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There is no way they would grant a patent in USA as all these techniques have been used there for years including slumping and holding the parts with epoxy prior to fusing. I have many papers from Applied Optics over the years which show spacers fused between face plates. Given that China shows no respect to US patents I doubt any commercial production of these designs would be any concern in the USA.
Hubble Optics blanks are just the marriage of two low cost techniques- fusing and producing round spacers with a simple core drill rather than traditional ribs. Marrying this with cheap 19mm plate glass for the face plates was a way of making large blanks avoiding the high cost of Pyrex and long anneal times for solid glass - and the cooling aspect is a bonus. A great piece of simple innovation.
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