Increasing Structural Performance of Space Telescope Mirrors through Simultaneous Shape and Size Optimization

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors describe their adaptive mirror with optimized shape and size. In the introduction, they specify current situation in mirrors design for space telescopes. In section 2, different rib patterns are considered and compared. In section 3, the deformation of the mirror surface under different type of support is calculated. In section 4, an overview on found optima is given. The overall work has not been completed yet, however.  

Some captions on Fig 4 are cut.

Author Response

Many thanks for your review. Your remark regarding the caption has been addressed.

Last but not least, you are perfectly right. The research work regarding the mirror deflections under gravity removal will be further investigated at AIRBUS.

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript describes the structural performance of space telescope mirror desgin. The authors did valuable works which can be presented in this journal. 

(1) However, I would like to authors to present the detailed input parameters in tabular formate in the optimization processes, as well as the output numbers from at the final interations. In order to be confirmed their works, the readers need to have numbers to repeat the processes. 

(2) The authors also need to discuss the balance between the mirror weight and the mirror surface deformations to find the best structural design for the space applications.

Author Response

First and foremost, many thanks for your thorough and complete review. We highly appreciate this.

Regarding your remarks, we would like to respond as follows:

• The overall English grammar and spelling has been rechecked
• Introduction
  • We did revise this section and slightly adopted it so as to make it more relevant
• Presentation of results and missing design space
  • We did appreciate this comment the most, as it was actually missing
  • For this reason a table highlighting initial and optimum design variable vector has been included
  • On top, the bounds (lower and upper) as well as variable type has been added
• Balance of weight
  • The missing discussion on weight is a really good aspect
  • We did add this in our paper and are happy that you did remark this

After we discussed on your valuable remarks, we would like to go one step further and also add our FEM to paper upon publication, such that everybody may studies our findings.

Please let us know at any given time in case you miss something. Again, many thanks for your support!