[zackbloom]

It's also worth noting that much of JWST is now twenty year old technology. Assuming it isn't a total failure which needs to be salvaged for PR reasons, it will almost certainly make more sense to build a new observatory in ten years rather than rescuing this one. If Starship exists at that point it will also be a much less complex undertaking to get it into space, and it could likely use an even bigger mirror.

[vlovich123]

The complexity of the undertaking was not building the rocket. The complexity is the telescope itself. It would be interesting what the costs come down to if rather than starting from scratch they iterated on existing designs. Anyone know what the incremental cost of building the same telescope again would look like?

[wolfd]

I think that the other commenter was referring to the relative complexity in JWST's unfolding/deployment. It might be possible to deploy something from Starship that doesn't need to be packed as tightly (and save on engineering costs there) and still get around the same performance.

A complicated sunshield deployment seems somewhat inevitable, personally, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong there.

[pirate787]

My understanding is that a lot of the complexity is making the telescope able to fit in limited space and then unfurl. That constraint is lifted significantly with Starship.