Value chain · CLM-0956
In plain terms
If the antenna structure bends by the amounts the 1975 design allowed for - millimetres to a few centimetres from heating - then sensors every 10 to 18 metres, which is the size of the building blocks it was made from, are far more than enough to keep the beam within its error budget. They would only become too sparse if the bending reached tens of centimetres.
The claim as recorded
For the thermal deformation band of a 1 km, 40 m deep graphite-composite transmit structure - 2.5 to 141 mm rms line-of-sight, CALC-109 - a modal field of up to ten beam modes meets the 0.1 dB residual budget at the reference 10 m subarray spacing up to about 1.3 m rms, and at the 18 m bay spacing up to about 400 mm rms, under every spectral assumption swept. At the band's design point of 2.5 to 7 mm the permitted spacing exceeds 400 m; at the top of the band it is 30 to 60 m. Detector spacing at subarray or bay scale is comfortable across the whole thermal band.
Evidence behind this: T0-derivation on bands, and MEDIUM confidence for that reason: the amplitudes are CALC-109's scaling-law bands, not measurements, and the mode shapes are a beam's, not the candidate geometry's.
Scope and limits
MEDIUM CONFIDENCE, AND FOR THREE STATED REASONS. The amplitudes are bands from scaling laws, not measurements or a structural model. The mode shapes are a free-free beam's; no stiffness data for the CASSIOPeiA geometry is held. And the absolute permitted spacing moves by about a factor of 2 with the spectral exponent, which only a structural model supplies. The 1 m static assembly-tolerance figure is excluded per CLM-0954; if it were treated as a moving field it would bring higher-mode spacing below 20 m. Dynamic amplitude from forcing - gravity gradient, control, thermal snap at eclipse - is not modelled anywhere in the chain.
What it assumes
Thermal deformation distributed across modes as n^-p with p between 0 and 2; the 1975 planar truss's depth and gradient limit; a beam-mode basis.
Where it comes from
This is the project's own working, shown in full:
CALC-110 Results 2 and 3: permitted spacing at the 2.955 mm budget for sigma_s of 3, 10 and 100 mm at p = 1 and 2; residual linear in sigma_s at fixed spacing, so the budget is exceeded at 18 m only above about 400 mm rms and at 10 m only above about 1.3 m. Reference subarray 10 m (SRC-085 p.A-28); bay 18 m (SRC-451 Vol III p.39). Amplitude choice per CLM-0954: the thermal case, because the 0.7 to 1.5 m assembly-tolerance error is static and calibratable and CLM-0912's relation is for a field that moves.
Basis: metres of detector spacing; millimetres rms of line-of-sight deformation
Related records
- Answers question
- QST-013 not published in this release
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-0956
CLM-0956, Energy Aperture, as of 2026-09-17.