Well I could tell you, but then I’d have to club you with the Tesco telescope…
Ok so this is all a bit vague now, but I shall do my best to relay the tale...
I work in optical engineering. I was at a conference some years ago in the early days of the JWST and I was talking to folks who were involved in the programme. The conversation turned to the primary mirror, how such a large yet lightweight structure could be unfolded and the separate mirror segments co-aligned to the required tight tolerances.
It was suggested that NASA were getting some assistance from US military R&D. (After the Star Wars program a number of classified optical technologies were put into the public domain, adaptive optics, high power solid state lasers etc. so sharing military tech is not without precedent).
Anyway there was apparently some early-days meeting, a sort of, “How can we help you?” thing between NASA / astronomy tech people and military tech people.
The Hubble Space Telescope mirror diameter has been limited by the size of the shuttle payload bay, so for the JWST to have a significantly larger mirror the team needed some very advanced mirror technology indeed. Someone commented that it would be fantastic to have a folding mirror of such a size with x number of segments, but that’s something they are really struggling with. The military response was simply along the lines of “Don’t worry about that. That’s something we routinely do.”
Astronomy / NASA folks were agog, “What, you’ve already deployed large folding mirrors in space”
Cryptic response:
“Don’t worry about it, we’ve got that.”