Woody, you're right about the size of the hole. After all, they originally set it up as a spherical mirror and could correct for spherical aberrations by positioning the pod, so by comparison, it's sort of like a dust mote on your camera lens.
The problem (as I see it) is the fact that a cable broke and re-suspending the pod is beyond reasonable feasibility.
And looking at the suspension system in the aerial view, calculating those multiple cables would be a nightmare, and no wonder they were looking for the original calculations and specs for that.
(I would liken it to the complexities of calculating a three-element compound lens. Any change of any element's refractive index, gapping between lenses, or a bit of curvature change and you've got to start all over.)
While the actual number-crunching could be done by computin' engines nowadays, it sounds like nobody knows how they set up the parameters any more.
And I guess most of the valuable results have already been obtained, so it ain't worth it.
That's my take on it anyhow.
Terry