Roger Hamlett wrote:
I think you have 'hit the nail on the head', with the cost of materials
'outweighing' any savings.
The obvious design idea, is to keep weights down, and distortions from the
weight down, on larger scopes. I'd doubt if the design is
economic/practical for scopes any smaller than the prototype

If this turns out to be true, it would provide a nice excuse to make
much larger amateur telescopes (as some other postings to this thread
have suggested). I can easily put a saucer sled in the back seat of my
small car. I would guess such a sled is a meter or so across. If that
fits, so would a meter-wide mirror (in a protective case). And a
knock-down truss assembly would fit, too.

BTW, while the original was a Cass, I don't suppose there's any problem
in principle with using a composite mirror in a Newtonian, in which case
a Dob mount should be feasible. Then again, I'd have to fit the ladder
in my car :-(. Or could a very deep mirror work, with some sort of
corrective optics to flatten the field? I'm getting beyond anything I
know now, but it's sure fun to speculate about eyeballing galaxy
clusters with a one meter mirror!

Mike Maxwell