Roman has two science instruments, a wide-field imager (“WFI”) and a coronagraph (“CGI”) and they were both built by NASA for this purpose (optics, electronics, detectors, deformable mirrors).
The WFI optics includes filters and a prism and grism for spectroscopy, and of course the very large CCD arrays.
The coronagraph is a rather special tech demo and allows imaging of exoplanets (Jupiter-like) while blocking the light of the host star. (https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/coron...). It’s a precursor to HWO which is mentioned down-thread.
Things aren't as simple as more money = more good.
Rapid progress requires adversity, the kind you'll find when nations compete for military power, for example.
Both KH-11 and Hubble had similar sized mirrors, but that wasn't because of design reuse, it was because that was the biggest primary mirror you could fit in the Space Shuttle cargo bay (1). In actual fact no KH-11 went into space on a Shuttle, but the plan up until the Challenger disaster had been for the STS to carry all US satellites into space, including the KH-11, which was designed around that cargo bay.
1: The space shuttle cargo bay was sized the way it was for NRO payloads, but it seems clear that the USAF wasn't thinking about KEEENAN when they requested that size- a design like that would be better if it was wider and didn't need to be nearly as long. My suspicion is, when NASA asked them what size they wanted for the bay, they took the last design they had- the just cancelled KH-10 Manned Orbiting Laboratory, and used that.
The problems are that anyone gave Musk/doge the time of day and that we're too used to the president giving no bid contacts to incompetent donors.
We should thank the government for spending tax money efficiently.
You should blame the legacy aerospace companies whom purposely inflate contracts and take forever to do things for there being a lack of competition, not Musk.
Yes, Musk is a crappy character, but that's not a reason to make things up. This isn't Reddit.
The point is this isn't happening.
Almost everything you're complaining about happened under Biden, who Musk wasn't on good terms with.
SpaceX is the cheapest provider of the services it offers, and the government is a large customer but has been less than half of revenue since before 2024.
If the government wants to build a space station (Vast, Axiom, Voyager) or land something(Firefly, Intuitive Machines) or someone on the moon(SpaceX, Blue Origin) , it will find contractors that can do all or part.
The contractors here are BAE Space & Mission Systems (fka Ball Aerospace), L3Harris, and Teledyne. i.e the "NASA" money always ends up at some corp. And complaining about SpaceX stealing money is ignorance.
It's worth noting that the primary contractor for the ISS is Boeing, but Leidos and KBR are involved.
The Artemis program was developed out of the Constellation program, which was initiated sometime around 2005 or 6.
Of course there have long been plans to go back to the moon because its a cool fun thing to do and whoever happens to be president would likely be well remembered for taking credit for it. That doesn't give it credibility as a useful endeavor.
Humans have intuition and curiosity, they can spot something quickly in the distance that looks peculiar, go to it and quickly inspect it.
That should be enough clue.
The Chinese car ban (not just electric mind you) was at the instigation/behest of Unions and Ford in particular. Another Biden thing
Blue Origin matters because they got more money to do less.
> How is landing on the moon not a publicity stunt?
That's fine, we all have our personal heros and villains. But don't be so disingenuous with your arguments or your reasoning.
Are you talking about SLS?
Oh maybe you'd say that is "Senate Launch System", it's complicated, job program, 50 states sharing, and so on?
And unlike SLS weren't no-bid