And in the battle for superlatives, the cancelled OLT would have been the largest of them all.
[1] https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/worlds-largest-telesco...
And for certain applications the four VLT unit telescopes [2] can already be used as one big telescope [3][4]. Even with 4 mirrors in place the GMT would only have slightly more collection area than the four VLT telescopes combined (8.4m primary mirrors versus 8.2m primary mirrors).
[1] http://www.gmto.org/overview/frequently-asked-questions/ [2] https://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/paranal/telescopes/ut.htm... [3] https://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/paranal/telescopes/vlti.h... [4] https://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/develop/instruments/espre...
Can't wait for the "JFCTABT".