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What really baffes me about megaprojects like the Webb telescope is that they do decades of research and design, build ONE and then disassemble the teams and ji

What really baffes me about megaprojects like the Webb telescope is that they do decades of research and design, build ONE and then disassemble the teams and jigs. Since all the design and tool-up costs are sunk, why not build two or three? Even just as components. Otherwise if we get to March 2020 and the launch fails, or the scope or shade doesn't deploy, that's $8 billion down the drain.

adventured 9y ago
The government occasionally does just that. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nasa-gets-military-spy-telescopes-for-astronomy/2012/06/04/gJQAsT6UDV_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nasa-...
yiyus 9y ago
> that's $8 billion down the drain Not really. The amount of scientific and technological developments that we get even from failed missions is substantial. When starting a new project, all the findings from previous projects are not ignored. What you are proposing is not necessarily a bad idea but, if that was the case, I would expect some comment saying: why do they construct three equal telescopes when we could use all that money and man-power to build three different ones that would help us much more?
- dingaling 9y ago
  That's a fair point regarding progress regardless of outcome. But starting a new project to build on that basis is going to be a lot tougher if there's no "look at the pretty pictures" Hubble-effect to sway budgeteers. To extend it ab absurdium, it does remind me of the joke about the theoretical physicist going back to bed when he finds his house aflame, because he invested in a fire extinguisher so a solution exists.
- jonhendry18 9y ago
  Perhaps it could be designed so that, if the first telescope reaches orbit and works, the extras could be partially dismantled and large subsystems repurposed in a new satellite. Take out the optics package and replace it with something else. Keep the power distribution, solar panels, and other things. If nothing else the intelligence agencies could probably come up with a use for it.
  - ehsankia 9y ago
    With space being so vast, and the telescope looking at such a tiny fraction of the sky, I'm sure scientists wouldn't mind having more than one. I'm not super familiar with this, but I remember hearing that getting time on Hubble for your experiment definitely wasn't easy. Getting three times the available time surely has to be a huge positive for research, no? Not only that, having a second source of data will be critical in making sure measurements aren't flukes.
  - zaarn 9y ago
    Outside of cubesats and mass deployed sats like GPS and the European variant, almost every satellite is somewhat of a unique build. Even cubesats and GPS sats are special, you can't simply take a GPS sat and repurpose it for a TV station. The requirements can be vastly different (geostationary vs LEO, precise orientation vs simple attitude control). The same goes for space telescope. You can't just take a ST sat body, ram in a LEO weather satellites electronics and expect that to stay in orbit or work reasonably.
MR4D 9y ago
From what I can tell, the general thinking in the government is "best-case scenario". Rarely do we as citizens ever hear of their planning (if it exists) for alternative outcomes. To be clear, I'm exempting disaster preparedness and stuff like that. But if we look at all sorts for things, from wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, to legislation like Dodd-Frank or the ACA, all we ever hear about is the best case scenario. I think your comment is spot on. The problem is the government only has one mode of thinking, and that has to increase waste tremendously. If anyone here can corroborate or contradict my theory, I love to hear either.
s0rce 9y ago
I've wondered the same thing. Same with Mars rovers, instead/in addition to designing a completely new one couldn't we have built a few of the previous generation at a fraction of the cost. My experience in science is that it was easier to get funding for new and exciting than old and already been done even if there is very interesting science to be done in both circumstances.
- staplers 9y ago
  Congress just passed a bill to increase our military budget by $60 billion so there must be a lot of 'new and exciting' things coming in warfare..
  - kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
    Yep. It's a bull market right now.
  - cmurf 9y ago
    There's always plenty of other people's money for blowing other people's shit up on the other side of the planet. This is not patriotism, it's jingoism. And at one time war profiteering got people hanged. But now, militarism is a product like any other, and subject to a grand markup. It's a brilliant way to redistribute wealth, not least of which is the massive asset destruction involved ($1 million dollar bombs are assets, they blow up, and they blow up people's houses in places we don't give a fuck about - see all the bombs we're selling to Saudi Arabia who then bomb the crap out of people's apartments in Yemen.) It's totally lost on Americans, but "Made in the USA" on the bombs other countries buy and then use against their adversaries is not lost on people who reap the destruction. Americans have forgotten how we ran out of shit to blow up during the Korean war, so we decided to blow up their dams in order to flood entire villages down stream. This is after the Geneva conventions were signed. The idea the United States is a peaceful country is very tenuous. So I sent a note to my Congresscritter Cory Gardner, over a month ago about JWST and WFIRST with a really simple question, if he supported their continued funding to project completion. I included this link with it: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/02/20/cancelling-wfirst-will-permanently-ruin-nasa/#38e55b7457b0 https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/02/20/canc... The response I got was a POS canned non-response to the question. But at the same time he talked up how great Colorado aerospace is, pretty much making it sound like if the juice doesn't come to Colorado, he doesn't give crap about aerospace. But he doesn't have the integrity to actually commit one way or another to these two projects. It's disappointing.
raverbashing 9y ago
Sometimes they build extra clones. Some of the mars rovers have a clone on Earth for simulation, fault studies, testing, etc
metaobject 9y ago
This is done for weather satellites, btw. See: the existing family of GOES satellites as well as for the newest family of GOES sats.
sigstoat 9y ago
> Since all the design and tool-up costs are sunk, why not build two or three? Even just as components. a huge chunk of the cost of "building" a spacecraft is all of the testing, calibration, integration, validation, etc etc that goes on after the physical objects are assembled. yeah, the machinists can crank out a second housing or structural element for nothing after they've made the first one. the electronics assembly techs make a handful of most every board, to start with. but only one set of all of them is handed back to all the principal investigators to go through the months/years of prep work necessary to ensure the physical assembly that's been produced will function correctly, for years, on orbit.
maerF0x0 9y ago
And they may as well shoot one out in various directions if the majority of the cost is R&D... Who knows what we'll find if we look .
mturmon 9y ago
The reason is: the second one doesn't cost much less than the first. They are hand-built. It's structurally very complex, so building takes a long time. Pieces are sent cross-country multiple times to assemble more and more components ("integrate") and tested in stages. The assembly and vacuum test of one module uses the whole chamber, so you can't do two at once. I'm using modest language ("very complex") - but the actual complexity is more like "uniquely mind-boggling". (I happen to know the MIRI cryocooler system engineer - just another Harvard PhD whose thesis required liquid helium.) For more on the MIRI cryocooler, which is the critical path item in JWST, and has been for some time, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRI_(Mid-Infrared_Instrument) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRI_(Mid-Infrared_Instrument). * The cost of these flagship missions, and the all-or-nothing problem that you point out, has caused conflict in the Astrophysics community. It might be better to have a pipeline of lower-cost but more frequent missions. A recent National Academy of Science report on exactly this question (https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24857/powering-science-nasas-large-strategic-science-missions https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24857/powering-science-nasas-lar...) concluded that the large missions did offer a unique benefit in pushing boundaries of what's possible. That report pinned the real problem on getting correct cost estimates, not the notion of large missions in itself.

adventured 9y ago

The government occasionally does just that. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nasa-gets-military-spy-telescopes-for-astronomy/2012/06/04/gJQAsT6UDV_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nasa-...

yiyus 9y ago

> that's $8 billion down the drain Not really. The amount of scientific and technological developments that we get even from failed missions is substantial. When starting a new project, all the findings from previous projects are not ignored. What you are proposing is not necessarily a bad idea but, if that was the case, I would expect some comment saying: why do they construct three equal telescopes when we could use all that money and man-power to build three different ones that would help us much more?

dingaling 9y ago
That's a fair point regarding progress regardless of outcome. But starting a new project to build on that basis is going to be a lot tougher if there's no "look at the pretty pictures" Hubble-effect to sway budgeteers. To extend it ab absurdium, it does remind me of the joke about the theoretical physicist going back to bed when he finds his house aflame, because he invested in a fire extinguisher so a solution exists.
jonhendry18 9y ago
Perhaps it could be designed so that, if the first telescope reaches orbit and works, the extras could be partially dismantled and large subsystems repurposed in a new satellite. Take out the optics package and replace it with something else. Keep the power distribution, solar panels, and other things. If nothing else the intelligence agencies could probably come up with a use for it.
- ehsankia 9y ago
  With space being so vast, and the telescope looking at such a tiny fraction of the sky, I'm sure scientists wouldn't mind having more than one. I'm not super familiar with this, but I remember hearing that getting time on Hubble for your experiment definitely wasn't easy. Getting three times the available time surely has to be a huge positive for research, no? Not only that, having a second source of data will be critical in making sure measurements aren't flukes.
- zaarn 9y ago
  Outside of cubesats and mass deployed sats like GPS and the European variant, almost every satellite is somewhat of a unique build. Even cubesats and GPS sats are special, you can't simply take a GPS sat and repurpose it for a TV station. The requirements can be vastly different (geostationary vs LEO, precise orientation vs simple attitude control). The same goes for space telescope. You can't just take a ST sat body, ram in a LEO weather satellites electronics and expect that to stay in orbit or work reasonably.

MR4D 9y ago

From what I can tell, the general thinking in the government is "best-case scenario". Rarely do we as citizens ever hear of their planning (if it exists) for alternative outcomes. To be clear, I'm exempting disaster preparedness and stuff like that. But if we look at all sorts for things, from wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, to legislation like Dodd-Frank or the ACA, all we ever hear about is the best case scenario. I think your comment is spot on. The problem is the government only has one mode of thinking, and that has to increase waste tremendously. If anyone here can corroborate or contradict my theory, I love to hear either.

s0rce 9y ago

I've wondered the same thing. Same with Mars rovers, instead/in addition to designing a completely new one couldn't we have built a few of the previous generation at a fraction of the cost. My experience in science is that it was easier to get funding for new and exciting than old and already been done even if there is very interesting science to be done in both circumstances.

staplers 9y ago
Congress just passed a bill to increase our military budget by $60 billion so there must be a lot of 'new and exciting' things coming in warfare..
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  Yep. It's a bull market right now.
- cmurf 9y ago
  There's always plenty of other people's money for blowing other people's shit up on the other side of the planet. This is not patriotism, it's jingoism. And at one time war profiteering got people hanged. But now, militarism is a product like any other, and subject to a grand markup. It's a brilliant way to redistribute wealth, not least of which is the massive asset destruction involved ($1 million dollar bombs are assets, they blow up, and they blow up people's houses in places we don't give a fuck about - see all the bombs we're selling to Saudi Arabia who then bomb the crap out of people's apartments in Yemen.) It's totally lost on Americans, but "Made in the USA" on the bombs other countries buy and then use against their adversaries is not lost on people who reap the destruction. Americans have forgotten how we ran out of shit to blow up during the Korean war, so we decided to blow up their dams in order to flood entire villages down stream. This is after the Geneva conventions were signed. The idea the United States is a peaceful country is very tenuous. So I sent a note to my Congresscritter Cory Gardner, over a month ago about JWST and WFIRST with a really simple question, if he supported their continued funding to project completion. I included this link with it: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/02/20/cancelling-wfirst-will-permanently-ruin-nasa/#38e55b7457b0 https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/02/20/canc... The response I got was a POS canned non-response to the question. But at the same time he talked up how great Colorado aerospace is, pretty much making it sound like if the juice doesn't come to Colorado, he doesn't give crap about aerospace. But he doesn't have the integrity to actually commit one way or another to these two projects. It's disappointing.

raverbashing 9y ago

Sometimes they build extra clones. Some of the mars rovers have a clone on Earth for simulation, fault studies, testing, etc

metaobject 9y ago

This is done for weather satellites, btw. See: the existing family of GOES satellites as well as for the newest family of GOES sats.

sigstoat 9y ago

> Since all the design and tool-up costs are sunk, why not build two or three? Even just as components. a huge chunk of the cost of "building" a spacecraft is all of the testing, calibration, integration, validation, etc etc that goes on after the physical objects are assembled. yeah, the machinists can crank out a second housing or structural element for nothing after they've made the first one. the electronics assembly techs make a handful of most every board, to start with. but only one set of all of them is handed back to all the principal investigators to go through the months/years of prep work necessary to ensure the physical assembly that's been produced will function correctly, for years, on orbit.

maerF0x0 9y ago

And they may as well shoot one out in various directions if the majority of the cost is R&D... Who knows what we'll find if we look .

mturmon 9y ago

The reason is: the second one doesn't cost much less than the first. They are hand-built. It's structurally very complex, so building takes a long time. Pieces are sent cross-country multiple times to assemble more and more components ("integrate") and tested in stages. The assembly and vacuum test of one module uses the whole chamber, so you can't do two at once. I'm using modest language ("very complex") - but the actual complexity is more like "uniquely mind-boggling". (I happen to know the MIRI cryocooler system engineer - just another Harvard PhD whose thesis required liquid helium.) For more on the MIRI cryocooler, which is the critical path item in JWST, and has been for some time, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRI_(Mid-Infrared_Instrument) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRI_(Mid-Infrared_Instrument). * The cost of these flagship missions, and the all-or-nothing problem that you point out, has caused conflict in the Astrophysics community. It might be better to have a pipeline of lower-cost but more frequent missions. A recent National Academy of Science report on exactly this question (https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24857/powering-science-nasas-large-strategic-science-missions https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24857/powering-science-nasas-lar...) concluded that the large missions did offer a unique benefit in pushing boundaries of what's possible. That report pinned the real problem on getting correct cost estimates, not the notion of large missions in itself.