>>11754912>>11754915>>11754927>>11754943>>11755025JWST is a perfect example of technological over-reach. If we actually wanted a working telescope, we'd grind a single piece 4.3 meter diameter mirror, put it inside a telescope tube with built-in multilayer sun-shielding and a cryocooler, and we'd have had it launched a decade ago. Would it have as much collecting area as JWST? No. Would it be as good as JWST on paper? No. Would it be better in reality? Hell yes. It would actually have results by now.
>but muh big folding mirror and sunshieldRetarded. Extreme waste of engineering effort that won't even work.
The best part? Starship will be able to launch telescopes, optical or infrared or whatever wavelength you like, that will have more collecting area in a singe non-folding mirror than JWST, and it'll be cheap enough that you could mass produce those telescopes and launch a fleet of them.
If we didn't go full retard on JWST we'd have terabytes of additional infrared survey data, in fact we'd probably have already spotted planet 9 if it exists because we'd have done multiple full-sky surveys by now, and by the time JWST finally gets launched the technology we devleloped to get it to that point will have become irrelevant because Starship will allow us to launch monolithic telescopes in the same size range as a large ground based telescopes for cheap.
