Instead of Building Single Monster Scopes like James Webb, What About Swarms of Space Telescopes Working Together?

"At the core of the swarm telescope is a shift away from thinking about an observatory as a monolithic entity. Rather, an observatory is viewed as many independent parts that work together to accomplish scientific observations. This shift requires moving part of the decision making about the facility away from the human schedulers and operators and transitioning it to “software defined operators” that run on each part of the facility. These software agents then communicate with each other and build dynamic arrays to accomplish the goals of multiple observers, while also adjusting for varying observing conditions and array element states across the facility."

"It allows for more efficient operations of facilities by moving much of the daily operational work done by humans to autonomous control systems. This, in turn, frees up personnel to focus on the scientific output of the telescope. The swarm concept can also combine the unused resources of the different elements together to form an ad hoc array."