Earlier quoted context omitted.
The previous top model NXE:3400B, "weighs 180 tons and needs 20 trucks or three fully loaded Boeing 747s for shipment. The price tag is $120 million." [1] [1] https://www.laserfocusworld.com/blogs/article/14039015/how-d... .
Most of that is packaging, seriously. The purity requirements and vibrational limits for those parts are very high. ASML has plans to get into sub 1nm level. 2nm and 1.5 nm is already in the pipeline. The technology high-NA EUV (high Numerical Aperture Extreme Ultraviolet) becomes just insane. Mirror manufacturing process requires atomic scale corrections and the whole metrology is moved into vacuum. The limit for ma…
A nitpick: You are greatly underestimating the precision in gravitational-wave astronomy.
ASML's atomic scale corrections are approximately one billion times larger than the fraction-of-a-proton's width displacements measured by LIGO.
From https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/facts:
> At its most sensitive state, LIGO will be able to detect a change in distance between its mirrors 1/10,000th the width of a proton! This is equivalent to measuring the distance to the nearest star (some 4.2 light years away) to an accuracy smaller than the width of a human hair.