Telescope held together with string?

[Demonperformer]

Have just come across this article containing 9 variants of a telescope design: Don's String Telescope Concepts

The article contains a lot about stresses, moments and strut compression, and I don't understand most of it, but I was wondering if anyone on SGL had ever tried one and/or had any thoughts on the design?

[andrew s]

I have not built one but have looked at using "string" in tension in several designs. However, I could never design a simple attachment that had positional accuracy and allowed accurate setting of the tension. Andrew

[Lux1]

Hmm... it all looks a bit ropey to me.

[keithmrris]

:D

[sbooder]

Wow, this is a thread thread!

[m.tweedy]

cutting edge string theory

[Trull]

So long as you triangulate the strings they allow you to have a collapsable structure around the struts. Lots of good reasons to get stuck in there! But, unless you are mechanically minded, this may get complicated quickly.