Are Membrane Telescopes The Future of Space-Based Astronomy?

powerful telescopes are very big and very heavy and this is a problem here on Earth there's a limit to how big you can make a telescope but the problem is even worse when you want to go to space because you have to launch all of that mass into space and we saw with James web is 6.5 meter primary mirror it's a lot of telescope it was sort of the limit what could be launched into space but to do like the Next Generation kinds of questions that we have we need bigger t opes in space and so my guest today thinks he has cracked a big part of this question and that is what if you could launch very thin flexible membrane-based telescopes these telescopes could be a fraction of a millimeter thick and yet expand out to tens of meters across but having a membrane based telescope made of a very thin polymer covered in a mirror is going to be very difficult to work with and this is the part of this idea that I think is really ingenious which is that if you heat the back of this membrane very carefully you can distort it and you can use that as a way to get the mirror into perfect alignment even though it's just this sheet of polymer floating in space and this is a way that you could launch larger and larger space telescopes and so my guest today is Dr Sebastian rabine he is a scientist at the max plunc Institute for extraterrestrial physics he is working on this idea of a polymer based membrane telescope he's tested this in the lab and demonstrated that you can make the mirror you can deform it using slight amounts of light and heat and you can maintain a high level of optical accuracy and thinks that this will then scale up nicely to go to space and so imagine a future where six 20 m space telescopes are all launched on a single Starship flight they UNR roll in space and now you have an interferometer of six telescopes 20 M across blows the mind and yet this could be feasible if this technology works out now we talk about this idea of the membrane Space Telescope but Dr rabin's day job is to work with a monster camera on the extremely large telescope and so we spend a little time talking about that as well all right enjoy this conversation with Dr Sebastian rabine Dr rabine thank you so much for taking the time to check with me today uh I saw your paper on archive and immediately uh just had to reach out to you and and talk to you because it's like a really clever idea uh before we get into your specific paper you sort of talk about this idea that Adaptive Optics is sort of the key to Modern groundbased telescopes and has applications in space people are very familiar with Adaptive Optics and how it works here on the ground how would Adaptive Optics work in space why is it necessary well basically adaptive optic comes always into play if you either have to compensate for very fast variations as you have it on ground from the atmosphere that distorts your phase of the wav that's arriving your telescope so you have need a fast correction to get a defraction limited performance of the telescopes and space actually you you have other disturbing elements yeah which is for example you launch your telescope you have the gravity release yeah so you or you unpack your telescope like has been done in the jwst and uh let's say jws jwst has a very rudimentary element of an Adaptive optic system on board so it can adjust the position of the segments yeah and it even can adjust the local curvature of each segment so that's let's say the very lowest order of an adaptive optic system but uh even due to that jwst is is so successful yeah since it delivers very sharp images and uh there will be the the other telescope which is going up which has a prototype of a um of an Adaptive optic systems on board which is uh Nancy Grace telescope and this as well has for let's say the coronograph uh system on board that uses deformable mirrors so it's coming yeah and and a lot of people in the space uh business building telescopes Etc are working on adaptive optic systems either to compensate an unperfect uh primary mirror or for other purposes so that's really let's say migrating now a bit from ground to space so that's right and and so when you build the telescope it's under a gravity well it's inevitably going to have slight distortions that then it would be great once you're in space and you're in those final conditions then you can change it as well as based on any kind of thermal changes that are happening from the Sun and and and so on that makes that makes a bunch of sense um so let's talk about your idea this idea of a membrane Space Telescope uh why don't you give us sort of an overview of what your idea would be yeah basically if if we imagine that at some point in time we would like to have a really large telescope in space yeah or since thinking maybe of interferometrically combining telescopes you want a lot of big telescopes in space we we need building blocks that are significantly let's say simpler cheaper and affordable and launchable in in a small volume and let's say this very naturally brings people to the idea well can't we let's say pack a sin membrane since it's doing the job of reflecting the light and could be packed in much smaller volumes than a heavy big glass mirror and in addition brings very very low aial weight which is key I think for a large telescope to be brought to the space since and any kilogram costs a lot when launching a system and therefore a lot of people already have been thinking of why not using a membrane on the other hand it's it's not so simple as as one thinks since uh everybody who had some membranes either from kitchen or let's say unfolds an aluminum foil somewhere yeah you see immediately that sin systems tend to not keep the shape and as well wrinkle and form things that you will not be usable for a telescope that needs to be precise to a fraction of a wavelength which is which is Lambda 10 is a usual let's say rule of sum that one would like to have to get good defraction limited performance and let's say my invention or let's say say a move here was uh to to attack two sides how can one make a membrane that already has a proper shape that you want to have as a primary mirror and the second uh key thing is if you have these flexible membranes that already is maybe half well shaped how can one bring that into the final good shape and that's let's say the two two key elements that we've been attacking here and uh yeah second one goes so so let's talk about the membranes them themselves and you mentioned like aluminum foil um you know what is sort of the thinking if you wanted something that was large you know tens of meters across but very very thin uh what are the kinds of materials that are Fe today to build a mirror that big yeah we've especially been looking now in into polymeres since uh polymeres are flexible they uh can be depending on on on the type can be rolled and uh be let's say and a lightweight and uh let's say much simpler than any metal foil inance metal foils tend to deform permanently if if you treat them wrong and let's say some po can let's say uh are more tolerant that's let's state it like that and uh people have been looking into ctom materials uh and stretching them over let's say a a solid Mell that already has uh the proper shape that you want and then maybe thermop forms then on top of that that has been tried out and uh let's say I think that's a a wave possible Maybe for smaller mirrors but at the moment you you imagine you want to have something which is beyond a 10 m aperture so let's say your solid mandrel is is becoming as expansive as a big groundbased telescope and as well you need to as well shape it properly that's uh so we've been using a trick here which is very old and uh we combined it with another method which as well is old but in combination uh brings us uh to a method which posits a polymer onto a rotating liquid mandrel so we have a liquid in a chamber and as well this liquid rotates and it's it's a well-known fact the rotating liquid uh in in a container forms a perfect parabol and to have it perfect we we uh let's say Shield it from the outside we put it in a vacuum chamber it pump the air out therefore no winds are there no dust no dirt and uh liquid is uh free to form the perfect surface and this is just this this shape Giver let's say yeah and on top of this liquid surface uh we grow then with a chemical vapor deposition process the polymer this takes a while yeah but at the end you can control the the growth rate and and the thickness of the membrane to the desired one that you want and this let's say after the end of the process you can release and the this uh polymer from the liquid wash it away and and you have a thin already pre-shaped membrane that is a perfect parab wow um and then at this point it requires silvering of some way to make it reflective for the wavelengths that you're looking for yeah so uh basically the polymer we are using is transparent and uh you Overcoat the the front surface with an aluminum or gold or Sil so that sticks all to the surface so that depends now on on your application and we've been trying that it works quite well and uh usually now our test uh units are coated with aluminum such that they reflect the light in the test Tower um and then give us a sense then of you know like what is the thickness of this polymer with the aluminum reflection you know in a kind of per per square meter yeah we've been using until now polymer up to 200 Micron thickness which is relatively sick yeah to compare to to standard kitchen stretching foil or something yeah uh but this gives us the possibility that this poly doesn't wrinkle when you roll it and as well it nicely unrolls uh when when you put it back onto a rest and uh when you when you hold it in your hands what does it kind of feel like I'm trying to imagine like a piece of rubber like very very thin rubber it's uh yeah it it uh feels like like a piece of plastic it's it's uh um it's not sticking very well to anything yeah so it's a very low friction material and so but I cannot really tell yeah since usually I use glass and touch thing I feel like I wanted you know just find out just you know but I understand um but and and so then you know per square meter give us a sense of like what this weighs per square meter we are below a kilogram in weight right so this is uh far below anything that is let's say standard glass mirrors and uh let's say to give you scale yeah 10 meter sized mirror would be approximately um 60 kilograms so two people could uh lift it without problem right compared to tons and tons for a glass standard glass mirror yeah yeah um okay so so this is kind of half of it and so I guess you know with this polymer you are getting something that is naturally in its natural state it wants to be the right shape of a parabola it is sort of and that way I sort of imagine you know if you had something that was say made Flat then if you tried to move it into the parabolic shape you're going to get Kinks and creases and it's just not going to be the right topology but in this case its natural state is to be in this um in this parabolic shape it naturally forms a parabol shape that I want to have and as well this gives us the uh let's say ingredients for the next step since it's the shape is good enough such that I can measure it optically that I can see the surface yeah since if you're let's say millimeters off from from the desired shape you have a hard time to to measure anything optically since let's say this distorts everything but let's say in our test units we are usually in the range of you see a Pak to valy maybe of 10 microns then which is an RMS of approximately to for 30 cm test unit but this is let's say easily and still measurable by standard for example we use a sh Hardman sensor to sense the W Front and uh then you can see the wavefront of the reflected one and this is let's say s the first step if I can see it I can do something I can correct it right right but but you can't I guess you know take a laser examine the the quality of the surface and go go in with and fine polish bits and pieces that are that aren't perfectly aligned like you're stuck with the the shape of the polymer yeah let's say our polymer itself it it comes off the process in in a very good shape but at the first moment I I pull it off I touch it then or put it onto a rest somewhere which it has some five microns or whatever which is not not a bad surface but it's not optically good and then it picks up for example and an a stigmatic distortion of the 10 microns plus some bumps left and right and those need to go away and then this is then the next stop step where the Adaptive optic come comes into play and uh looking at the surface measuring it and then you need a mean let's say to deform the surface and uh best without directly touching it uh since the polymer is thin and and sensitive and uh and this is an is a method that we have developed which is very different from from any other actuation as it has been done before we uh irradiate light onto the surface with that I can locally control the intensity of the light which basically warms then locally left or right or where I want to warm it and this uh slight warming uh causes sensor surface to deform by using basically uh the CTE the termal uh expansion of the material and this gives me a mean at hand which is uh really we've found now that it's really great it works really good and I have a mean to not touch the surface I can build this radiative uh actuation system in a small box let's say bigger shoe box or something that it still could activate 10 m sized mirror with a lot of actuators and and and so does the you know you're using light to heat up a little bit of the polymer and that is change just distorting its shape just enough to bring it back into Optical alignment to give you you know that perfect wavefront um and you say you know a small box is it is it you're still having to sort of have the emitter very close to the polymer or is it sort of able to to you know the small box it can affect the entire area the small box can affect the entire area so let's say in our final setup on would be some 10 met away from the 10 m sized mirror and the small box would sit there and then illuminate the whole surface yeah you can tailor the objective which is in front of it such that it matches and you can let's say adjust the power of the light source as uh you want to do that so and then this could come into two flavors uh One is using commercial dlps so Digital Light projector or a laser scanning system could do the same job as well easily and until now we've been using dlps which which turned out to be very successful so then I guess sort of explain the the setup then so you've got on the you know say you have the polymer you have the emitter on the one side that is that is firing I'm assuming that on the other side you are sort of measuring the shape of the wave fronts that are coming off this telescope and then knowing how and then sort of feeding it back to itself to in yeah so that's basically the closed loop system that you need a realtime system that is capable of measuring the reflected wavefront from the mirror and in a telescope setup and and you would look at your object your star your planet whatever you want to look at and you use this point source at the probe of your mirror that's how we do adaptive optic as well on the ground and uh the Starlight is reflected off the the mirrors and ends up let's say in front of your scientific instrument and you pick a bit of that staright and uh you feed it into a wavefront sensor such that you can see how distorted is your wfront and then you have the computer controlled feedback loop uh that and the signs uh let's say we would call it modes of different information that are necessary to bring back the shape to the desired one since even in space I think you would have uh a variable environment you you change pointing of your telescope uh you may have uh let's say bit background radiation if you're close to Earth if you go to L2 might be better but uh and let's say there's always some let's say even pointing would change let's say the shape of the mirror so you need to actively keep it all time so I mean before we talk about space I would just love to sort of talk about what applications you see here even on Earth under the Earth's gravity well do you think there's a a place where these could be used as telescopes here on Earth compared to these you know as we talked about these ton multi-ton primary mirrors built for these big astronomical telescopes I mean this sounds like a very quick way to get a good telescope operating yeah we thought about that yeah and at the moment I would consider it uh difficult but maybe it's not sought through yet the one thing is uh that these membranes are sensitive so if you would let's say uh pull it out during night time and and put it on a Mountaintop it would see winds would see termal changes and uh distort and and if one finds a way to to keep winds and and uh let's say termal changes away then this could be a viable option or let's say where we are not at the end is let's say since we using Adaptive Optics to keep it in shape we may find a way to to make the response faster since currently the radiative uh let's say actuation is relatively slow so let's say a wind which blows over it could not be corrected but uh we may find ways to to add on an electrostatic or similar Fast Response uh unit that's interesting is there a any kind of wearing down of the membrane as you are you know heating it and letting it cool we've not seen anything like that the material itself is is a extremely stable uh let's say material yeah you you can use it down to cryogenic temperatures so minus 200° no problem celius sorry and uh let's say up to 200 even yeah so it can be warm and cold so let's say what say's a transition in all these polymer materials which is called glass transition and normally you would not like to store these things above it which is 50ish degrees Celsius since then you might uh pick up permanent let's say distortions which don't go away anymore right yeah yeah I can think about uh plastic that I put in my dishwasher that won't ever be the same again uh just because I put it too close to the heating element got hit by two hot water I've sort of learned the places in the dishwasher to put the plastic so that it doesn't completely melt all right now the fun part let's talk about going to space so how do you sort of Envision this working as a Space Telescope well if it's a single telescope one could build up let's say a package where these mirrors are stored rolled and let's say there's a whole structure as well that needs to go with it here which holds for example a secondary mirror or the instrument behind the main mirror um as well needs to be stored in the same volume yeah um we've we've made some some sketches yeah so will be several ways of how to let's say fold or unfold uh these structures but uh it it looks like to me that uh there's good ways in in let's say folding these structures away and and building the role beside of it and to me this looks like that let's say even uh uh if we are able to to roll a 20 M size telescope to the T of its diameter which is a 2 MERS and uh this would bring us to the possibility to pack in a Starship now or in a new SLS a large cargo we could store six telescopes maybe for launch and uh so this to my opinion would bring an extra possibility here to bring us towards the desired array of telescopes yeah that brings us the resolution to look at very special object right yeah yeah six 6 20 M telescopes acting as an inter barometer would be interesting yeah to say the least bring us to to the point where we could think of resolving [Music] planets I mean that sounds amazing um but sort of give me an idea kind of practically so you know have you got some kind of rigid um ring that sort of holds the outside of the of the polymer telescope and then you know is the emitter connected is it free floating the instruments I'm trying to sort of imagine what this will' develop now one or two schemes how how to let's say fix this grown uh mirror to a structure it looks like that U could be relatively uh successful uh to just do it with wires or a sin other membrane I said you attached to the outer ring best and in some schemee where where you keep it Force three after the growth and and then you pull it at three points back into the shape this nicely three points form a plane and if you go back into the plane where where the mirror has been grown you would be able to say get it back this needs a bit of structure around but the structure could be very lightweight and we would be able let's say but if we do wire pullings this has been done already in in space and let's say as well gives you the possibility to control the force finally that you put on the outer ring and and and I know people have been thinking about like rotating structures using that outward centripetal force as a way to maintain the the structure of a telescope as well one could do that yeah would be a possibility to keep the rotation it's maybe another Ree of Freedom that your spacecraft needs to be able to do that since you're doing as well pointing and if you have the rotation in addition it may be conflicting but uh say I'm not a good flight Dynamics person that's but it would be phys physically perfectly possible that uh to do that yeah um okay so so I'm sort of envisioning you got this 20 M telescope and and its five friends um that are in orbit where are you where do you think would be the best place to put them well uh currently if if you're looking for a quiet place in space L2 is a fantastic location what you need is a good sun shield to to keep let's say the radiation away since it's uh it's quite some power which is arriving there and uh on the other hand let's say orbits closer to Earth have have a nice possibilities that one could do repair missions or similar since to L2 people are thinking of it to do repair Mission but it's it's much more complicated I guess um you know and we think about these telescopes like now current telescopes I mean James web is you know was built with a 10-year lifespan it'll probably last longer thanks to the you know the very careful launch um do do you see this lasting a shorter amount of time a longer amount of time than than other telescopes that are more made of Hardware I don't think so yeah that let's say sin polymer has one nice possibility that I think it would be relatively uh has no problems with space debris yeah you get a little hole what so what yeah if let's say a little hole right through you have a big area but let's say if you if you have metal mirrors or big glass mirrors and it's hit by a fast particle as it may heavily damage it and but of course there other parts of spacecraft that can be hit always and let's say the materials themselves would be good very longlasting materials and it's an I think there a total spacecraft which normally is designed for such a life span that try to keep it long but you don't know there's a lot of pieces in I mean you talk about that that idea of the need of a sunshield that's theoretically then a second uh polymer probably that would be that would be launched to go go with it but I mean you're sort of dealing with those temperature extremes if you leave it in full sunlight then you are looking at something that sounds like it's probably getting close to the hottest temperature of the polymer is comfortable with but if you do put it into a sun shield now you're going the opposite direction you're going to approach you know few T of degrees above absolute zero like what we're seeing with James web is there a temperature regime that you would feel most comfortable with this being in well and in very general if if you would build such such a telescope it uh would look over a broad wavelength regime from Best Optical uh a bit uh quite in the infrared and if you go to the infrared you anyway want to have a cold telescope so cold telescope is good for astronomy and that's and uh since we are actively controlling the surface with heating the materials we would control the temperature of of the mirror so that's a you could set it to 100 Kelvin 120 Kelvin which could be a good regime let's say for even to the nicely into the 10 Micron regime of observations and so let's say uh we would be passively cooling but we would be actively heating it to a desired temperature so it's an design criteria right um that's interesting that that essentially the the device you're using to warp the telescope could also be used to keep it warm to whatever is the temperature you're looking for um so let's talk about pointing I mean you know when you think about a traditional telescope it's it's running uh reaction Wheels Inside It's Quickly turning it's got gyroscopes that keeping it on target how would you point it yeah you would use as a normal uh methods that I used spacecraft to point it and I think and good uh move would be if if the structure which is holding the whole thing around it which is holding the secondary mirror and the instrument is sort of stiff and uh not too sloppy yeah since let's say to avoid wobble modes that die out very slow yeah but let's say that you can rotates as a whole entity in in one unit and the membrane itself due to its lightweight structure I think it's it's a plus for pointing operations since it comes with the whole structure around it and then the lightweight membranes will follow it and I see so so if it's only say a few hundred kilograms or maybe a thousand kilogram that's quicker and easier to move requires less reaction Wheels to move it than something that is L reaction forces for the whole thing and maybe could be pointed like a smaller telescope oh good okay all right so it's still going to be fast to point at new targets or track targets that are moving and this is usually a design work which is done when you design your your spacecrafts and structure Etc that you look at I modes and frequencies that the whole thing is is not let's say wobbling for hours after you're done operation so so let's talk about like a practical Next Step then so I mean you have demonstrated in the lab all of the key parts that you think make this a viable concept what would be the next step to sort of show if this is you know a possible future Space Telescope yeah next steps would be a bit at the moment looking for for partners that would be interested in continuing that or even commercialize the whole story and this is ongoing I've been talking to people going to conferences and uh so uh let's say that natural thing now to do um we would I would laugh uh to to enlarge uh to the next step to grow a meter meter 20 sized uh unit since you could learn a lot from that what what are really the surface structure functions that you have to deal with on a larger mirror which would then be more let's say representative for going to a big big telescope so the things to do and uh yeah I've got a couple of questions from audience I let people know that we would be talking today uh Alexander gross asks uh would the time to develop and build such a telescope differ compared to a conventional Space Telescope I'm pretty sure that it could be shortened since if you build up some Machinery uh to to grow these mirrors at uh your desired size you can make many since the Machinery is at the end sort of industrial production of these membrane mirrors you could grow many that that helps a lot in the development if you can do it I mean we think about say the work on the extremely large telescope which we're going to talk about in a second because that's your day job um but um you know a lot of these mirror segments have taken in some cases a decade in the mirror lab to go through the entire process from from putting in all the glass to doing the polishing to finally delivering to its final Place yeah yeah and it's a lot of it's a lot of segments but actually ISO and and the companies that are doing the the the job for the mirrors are good path that's it's not bad a whole production facility I I don't want to tell now dates since I don't have it directly here in my head and uh they've been doing a good job for the 800 segments which are on the way that's right no and I I report on on the work that's been done at the miror lab in the University of Arizona the one that contributed to the I mean they make these eight meter yeah they did the ones for for the LBT and uh the ones for the synoptic large survey telescope which is coming up now and uh yeah yeah and and it is about like you know a 10ish year process or a little bit less for them to go from when they they melt all the glass to when they finally deliver that that final mirror on the top of the mountain it's a it's a long process they've been doing the LBT ones took a long time and and same thing as you say with ver Rubin it's been it's been a lot of work um mle milavsky asks can various natural lasers that emit visible light or other wavelengths of light coming from the universe cause some change to the shape of the membrane basically not yeah I would need to recalculate what if you point to one of the brightest stars uh on the sky how much power you have but per square meters that's not a lot that's right General the universe is full of light but but it's still dark right yeah of course all right I'd like to shift gears then and and talk about like I mentioned your your day job which is that you're working on the camera system for the extremely large telescope so can you give us a background of this oh yeah if you want to cover that in addition yeah so it's say my my day job that's the camera is called Mikado and uh it's going to be the first light camera that will be sitting on the nasus platform of the extreme large telescope at the moment the telescope is ready so so both units are currently being build so the telescope is growing every day in atakama desert there's a webcam actually one can look at the Daily Progress which is fantastic it's getting really huge a huge building and uh we here at our Institute uh we have the pi Institute of the Mardo camera which is an infrared camera that are going to attach to the extremely large telescope and uh talking about camera I told you before yeah that infrared camera needs a cry start needs to be cooled down to liquid nitrogen temperatures and uh let's say the arrangement at the telescope plus all facilities you need for this infrared camera makes it an 18 ton heavy unit which is a six meter high right it's a building not not a camera it's a small building yeah but it's full of Technology from B to top right and and so you know when you think about the like the elt is going to have this 39 meter aperture it's going to be collecting all of this light and then light is going to be bouncing off the the secondary mirror and then is this like the main instrument that's going to be gathering up that light the the main camera or will there be sort of multiple cameras so there will be multiple systems at the telescope of course uh ours is an near infrared imager and and some spectroscopy and uh but there will be a camera with an ifu and there will be a midin infrared uh instrument as well as spectroscopy and imaging and uh then others are in the queue yeah since of course a largest telescope of the world is let's say needs to have quite some capabilities since it will be serving a large community of astronomers that all need different wavelengths regimes to observe right um and and give people a sense then like like what are the the kinds of astronomical objects that this will be ideal for observing so can pull here of course one out of the pocket immediately which is black hole at the galactic center this is one of our main topics here in our group and let's say this camera with a 40 m resolution of the telescope will be capable of resolving tiny objects close to the black hole so smaller stars and this will gifts and hand of uh of uh constraining uh let's say general relativity in the vinity of the heavy black hole right I I think about the you know there was a Nobel Prize awarded for the observations made around uh the center of the Milky Way and these stars that are moving and that was all done with I think at the time the European Southern observatory's very large telescope or even early models and and using that INF capability to look through the gas and the dust to be able to see those Stars moving on on elliptical orbits around nothing yeah it looks fantastic if you look at a movie Switch we we made of that that you can see really uh Stars which are 100 solar masses and and moving on orbits that's fantastic and from that you of course you can measure a lot of things to a lot of physics and then the measurements mostly have been done in the early times with Adaptive Optics at the 8m whe uh telescopes and later on with infometer and an instrument called gravity as well we been involved here in the pi Institute and with the infometer you get a fantastic resolution you have a 100 meter Baseline there and so you can see let's say uh stars move to a super high precision and then just gives you then hand on let's say the general relativity effects you're seeing there know and and where is the camera now is it is it in okama or is it still at your facility getting wrapped up uh the whe te facility is still there it will exist for for a long time no no no the the new one the new one new one you're working on yeah you're building it up currently we building Mikado up and and pieace is arriving in our integration Hall here and uh being put together and uh we are then hopefully in time uh ready with the whole system so it's a big partnership yes that uh yeah say with there's Partners uh all over Europe as well and uh they're delivering pieces to us we are building pieces up like mechanisms the cry start hopefully will arrive soon and all that need to be put together be tested and uh at the end let's say yeah then and I guess you're waiting on on the on ESO for when you're going to know your first light it's a telescope must be ready yeah and then we must be ready of course they scheduled all around and say latest one can be seen on the EO web pages but let's say it's it's not so far in the future say within a four or five years we're going to be there yeah yeah that'll be great I mean it's such a dramatic step up from any other telescope that that exists it's kind of mind-blowing how much bigger this telescope is going to be than anything else and when you have the Adaptive Optics then it it makes it feel as if it's almost in space um and you know I think you know a lot the right now everyone talks about James web but but that's the telescope that will then take I mean you can't see the same wavelengths as James web but just the size and sensitivity of this telescope is going to be mindblowing so basically it's the resolution yeah the 40 meter size resolution that will let's say resolve a lot of uh questions that we that we have James we is extremely sensitive this 40 meter and mikardo will reach similar sensitivities in certain wavelength band not at a long end yeah since of course atmosphere is killing you yeah but let's say and in the near infrared wave bands where we design for this say it's a 40 meter is is as sensitive as a jwst out a on L2 yeah yeah fantastic well Dr Ruben thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today good luck with launching uh six 20 met space telescopes in a Starship that sounds great I can't wait okay many thanks to you and have a great day I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Dr rine I'm going to give you some references to other conversations we've had that are similar here on the channel but first I'd like to thank our patrons thanks to Abe Kingston Adam schaer Barry Lake Roofing David Gilton and David matz Dennis elberty Dustin cable Jeremy murn Jim Burke Jordan young Josh Schultz Paul Robo scienceworld rec.org spiders swap. iio Steven Kaki Steven fer Munley and Vlad chiplin who support us at the master of the universe level and all of our others supporters on patreon obviously I'm very excited about practical ideas to build larger and larger space telescopes I mean web is fine you know whatever comes with habitable World Observatory that's great but I think we really want to have larger and larger telescopes so I'm going to give you a couple of links to various interviews that I've done in the past one is this idea of the solar gravitational lens that what if you could use the sun itself as the focusing part part of a really powerful Space Telescope and this is a conversation that I've had with Dr Slava turev he is the originator of the idea and and we have a really in-depth conversation about how the solar gravitational lens would work and then a follow on conversation about how we could get out to the solar gravitational lens in a short amount of time the other conversation that I think you'll find really interesting is about the Nautilus Space Telescope and this is an idea of launching flexible telescopes that would work in a large configuration you could launch them sort of flattened and then they would inflate once they're in space and act like telescopes working together or an interferometer sort of similar idea but sort of a different substrate so definitely check out that interview as well all right I hope you enjoyed this conversation and we'll see you next time