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This. The JWST cost/will cost about 10 billion dollars. The launch costs are negligible.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
The JWST costs that much primarily because it's a one-off, which is a consequence of high launch costs. If you drop the launch costs by 100x, this means being able to launch 100x JWSTs for the same price, meaning it makes sense to optimize for production costs instead of reliability - as if one of your telescopes fail, you can always launch/use another. So now it makes sense to focus on using mass-manufactured parts instead of specialty ones, which drops the production costs significantly. It might make sense to design a telescope platform instead, opening more opportunities to exploit economies of scale.
- giantrobot 5y ago
  > If you drop the launch costs by 100x, this means being able to launch 100x JWSTs for the same price As the GP pointed out the launch cost of the JWST is a small fraction of the program's overall cost. Launching a hundred JWSTs would mean building a hundred JWSTs and doing so is not cheap. Even with economies of scale producing various components for the hundred JWSTs those all need to be tested and verified. That's an expensive process that doesn't really benefit from economies of scale. For an instrument the size of JWST you can't just spam launches with the assumption some will fail. It's a giant instrument. A catastrophic failure would see it land mostly intact in a populated area or fill a huge orbit with dangerous debris. Even if it was just non-operational it would not occupy an orbital slot that's unusable by other instruments. Launch costs are almost always a small portion of overall mission costs. Just because launch costs go down doesn't mean space missions can magically scale up. The goal is to launch useful scientific/commercial instruments or space vehicles. We don't just launch hunks of lead into orbit for funsies. Lower launch costs are nice but they're not going to magically make all space missions cheap or easy.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > Even with economies of scale producing various components for the hundred JWSTs those all need to be tested and verified. That's an expensive process that doesn't really benefit from economies of scale. My point is that all those processes are expensive because the final result has to work the first time, because launches are expensive and infrequent. Drop launch costs enough, you don't need so much reliability, so everything across the board suddenly becomes much cheaper. Which then opens many further opportunities to reduce costs.
    - giantrobot 5y ago
      You can't just make space equipment less reliable because launching it is cheaper. Equipment failures will kill people and ruin missions. Things that might work fine on Earth's surface will not work the same way in space. Even seemingly mundane failures can damage important components.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        Most missions aren't manned. If your equipment is cheap enough, you can just send more and achieve reliability through numbers. If you don't have to optimize for mass so hard, you can achieve reliability through cheaper means - e.g. simplifying heat management by bolting on a larger radiator; simplifying radiation effects mitigation by having multiple CPUs running the same calculations and voting on results, and/or making thicker rad insulation. Etc.
    - vanattab 5y ago
      Launch costs are not the only (maybe not even the most) important factor for reliability. If your probe takes 9 years to reach it's destination and then fails to deploy it's not the launch costs that are the problem. Or if you want to land an unmanned cargo ship near your lunar or mars base reliability is defiantly a concern. Cheap launch costs are definitely in important step to colonizing the system we are simply pointing out it's one of many things we need before we can usefully launch millions of tons around the universe.
      - 5y ago

The JWST costs that much primarily because it's a one-off, which is a consequence of high launch costs. If you drop the launch costs by 100x, this means being able to launch 100x JWSTs for the same price, meaning it makes sense to optimize for production costs instead of reliability - as if one of your telescopes fail, you can always launch/use another. So now it makes sense to focus on using mass-manufactured parts instead of specialty ones, which drops the production costs significantly. It might make sense to design a telescope platform instead, opening more opportunities to exploit economies of scale.

giantrobot 5y ago
> If you drop the launch costs by 100x, this means being able to launch 100x JWSTs for the same price As the GP pointed out the launch cost of the JWST is a small fraction of the program's overall cost. Launching a hundred JWSTs would mean building a hundred JWSTs and doing so is not cheap. Even with economies of scale producing various components for the hundred JWSTs those all need to be tested and verified. That's an expensive process that doesn't really benefit from economies of scale. For an instrument the size of JWST you can't just spam launches with the assumption some will fail. It's a giant instrument. A catastrophic failure would see it land mostly intact in a populated area or fill a huge orbit with dangerous debris. Even if it was just non-operational it would not occupy an orbital slot that's unusable by other instruments. Launch costs are almost always a small portion of overall mission costs. Just because launch costs go down doesn't mean space missions can magically scale up. The goal is to launch useful scientific/commercial instruments or space vehicles. We don't just launch hunks of lead into orbit for funsies. Lower launch costs are nice but they're not going to magically make all space missions cheap or easy.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > Even with economies of scale producing various components for the hundred JWSTs those all need to be tested and verified. That's an expensive process that doesn't really benefit from economies of scale. My point is that all those processes are expensive because the final result has to work the first time, because launches are expensive and infrequent. Drop launch costs enough, you don't need so much reliability, so everything across the board suddenly becomes much cheaper. Which then opens many further opportunities to reduce costs.
  - giantrobot 5y ago
    You can't just make space equipment less reliable because launching it is cheaper. Equipment failures will kill people and ruin missions. Things that might work fine on Earth's surface will not work the same way in space. Even seemingly mundane failures can damage important components.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      Most missions aren't manned. If your equipment is cheap enough, you can just send more and achieve reliability through numbers. If you don't have to optimize for mass so hard, you can achieve reliability through cheaper means - e.g. simplifying heat management by bolting on a larger radiator; simplifying radiation effects mitigation by having multiple CPUs running the same calculations and voting on results, and/or making thicker rad insulation. Etc.
  - vanattab 5y ago
    Launch costs are not the only (maybe not even the most) important factor for reliability. If your probe takes 9 years to reach it's destination and then fails to deploy it's not the launch costs that are the problem. Or if you want to land an unmanned cargo ship near your lunar or mars base reliability is defiantly a concern. Cheap launch costs are definitely in important step to colonizing the system we are simply pointing out it's one of many things we need before we can usefully launch millions of tons around the universe.
    - 5y ago