Andrew N. Aurigema
Fred,
Wow............. I just connected you with that site. I have seen it before but lost the link several moves ago.
Dude, you already make blanks bigger and better than I ever could. We gota talk.
Ok, here is the deal. I am a mechanical design engineer for NASA but they never let me design or build anything cool. So I play in my off time. I have designed and built racing aircraft, sounding rockets, race cars, dune buggies, and more telescope peices parts than I care to think about. Now I want to put it all together and make myself a little telescope making business. I was thinking of GOTO RC 0.8 and 1.0 meter scopes. See my 0.8m prototype scope. I developed and hold the engineering rights to all you see. Sweet Porter style mount, servo controled drive system, OTA design, computer controled 6" dia focuser, motorized multi mirror alignment system.......... I have figured it all out. My prototype uses an f/1.1 primary that I realize we would never be able to reproduce, but I have worked out the design for an f/2 RC primary and f/3.3 corrected newtonian as well. I can find anything in the sky first try with 10 arcminute GOTO precision and then track it 5+ hrs till I run out of disk. This is all THESky6 controled and RF LAN based.
I have a world class glass pusher lined up that can turn blanks into mirrors. Not shaving mirrors like most of these optical houses make but real telescope mirrors that actually are what the test says they are. I a have a 63" vacuum chamber for doing my own coatings so I dont have to send them to anybody and cry over the damage.
What is stopping me from pulling this off is that nasty price tag on a good 1 meter celular blank. I really dont want to re-invent the wheel and figure out all the stuff you already have. So lets talk about me buying blanks off of you.
My mirror maker is very very very fussy about the blanks he is willing to push on. The first thing he is gona ask me is how thick is the face of the cellular. He wants between 1/2 and 3/4 inch thick face plate on a 1 meter blank. What you your typical cellular be ???
This is all very cool by the way.
Are you interested in any of this ??? I am game for just about anything you can think of that gets this dream off the ground.
Andrew
