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The largest filled-aperture radio telescope in the world has a 500-meter diameter, and reportedly only cost $180 million. For comparison, the International Space Station costs $3 billion per year just to operate. Doing stuff in space is expensive.


Right, but the whole reason people are so excited about SpaceX is because they're making the costs of doing stuff in space drop like a stone.


For large (>10m) telescopes, it doesn't matter much, because no one is building rockets with big enough fairings. Even if the cost of launching to LEO was $0, in-orbit unfolding/assembly is a bottomless hole of engineering complexity that you cannot avoid. Again, see JWST/ISS.




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