Why Don't We Build a Telescope Without Mirrors or Lenses?

This is a very bad article. NASA has investigated how a lensless mirrorless telescope could actually be made using photonic integrated circuits[0]. There are even mass benefits too.

[0]https://www.nasa.gov/content/low-mass-planar-photonic-imagin...

If this sounded like a bad idea to you, and you wondered what new tech made this possible - there is no new tech mentioned and you can safely skip the article.

It’s basically just a list of reasons why this does not work at all.

I thought they were going to talk about diffractive optic telescopes which require neither lenses or mirrors. See more here https://str.llnl.gov/str/March03/pdfs/03_03.2.pdf. Someone did not do their research! The aragoscope is mentioned in the Spacetime episode mentioned elsewhere here.

Like this one?

http://www.lofar.org/about-lofar/general-information/introdu...

Because it's really hard to arrange for gravitational lenses in the directions and distances you want to observe?

This PBS Space Time episode [1] covers quite a few possible designs for space telescopes without heavy lenses or mirrors.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BIASPc89Sgk

How about phased arrays? http://m.caltech.edu/news/ultra-thin-camera-creates-images-w...

It's not:

    	Why Don't We Build a Telescope Without Mirrors or Lenses?

It's:

    	Why We Don't Build a Telescope Without Mirrors or Lenses.