Silicon carbide mirrors

Could this usher in a new era of lighter weigh large aperture
Dobs? I hear they are using this material on most NASA missions
requiring mirrors but I don't know if it's possible to make them
beyond a small (4"?) size.
-Rich

"Richard" wrote in message
...
Could this usher in a new era of lighter weigh large aperture
Dobs? I hear they are using this material on most NASA missions
requiring mirrors but I don't know if it's possible to make them
beyond a small (4"?) size.
-Rich


40 cm http://www.trexenterprises.com/mirror.html

MAT wrote:

"Richard" wrote in message
...
Could this usher in a new era of lighter weigh large aperture
Dobs? I hear they are using this material on most NASA missions
requiring mirrors but I don't know if it's possible to make them
beyond a small (4"?) size.
-Rich


40 cm http://www.trexenterprises.com/mirror.html

Yeah, I was going to chime in that we used a 0.4m SiC mirror for the
Starlite experiment on STS-95. That would have been much more
interesting if one of the mounting bearings hadn't frozen by the
time the UV detectors had outgassed enough not to be fried by
operating voltage... For that application, the mirror construction was
particularly interesting because an SiC coating has excellent
deep-UV reflectance.

Bill Keel