/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15785349
So you're saying that OST's will get mirrors maybe 30% larger than what they have now?
Starship likely won't launch any space telescopes unless it gets a kick stage made for it, which would in turn reduce the available payload size for the telescope.
What kinds of telescopes would be launched on a Starship? Who would make them? How long until Starship is reliable enough to entrust a multi-billion dollar space telescope on it as payload, if ever? And could Starship even take some of the possible telescopes out to their desired orbits?

I know that Falcon 9 already launched one telescope, the IXPE, but starship would likely run into issues trying to recover the second stage from such an orbit. It would also have to be worth it to use such a heavy vehicle for a single telescope, so not just any tiny university telescope would get its own ride like IXPE did.