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Yes, surely. Most of the cost was in R&D and in the mirror manufacturing. They've been designing and manufacturing it for 20 years. Per-unit costs would go dow

Yes, surely. Most of the cost was in R&D and in the mirror manufacturing. They've been designing and manufacturing it for 20 years. Per-unit costs would go down. Take the mirror, it's made of segments, the facility used to produce those segments certainly would benefit from scaling up production. They'd get better at fabbing them over time, increasing yields, reducing costs. What NASA is doing is building the equivalent of a $10 billion fab to produce one chip. Space telescopes could be continually produced on a schedule, and retired on a schedule, with constant improvement. Look at RS-25 engines vs Raptor engines in terms of costs to produce one.

wolverine876 5y ago
Increasing production from 1 unit to 2 doesn't necessarily reduce costs. Due to demand and limited supply, for example, some prices increase. We know almost nothing about this thing. It's very speculative to say the cost would decrease. Also, how many space telescopes of this variety do we need? All that said, it would be interesting to see NASA research on mass producing the more common components of its 'product line'. It does it for rockets, of course, but computers? Solar panels? Mars rover components? I'm sure it's been considered and I expect it's done in ways I'm not aware of.
bumby 5y ago
Certainly a lot of the cost of the project is R&D, but most people would be shocked by how much of aerospace project budgets are driven by quality. E.g., a bolt costs $200 not because it has to go through a new R&D cycle, but because it needs a chain-of-custody, inspections, metal coupons stored, etc. There's also a huge amount of political risk for a government entity. Politicians will be reluctant to fund another JWST if the first one fails because many will fight it as a waste of money, and the previous failure just bolsters the JWST-opponent's position.

wolverine876 5y ago

Increasing production from 1 unit to 2 doesn't necessarily reduce costs. Due to demand and limited supply, for example, some prices increase. We know almost nothing about this thing. It's very speculative to say the cost would decrease. Also, how many space telescopes of this variety do we need? All that said, it would be interesting to see NASA research on mass producing the more common components of its 'product line'. It does it for rockets, of course, but computers? Solar panels? Mars rover components? I'm sure it's been considered and I expect it's done in ways I'm not aware of.

bumby 5y ago

Certainly a lot of the cost of the project is R&D, but most people would be shocked by how much of aerospace project budgets are driven by quality. E.g., a bolt costs $200 not because it has to go through a new R&D cycle, but because it needs a chain-of-custody, inspections, metal coupons stored, etc. There's also a huge amount of political risk for a government entity. Politicians will be reluctant to fund another JWST if the first one fails because many will fight it as a waste of money, and the previous failure just bolsters the JWST-opponent's position.