Previous
abstract 
Next
abstract
Reduced capital funding, reduced operating budgets, global networking and advanced educational requirements, among other issues, are limiting the efficacy of traditional one-off designs to acquiring new telescopes. One approach to providing needed new equipment is to develop standardized designs which can then be specialized by modular components and instrumentation. The standardized telescope becomes analogous to the computer platform, while the specialized modules (instruments) are analogous to software. Additionally, vertical integration of manufacturing facilities appears to make enormously favorable impacts upon costs. High performance at low cost is then achievable by providing quality optics, structures, drives and automated TCS.
