I Have a Little Black Hole

Boss, if these important parts are produced in our country, the overall performance of our communication satellites and detection satellites will drop by 15%-20%! Even more than that, there is no way to meet the company's performance with such performance. Communication and probing needs!

And the space telescope that the boss pays more attention to is impossible to use domestic parts to replace! Because if those low-performance parts are used, the entire space telescope can be said to be useless! And the most important lens problem, I estimate that our domestic technology has no way to create a barely usable one! I'll give you an example, boss, and you'll know.

Take the Hubble Space Telescope, a space telescope that is about to retire. Its mirror is the Hubble primary mirror polished by PerkinElmer in Danbury, Connecticut, in May 1979.

The mirror and optical system of the telescope are the most critical parts, so there are very strict specifications in the design. In general telescopes, mirrors are polished to an accuracy of about one-tenth the wavelength of visible light, but because space telescopes observe from the ultraviolet to the near-infrared.

So it requires ten times higher resolution than previous telescopes, whose mirrors are polished to an accuracy of one-twentieth the wavelength of visible light, or about 30 nanometers.

PerkinElmer deliberately used an extremely sophisticated computer-controlled polishing machine to grind the mirror, but had trouble with the cutting edge technology; Kodak was commissioned to make a spare mirror using traditional polishing techniques (this mirror from Kodak is now Permanently preserved at the Smithsonian Institution).

In 1979, PerkinElmer began grinding the lenses, using ultra-low expansion glass, and in order to minimize the weight of the mirror, a honeycomb lattice was used, and only one inch each of the top and bottom was thick glass.

Polishing of the mirrors, which began in 1979 and continued until May 1981, was behind schedule and over budget, when NASA reports began to question PerkinElmer's management structure.

In order to save money, NASA stopped supporting the production of the lenses and postponed the launch date to October 1984. The lenses were completed by the end of 1981 and were coated with 75 nm thick aluminum for enhanced reflection and 25 nm thick magnesium fluoride protective layer.

As budgets continue to balloon and progress is falling behind on the optical telescope portfolio, doubts persist about PerkinElmer's ability to follow suit. In response to what has been described as an open and fickle daily report, NASA extended the launch date to April 1985.

However, PerkinElmer's progress continued to deteriorate at a rate of one month per quarter, and the time lag also continued to fall behind every working day. NASA was forced to delay the launch date, first to March 1986, then to September 1986. At this time, the total cost of the entire project has reached as high as 1.175 billion US dollars.

And a few weeks after the telescope was launched, images returned showing serious problems with the optics. Although the first image looked sharper than the ground-based telescope, the telescope was clearly not optimally focused, and the best image quality obtained was much lower than originally expected.

The image of the point source is diffused into circles with a radius of more than one arcsecond, rather than the norm in the design guidelines: concentric circles of point diffuse function images centered within 0.1 arcseconds in diameter.

Analysis of the pattern defects revealed that the root of the problem was that the primary mirror had been ground in the wrong shape. The mirror edge is a little too flat, about 2.2 microns away from where it needs to be, but this difference creates catastrophic, severe spherical aberration. Reflected light from the edge of the specular surface cannot be focused on the same focal point as the reflected light from the center.

Although this problem was solved by technical means later, from this example, the boss must have seen the difficulty of manufacturing parts such as lenses in the space telescope!

Let's talk about the lenses of the James Webb Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope has a mass of about 6.2 tons, which is about half of the Hubble Space Telescope. The primary mirror is made of beryllium and has a diameter of 6.5 meters, more than five times the area of ​​the Hubble Space Telescope. It can operate in an environment close to absolute zero (equivalent to minus 273.15 degrees Celsius).

The technology and time required to manufacture such high-performance lenses are also very long, so if our company develops such high-precision lenses by ourselves, it is estimated that our space telescope will have to wait for a long time to go to the sky!

Moreover, our company has not entered such a field at present. If we want to develop such a lens, we need to start from scratch. Boss, you should not accept such a long wait, right?

What's more, it is not just this problem that we have encountered. Although we have been studying other high-performance equipment, we are still a long way from success, so we thought about purchasing these parts from European and American countries first, and then we will complete our work first. Construction of current space telescopes and satellites.

As for the parts and components we developed ourselves, we can use them in future space telescopes and various satellites. The advantage of this is that we don't have to slow down the entire company's space program because of parts and components! Kong Yuxiao explained in detail.

Hearing what Kong Yuxiao said, Lei Tiantang finally understood the reason why he came to him this time. It's no wonder that the experts involved in space telescope and satellite projects have thought about it. Comprehensive, after all, they already have the action of developing these core components.

It’s just that the progress cannot keep up with the company’s space program. You must know that the most important engine problem of the rocket has been basically completed. After some tests, the test launch of the rocket can be carried out. At that time, if the satellite and space telescope still exist If the construction is not completed, then the rocket can't just launch anything into space, right?

Okay, you ask them to send me a detailed catalog of the parts to be purchased, as well as their specific parameters and performance requirements. Let me solve the problems of these parts!

However, I can only help you solve this kind of thing once or twice at most. After all, relying on such means cannot help the long-term development of the company. You are also aware of this!

Therefore, the company can increase investment in the research and development of these components! For a business that we have not been involved in, such as lenses, it will be very slow to start from scratch, but you can acquire such a company, and then incorporate its experience and R\u0026D accumulation into the company. I believe that with the current strength of our company, it is necessary to Acquiring a business like this should be no problem at all!

For other parts, you can also use this method to solve the initial experience accumulation process. After all, it is difficult to go from zero to one, but it is much easier to go from one to ten! Lei Tiantang said after thinking about it.