I don't believe this. I looked at the error quite carefully at the time, and it really was just that they misplaced a set of washers on the test jig, due to a misplaced laser beam. And they didn't believe the "less reliable" tests that showed things were wrong. Here's Mitch Waldrop's article at the time: From the NASA technical failure analysis report: The spacing of the field lens in the corrector was to have been done by laser measurements off the end of an invar bar. Instead of illuminating the end of the bar, however, the laser in fact was reflected from a worn spot on a black-anodized metal cap placed over the end of the bar to isolate its center (visible through a hole in the cap). The technician who performed the test noted an unexpected gap between the field lens and its supporting structure in the corrector and filled it in with an ordinary metal washer. [www.ssl.berkeley.edu/~mlampton/AllenReportHST.pdf] A fascinating (somewhat morbid) read is the single author article by the fellow who figured the lens, explaining proudly and in great detail how it was < 10 nm p-p accurate and how he achieved this level of precision. Published, of course, before the error was discovered. I believe it is in one of the SPIE journals. On Jul 17, 2013, at 10:00 AM, Henry Baker wrote:
While we're on the subject of speculation, I saw a TV program last night that suggested that the Hubble Space Telescope's original lens design _wasn't an error_, but a 'cover story' for some nefarious classified tests by the US DoD.
After all, the company making the Hubble's lenses was the same company that had been making lenses for spy satellites since the beginning, and it's hard to see how they could have made such an 'error'.
After these classified tests were done, the Hubble's new optics were installed (& other stuff removed??), and the Hubble went on to perform its (unclassified) mission.
I'm not sure what those classified tests might have involved, but the 'error' in the Hubble's optics has been pretty well documented, so it might be possible to 'reverse engineer' what the original 'design' might have been used for.
At 02:07 AM 7/17/2013, Simon Plouffe wrote:
Hello,
I was thinking at how we could procuce energy in a simple way, like having solar ovens with mirrors and such devices. This lead me to Archimedes and the way he used to 'toast' roman warships from the Syracuse citadel, apparently that idea was somewhat validated once, they found a way to toast a pile of plywood resembling a roman ship with plates of metals used at the time.
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