What I am pointing out is that something has gone wrong, badly, in astronomy. The TMT is the telescope I've been following most closely. The costing just doesn't make sense. The project delivery seems horrible.
Shall we use the TMT as our example? Its going to HAVE to have some sort of actuation on mirrors, because its sitting under atmosphere. Period. There is going to be noise from atmo in the imaging. So you are already starting behind.
Transmission losses for infra / UV.
My proposal is simple. Put a $2B RFP out for a 9 arc second telescope if that is what is needed, perhaps 10 $1M proposal awards, down select to 3 $20M awards for further work, then down select to 1 or 2 $1B-$2B awards depending on where the bidding comes in. Payment as delivery is met.
Find folks who instead of criticizing dirt cheap access to space can think of ways to take advantage of it.
Note that I say this having written sections of or supported very successful govt grant proposals, chased all the preference points, yadda yadda. An amazing waste of time if someone else had the "in" and you didn't realize it, and sometimes you crush everyone for no good reason other than your proposal checks every box very carefully.