These are some of the original concepts on, uh, what was then calledthe Next Generation...

[OPENING BRIEFCASE] These are some of the original concepts on, uh, what was then called
the Next Generation Space Telescope. The bigger the mirror,
the more light you're collecting. So, to actually see first light,
you're going to have to be big. We had five... five concepts
that we looked at. This was, uh, an original one. The devil in these designs
are in the details, so it isn't until you get
to, you know, some detailed engineering that looks like this,
that you find the problems. The most obvious problem, its... its diameter is bigger than the diameter
of the rocket that carries it. So you have to fold it up. We had deployments that had
the primary mirror segments stacked, almost like a record player. And then one of the concepts that we had
was, uh, to deploy the primary mirror using two leaves
that look like a drop table, which is what we're doing now. Our preliminary design review was 2008, and that's where the telescope starts
really looking like what we have today