Spaceborne telescopes on a budget: paradigms for producing high-reliability telescopes, scanners, and EO assemblies using heritage building blocks

By starting with established and flown hardware (high Technology Readiness Level (TRL)), and implementing a concurrent engineering environment and seamless team, a mission architect can achieve high reliability and high performance while operating under constrained cost and short implementation schedule. We will describe methods, including those used by the telescope team on the recent Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, to manage cost and realize aggressive schedules. These lessons may be evoked for telescopes addressing defense, security and sensing, as well as those for NASA science.