5 ms·

When US gov expenditures are like $4 trillion yearly, $11 billion for an era-defining, cutting-edge space telescope built over 10-15 years does not seem much at

by pradn 5y ago

When US gov expenditures are like $4 trillion yearly, $11 billion for an era-defining, cutting-edge space telescope built over 10-15 years does not seem much at all.

smachiz 5y ago
1996 cutting edge
- guerrilla 5y ago
  Is there something better in production going into space right now? No, because this is literally cutting the edge right now.
podgaj 5y ago
Yet we can't house the homeless.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  It’s astounding that for a $5 Trillion dollar neighborhood (Bay Area), we are incapable of having a first world infrastructure and solve homelessness. The will of the people is weak.
  - podgaj 5y ago
    Truth! And look at all the techno-sociopaths downvoting me! That is why the Bay Area cannot solve the homeless problem!
spaetzleesser 5y ago
But then people complain about ITER costing 25 billion although its possible impact in the world is much bigger.
trasz 5y ago
Never mind government expenditures as a whole; $11 billion is less than a single aircraft carrier.
credit_guy 5y ago
My question still stands: would $25 BN be too much? $100 BN? Why is $11 BN a good deal? Would any price be a good deal for an "era-defining" project? In the '90's there was this huge Manhattan-like project, called "The Human Genome Project" [1]. The pricetag was about $3 BN. It took more than a decade. Then out of nowhere a startup appeared, and sequenced the human genome ten times faster and ten times cheaper (and fully with private funds). Nowadays, of course, we can sequence someone's genome for literally cents. The JWT project started before SpaceX was a thing. Right now it looks quite likely that in less than one year we'll have a launch vehicle that will be able to put 100 tons in orbit in one shot, and for cheap. All the complexity of the folding involved with JWT would become unnecessary with Starship. If someone were to start right now a JWT project, there's a realistic chance they'll finish it in a tenth of the time and a tenth of the cost, just like Celera did. We would get the same scientific results, but maybe one or two years later. So, now, am I allowed to ask again: why exactly was the $11 BN a good deal? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celera_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celera_Corporation
- adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
  From link 2: "However, a significant portion of the human genome had already been sequenced when Celera entered the field, and thus Celera did not incur any costs with obtaining the existing data, which was freely available to the public from GenBank". The reason Celera was able to finish the project cheap was because public funding had already done the first 90%.
- CuriousCosmic 5y ago
  20-30B would have been about what I had estimated given the complexity involved for this project. I think 11B spread over 2 decades and some change was a pretty good deal comparatively. Now I think that hindsight being what it is, if we had known that Starship was in the pipeline and this would be launching right when Starship is getting into production (considering JWST started development in the mid 90s), I would have said that we should be designing a cheaper/simpler telescope that uses this larger launch package. But that's all hindsight. For what the JWST actually accomplishes, it's an engineering marvel and given what we knew when it was being designed, I think NASA and the associated committees did an excellent job making it as cheap and large as it is. Now if we were to take what was learned from the JWST (a lot of innovative work on beryllium mirror design and segmented telescope design was done on this project) and were to design a new telescope today using modern technology, modern materials knowledge, and a launch vehicle like the Starship, I'd suppose we could make an equivalent telescope for 25% or less of the JWST's cost. Unfortunately however by the time this would be feasible, the majority of that money had already long since been spent using existing technology and techniques. This hypothetical cheaper telescope would also likely not be ready for launch if started in say 2015 until 2025 or so when the Starship would be considered safe enough for such a high value mission. TLDR: It was a good value for the era in which it was designed and built. It is limited by what NASA knew when they designed it. And if it was to be built today, it wouldn't launch for at least a decade after the design would start and you'd undoubtedly be able to make a similar statement about said design from "now-era" vs a hypothetical better value proposition from "future-era". Knowing what we knew at the time it was worth it and to wait indefinitely for the optimal time to start a design will always be a race of better vs perfect.

by pradn 5y ago

When US gov expenditures are like $4 trillion yearly, $11 billion for an era-defining, cutting-edge space telescope built over 10-15 years does not seem much at all.

smachiz 5y ago

1996 cutting edge

guerrilla 5y ago
Is there something better in production going into space right now? No, because this is literally cutting the edge right now.

podgaj 5y ago

Yet we can't house the homeless.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
systemvoltage 5y ago
It’s astounding that for a $5 Trillion dollar neighborhood (Bay Area), we are incapable of having a first world infrastructure and solve homelessness. The will of the people is weak.
- podgaj 5y ago
  Truth! And look at all the techno-sociopaths downvoting me! That is why the Bay Area cannot solve the homeless problem!

spaetzleesser 5y ago

But then people complain about ITER costing 25 billion although its possible impact in the world is much bigger.

trasz 5y ago

Never mind government expenditures as a whole; $11 billion is less than a single aircraft carrier.

credit_guy 5y ago

My question still stands: would $25 BN be too much? $100 BN? Why is $11 BN a good deal? Would any price be a good deal for an "era-defining" project? In the '90's there was this huge Manhattan-like project, called "The Human Genome Project" [1]. The pricetag was about $3 BN. It took more than a decade. Then out of nowhere a startup appeared, and sequenced the human genome ten times faster and ten times cheaper (and fully with private funds). Nowadays, of course, we can sequence someone's genome for literally cents. The JWT project started before SpaceX was a thing. Right now it looks quite likely that in less than one year we'll have a launch vehicle that will be able to put 100 tons in orbit in one shot, and for cheap. All the complexity of the folding involved with JWT would become unnecessary with Starship. If someone were to start right now a JWT project, there's a realistic chance they'll finish it in a tenth of the time and a tenth of the cost, just like Celera did. We would get the same scientific results, but maybe one or two years later. So, now, am I allowed to ask again: why exactly was the $11 BN a good deal? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celera_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celera_Corporation

adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
From link 2: "However, a significant portion of the human genome had already been sequenced when Celera entered the field, and thus Celera did not incur any costs with obtaining the existing data, which was freely available to the public from GenBank". The reason Celera was able to finish the project cheap was because public funding had already done the first 90%.
CuriousCosmic 5y ago
20-30B would have been about what I had estimated given the complexity involved for this project. I think 11B spread over 2 decades and some change was a pretty good deal comparatively. Now I think that hindsight being what it is, if we had known that Starship was in the pipeline and this would be launching right when Starship is getting into production (considering JWST started development in the mid 90s), I would have said that we should be designing a cheaper/simpler telescope that uses this larger launch package. But that's all hindsight. For what the JWST actually accomplishes, it's an engineering marvel and given what we knew when it was being designed, I think NASA and the associated committees did an excellent job making it as cheap and large as it is. Now if we were to take what was learned from the JWST (a lot of innovative work on beryllium mirror design and segmented telescope design was done on this project) and were to design a new telescope today using modern technology, modern materials knowledge, and a launch vehicle like the Starship, I'd suppose we could make an equivalent telescope for 25% or less of the JWST's cost. Unfortunately however by the time this would be feasible, the majority of that money had already long since been spent using existing technology and techniques. This hypothetical cheaper telescope would also likely not be ready for launch if started in say 2015 until 2025 or so when the Starship would be considered safe enough for such a high value mission. TLDR: It was a good value for the era in which it was designed and built. It is limited by what NASA knew when they designed it. And if it was to be built today, it wouldn't launch for at least a decade after the design would start and you'd undoubtedly be able to make a similar statement about said design from "now-era" vs a hypothetical better value proposition from "future-era". Knowing what we knew at the time it was worth it and to wait indefinitely for the optimal time to start a design will always be a race of better vs perfect.