Roman has two science instruments, a wide-field imager (“WFI”) and a coronagraph (“CGI”) and they were both built by NASA for this purpose (optics, electronics, detectors, deformable mirrors).
The WFI optics includes filters and a prism and grism for spectroscopy, and of course the very large CCD arrays.
The coronagraph is a rather special tech demo and allows imaging of exoplanets (Jupiter-like) while blocking the light of the host star. (https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/coron...). It’s a precursor to HWO which is mentioned down-thread.
Both KH-11 and Hubble had similar sized mirrors, but that wasn't because of design reuse, it was because that was the biggest primary mirror you could fit in the Space Shuttle cargo bay (1). In actual fact no KH-11 went into space on a Shuttle, but the plan up until the Challenger disaster had been for the STS to carry all US satellites into space, including the KH-11, which was designed around that cargo bay.
1: The space shuttle cargo bay was sized the way it was for NRO payloads, but it seems clear that the USAF wasn't thinking about KEEENAN when they requested that size- a design like that would be better if it was wider and didn't need to be nearly as long. My suspicion is, when NASA asked them what size they wanted for the bay, they took the last design they had- the just cancelled KH-10 Manned Orbiting Laboratory, and used that.
Things aren't as simple as more money = more good.
Rapid progress requires adversity, the kind you'll find when nations compete for military power, for example.
The problems are that anyone gave Musk/doge the time of day and that we're too used to the president giving no bid contacts to incompetent donors.
We should thank the government for spending tax money efficiently.
You should blame the legacy aerospace companies whom purposely inflate contracts and take forever to do things for there being a lack of competition, not Musk.
Yes, Musk is a crappy character, but that's not a reason to make things up. This isn't Reddit.
The Artemis program was developed out of the Constellation program, which was initiated sometime around 2005 or 6.
Of course there have long been plans to go back to the moon because its a cool fun thing to do and whoever happens to be president would likely be well remembered for taking credit for it. That doesn't give it credibility as a useful endeavor.
Humans have intuition and curiosity, they can spot something quickly in the distance that looks peculiar, go to it and quickly inspect it.
Are you talking about SLS?
Oh maybe you'd say that is "Senate Launch System", it's complicated, job program, 50 states sharing, and so on?