An Air Force academy physicist is developing a new telescope lens that news reports say would revolutionize the spy satellite business. Instead of the current Hubble-size space telescope—with a four-foot glass lens weighing as much as a truck—the lens Geoff Andersen wants to construct would employ lightweight material like aluminum foil and, at 60-feet-wide, would weight just half a pound. He has built a four-inch experimental model at a cost of $1,000 that works better than lenses at 10 times that cost. He says that his 60-foot version would enable one to read a newspaper from a satellite placed in low Earth orbit.
The rate of building B-21 bombers would speed up if the fiscal 2026 defense budget passes. But it remains unclear how much capacity would be added, and whether the Air Force would simply build the bombers faster, or buy more.
