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Juts having some thoughts about the JWST.
I wonder why the rocket which carries the mirror has to be a long cylinder?
If it had a nose cone more like the shape of an oblate spheroid, highly flattened then
it could conceivably hold a very large mirror.
It could have been large enough to hold a single mirror and not 18 hexagonal ones folded up.
That would have made the JWST mission much cheaper and
the diffraction spikes not so bad as we see now.
That idea would mean even larger mirrors could be sent into space.
Maybe aerodynamics and also the extreme G forces on a large mirror would make it impossible?
Allan
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