7 ms·

I'm still anxious about the James Webb Space Telescope though. Fingers crossed.

HenryKissinger 5y ago
If the rocket explodes on the launch pad, it will be a bad day. At the same time, it shouldn't take twenty years to build a space telescope, especially since it's not like it's the first one ever. The first atomic bomb was built in 4 years.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  The first atomic bomb was nowhere near as precisely-built as the James Webb telescope has to be.
- scrozart 5y ago
  It's not the first space-based observatory, but it's still a _wholly novel_ device, containing instrumentation designed by scientists and engineers in concert to leverage every piece of bleeding edge technology available at the time, and some throughout the process. Everyone of the flagship observatories is moon shot. It's not a mass-produced helicopter or missile. This project in particular is easily one of the wildest feats of science and engineering _ever_ just like Hubble, Cern, and LIGO. Regarding the bomb, we were trying to end a global conflict, so the comparison couldn't be further off base.
  - airstrike 5y ago
    Plus the bomb was built with the literal opposite purpose of the JWST: blowing up! Worst case scenario it doesn't blow up exactly right and you just build another one?
    - cmpb 5y ago
      I see your point, but you could also argue that worst case scenario for atomic bomb malfunction is much more awful than worst case for JWST
      - lazide 5y ago
        With the mindset at the time, the worst case scenario for the atomic bomb would have been it not going off in anyway way, and then they just handed their greatest enemy dud version if a top secret weapon. Since it likely would have just blown up (fizzle) even if it didn’t fully detonate that is a pretty remote possibility. Second worst would be it went off on a base somewhere and nuked a US base. Considering the location of these bases and the nature of the war at that point, it would have been a footnote causality wise, but embarrassing.
    - retzkek 5y ago
      The worst case considered at the time was an uncontrolled chain-reaction annihilating the planet. It was calculated to be impossible, but it still weighed on the minds of many scientists involved, even well into the hydrogen bomb era. https://www.insidescience.org/manhattan-project-legacy/atmosphere-on-fire https://www.insidescience.org/manhattan-project-legacy/atmos...
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- dekhn 5y ago
  there has never been and never will be anything like the Apollo or Manhattan projects. They had levels of productivity that are not normally seen.
  - sebzim4500 5y ago
    If the Starship program succeeds in reaching the moon in the next few years then I think that is comparable to Apollo. Ofc it is easier to do things the second time than the first but safety standards are higher and this time it will have been done at an enormously reduced price.
  - Swenrekcah 5y ago
    Well, there were the Egyptian Pyramids, Great Wall of China, Roman Aqueducts and a whole bunch of Great Projects in the past and I certainly hope there will be lots more in our future.
    - spenczar5 5y ago
      Those projects took centuries to complete.
      - delecti 5y ago
        As far as I know, the pyramids were each constructed for a single pharaoh, and during their single lifetime. I don't know about all of them, but that's at least true of Great Pyramid of Giza.
      - DLWormwood 5y ago
        Or just a few turns, depending on your difficulty setting. (-;
      - dmos62 5y ago
        We don't know how some of the Egyptian pyramids were constructed, or when, or how long it took.
- gumby 5y ago
  It took 25 years to replace the SF Bay Bridge, a much less complex endeavor. It’s simply how things are done around here these days.
  - m0llusk 5y ago
    That is not a good comparison. The SF Bay Bridge replacement project was conducted as a competition. The design that won was so much more complicated than all the other entries that at first it was not clear that it could be built and in fact the finished product is flawed with cracks and other failures. There is nothing particularly complex about the basic problem and the simple viaduct design that was advocated by the Governor at the time was expected to involve an order of magnitude less cost and time of construction but was rejected for being too simple and not beautiful enough. This management structure and these considerations have not been used for any space missions.
- rtkwe 5y ago
  It is a completely novel design for a space telescope though. On top of that there's no capability [0] to go patch up a sloppy job like we did with Hubble. [0] Currently at least. Starship could I guess but it was planned way ahead of Starship even being a glimmer in Musk's eye. Do they have any grapple points on it as insurance? I would at this point, just put one of the posts they use on the ISS for Canada Arm to grapple.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    And that is the problem with 20 year (30 year?) product lifecycles. A lot can change in 20 years. For example the ability to service it might now be feasible. But since it’s almost entirely built, good luck making it serviceable!
  - frosted-flakes 5y ago
    There is a docking ring on the JWST.
  - dr_orpheus 5y ago
    Yeah, there is a docking ring as a "maybe we can design something to use this in the future". Since JWST is going out to a Lagrange point it would definitely be robotic servicing at this point unless our human spaceflight capabilities expand very significantly. The Nancy Grace Roman (formerly WFIRST) space telescope also has grappling points for robotic servicing so it is something that is being considered in designs for programs of record.
belter 5y ago
Keep in mind its an orbiting Infrared Observatory so not an alternative to Hubble. Of course it will be an amazing scientific instrument and we should hope that nothing happens during launch.
BurningFrog 5y ago
One reason JWT has taken so long and is so expensive is that launch costs used to be "astronomical". In the SpaceX era of reusable rockets, those costs become 1-2 orders of magnitude smaller, and I expect a flurry of simpler space telescopes in the nearish future. That's the theory. Does anyone know if such things are being worked on?
- terramex 5y ago
  Not to my knowledge. Actually, it was said that lack of smaller space projects was catalyst for creation of Starlink. They expected tons of launches once launch prices dropped but it never materialized so they decided to become their own biggest client.
- henrikeh 5y ago
  Who’s theory? JWST costs upwards to 9 billion USD. An Ariane 5 launch maybe 200 million. Just because the launch is cheaper doesn’t make the rest of the project less complicated and costly.
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    JWST costs $9B when NASA does it. I think other actors can do similar things much cheaper and faster.
    - qayxc 5y ago
      > I think other actors can do similar things much cheaper and faster. Think again. JWST was criticised for being too ambitious and rightly so. It uses technology that was (and in some areas still is) cutting edge. It baffles me how people always seem to assume that some company can miraculously solve scientific and engineering challenges quicker and cheaper than the teams that are working on it. JWST was designed with no serviceability in mind, that is, unlike HST it absolutely has to work. Every detail, from the folding mirror, to the sun shield, to the computer systems to the instrumentation. ZERO room for error and no "fail early, fail often"-option here. Most of the delays have been caused by engineers and scientists wanting to make 100% sure they get it right, because there's no STS servicing for fixing imperfect mirrors or switching out hardware.

If the rocket explodes on the launch pad, it will be a bad day. At the same time, it shouldn't take twenty years to build a space telescope, especially since it's not like it's the first one ever. The first atomic bomb was built in 4 years.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
The first atomic bomb was nowhere near as precisely-built as the James Webb telescope has to be.
scrozart 5y ago
It's not the first space-based observatory, but it's still a _wholly novel_ device, containing instrumentation designed by scientists and engineers in concert to leverage every piece of bleeding edge technology available at the time, and some throughout the process. Everyone of the flagship observatories is moon shot. It's not a mass-produced helicopter or missile. This project in particular is easily one of the wildest feats of science and engineering _ever_ just like Hubble, Cern, and LIGO. Regarding the bomb, we were trying to end a global conflict, so the comparison couldn't be further off base.
- airstrike 5y ago
  Plus the bomb was built with the literal opposite purpose of the JWST: blowing up! Worst case scenario it doesn't blow up exactly right and you just build another one?
  - cmpb 5y ago
    I see your point, but you could also argue that worst case scenario for atomic bomb malfunction is much more awful than worst case for JWST
    - lazide 5y ago
      With the mindset at the time, the worst case scenario for the atomic bomb would have been it not going off in anyway way, and then they just handed their greatest enemy dud version if a top secret weapon. Since it likely would have just blown up (fizzle) even if it didn’t fully detonate that is a pretty remote possibility. Second worst would be it went off on a base somewhere and nuked a US base. Considering the location of these bases and the nature of the war at that point, it would have been a footnote causality wise, but embarrassing.
  - retzkek 5y ago
    The worst case considered at the time was an uncontrolled chain-reaction annihilating the planet. It was calculated to be impossible, but it still weighed on the minds of many scientists involved, even well into the hydrogen bomb era. https://www.insidescience.org/manhattan-project-legacy/atmosphere-on-fire https://www.insidescience.org/manhattan-project-legacy/atmos...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
dekhn 5y ago
there has never been and never will be anything like the Apollo or Manhattan projects. They had levels of productivity that are not normally seen.
- sebzim4500 5y ago
  If the Starship program succeeds in reaching the moon in the next few years then I think that is comparable to Apollo. Ofc it is easier to do things the second time than the first but safety standards are higher and this time it will have been done at an enormously reduced price.
- Swenrekcah 5y ago
  Well, there were the Egyptian Pyramids, Great Wall of China, Roman Aqueducts and a whole bunch of Great Projects in the past and I certainly hope there will be lots more in our future.
  - spenczar5 5y ago
    Those projects took centuries to complete.
    - delecti 5y ago
      As far as I know, the pyramids were each constructed for a single pharaoh, and during their single lifetime. I don't know about all of them, but that's at least true of Great Pyramid of Giza.
    - DLWormwood 5y ago
      Or just a few turns, depending on your difficulty setting. (-;
    - dmos62 5y ago
      We don't know how some of the Egyptian pyramids were constructed, or when, or how long it took.
gumby 5y ago
It took 25 years to replace the SF Bay Bridge, a much less complex endeavor. It’s simply how things are done around here these days.
- m0llusk 5y ago
  That is not a good comparison. The SF Bay Bridge replacement project was conducted as a competition. The design that won was so much more complicated than all the other entries that at first it was not clear that it could be built and in fact the finished product is flawed with cracks and other failures. There is nothing particularly complex about the basic problem and the simple viaduct design that was advocated by the Governor at the time was expected to involve an order of magnitude less cost and time of construction but was rejected for being too simple and not beautiful enough. This management structure and these considerations have not been used for any space missions.
rtkwe 5y ago
It is a completely novel design for a space telescope though. On top of that there's no capability [0] to go patch up a sloppy job like we did with Hubble. [0] Currently at least. Starship could I guess but it was planned way ahead of Starship even being a glimmer in Musk's eye. Do they have any grapple points on it as insurance? I would at this point, just put one of the posts they use on the ISS for Canada Arm to grapple.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  And that is the problem with 20 year (30 year?) product lifecycles. A lot can change in 20 years. For example the ability to service it might now be feasible. But since it’s almost entirely built, good luck making it serviceable!
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  There is a docking ring on the JWST.
- dr_orpheus 5y ago
  Yeah, there is a docking ring as a "maybe we can design something to use this in the future". Since JWST is going out to a Lagrange point it would definitely be robotic servicing at this point unless our human spaceflight capabilities expand very significantly. The Nancy Grace Roman (formerly WFIRST) space telescope also has grappling points for robotic servicing so it is something that is being considered in designs for programs of record.

belter 5y ago

Keep in mind its an orbiting Infrared Observatory so not an alternative to Hubble. Of course it will be an amazing scientific instrument and we should hope that nothing happens during launch.

BurningFrog 5y ago

One reason JWT has taken so long and is so expensive is that launch costs used to be "astronomical". In the SpaceX era of reusable rockets, those costs become 1-2 orders of magnitude smaller, and I expect a flurry of simpler space telescopes in the nearish future. That's the theory. Does anyone know if such things are being worked on?

terramex 5y ago
Not to my knowledge. Actually, it was said that lack of smaller space projects was catalyst for creation of Starlink. They expected tons of launches once launch prices dropped but it never materialized so they decided to become their own biggest client.
henrikeh 5y ago
Who’s theory? JWST costs upwards to 9 billion USD. An Ariane 5 launch maybe 200 million. Just because the launch is cheaper doesn’t make the rest of the project less complicated and costly.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  JWST costs $9B when NASA does it. I think other actors can do similar things much cheaper and faster.
  - qayxc 5y ago
    > I think other actors can do similar things much cheaper and faster. Think again. JWST was criticised for being too ambitious and rightly so. It uses technology that was (and in some areas still is) cutting edge. It baffles me how people always seem to assume that some company can miraculously solve scientific and engineering challenges quicker and cheaper than the teams that are working on it. JWST was designed with no serviceability in mind, that is, unlike HST it absolutely has to work. Every detail, from the folding mirror, to the sun shield, to the computer systems to the instrumentation. ZERO room for error and no "fail early, fail often"-option here. Most of the delays have been caused by engineers and scientists wanting to make 100% sure they get it right, because there's no STS servicing for fixing imperfect mirrors or switching out hardware.