I hope this article ages badly. We're at the tail end of the "mainframe" age of satellites. Expensive, long development times, low-risk projects. Hopefully with launch prices dropping, satellite development can become cheaper and iteration can become faster. We'll likely always require clean rooms for optical satellites but this doesn't have to be the case for other types.
For optical, I'd love to see a comparison between standards for terrestrial use mirrors vs satellite ones. Surely the ones used on earth are manufactured well, but end up with dirt on them anyway? Is the difference because the earth based ones can be cleaned earlier during use? Would a future path to better ability for optical imaging satellites to self-clean be a game-changer?
