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I've found that there's a weird internal psychology I have with any news relating to Webb. I'm just as excited and hopeful as everyone else. But somehow the w

I've found that there's a weird internal psychology I have with any news relating to Webb. I'm just as excited and hopeful as everyone else. But somehow the whole story underscores the perils of singular hope. It also seems to underscore the inherent issues with massive, carefully planned, "vertically" scaled science projects a la 20th century NASA. I've carved out a little nook in my psyche to cope with the outcome that something goes wrong during the Webb's incredibly complicated launch process and all those years of effort come to nothing. It's also made me wonder if there's a way for humanity to pivot to more "horizontally" scaled science. I'm imagining a kind of science conducted by aggregating the data collected by many cheap, easily produced instruments instead of a few incredibly fragile, extremely difficult to build contraptions. I have an intuition that we'll increasingly run up against practical limitations in undertaking ever more complex projects of this kind in the coming years.

holoduke 5y ago
We do actually. One area in which we make enormous progress is simulation. The entire perseverance trip was almost perfectly simulated in a simulator. It's predecessor only partly. The JW launch and deploy steps are also simulated in a very detailed way. Many different (fault) scenarios are tested. I have good faith everything will go as planned.
- indolering 5y ago
  That's sounds really interesting! Any resources for the layman that would provide more detail?
bumby 5y ago
I think these are large vertical projects because of the nature of the problem. I.e., the data we're after is inherently obfuscated by our earthly dwelling so we need to get our instruments a long ways "out-there". And to do so incurs a lot of risk and, generally speaking, the only institutions large enough to incur a risk that large without much profit upside are governments. Now maybe we'll find clever ways to get different data cheaply that meets similar ends, but that seems to be hinged on hope at the moment.
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  That's part of the problem, another part is lack of scale in the space launch market, which results in relatively small and expensive launchers. Lots of complexity and thus cost in JWST could've been avoided if it could be heavier and larger.
  - bumby 5y ago
    How would you propose to fix that problem? I suppose we could get some asteroid barons that bring in a profit motive but fundamental science rarely has a profit since, by definition, it hasn’t found an application yet
    - XorNot 5y ago
      SpaceX dropping launch costs with Falcon 9 already did that. The IXPE mission launched last week went up in a gigantic, barely filled fairing, because SpaceX bid below what the previous "cheap" launch was going to be.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
      Two tools: One, commoditize your complements. The complement of satellites is rockets, make rockets cheaper and you simplify the process of getting to space. Second, build towards economies of scale. A one-off is going to be ludicrously expensive, even the Apollo program saved money by reusing technology from military missiles. SpaceX has built more than a hundred rockets and launched more than a thousand satellites. Asteroid barons launching megatons to orbit would certainly make launching a 6.5 ton payload a non-issue. The complexity in the smartphone in my pocket boggles the imagination, I bought it for $200 but if it was a one off you'd have to be Bruce Wayne to afford it.
mwattsun 5y ago
I can't even follow the news because I know how disappointed I'll be if the launch crashes. Wake me up when it's over.
- sen 5y ago
  Couldn’t agree more. I’m a huge space nerd and this is the LEAST I’ve followed a project because I’m so worried it’ll fail. I keep up with the headlines but I’ve found it very difficult to get excited over it as I’m pretty much expecting the worst and anything more than that will be a bonus to enjoy later.
  - lazysheepherd 5y ago
    Ditto! As we approach the launch date, the feeling in my stomach when I read about Webb is getting worse. JWST is going to revolutionize our understanding of cosmos, but only because it's target spectrum, which requires operating temperatures around 45K(-228°C!), to completely eliminate blackbody radiation. Which means that tender layers of sunshield must... OHMY panic attack ...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- joshuahedlund 5y ago
  I’m less nervous about a launch crash than about the hundreds of moving parts that have to perfectly unfurl the thing between the launch and L2
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
barkingcat 5y ago
Sometimes there just is no substitute.
908B64B197 5y ago
> It's also made me wonder if there's a way for humanity to pivot to more "horizontally" scaled science. Today with F9 (and Starship not too far) yes. Launch costs are a fraction of what they were just a few years ago. When Webb was planned? No way. Keep in mind that it's the same agency that gave us the SLS.
alfor 5y ago
SpaceX is showing the way. No being afraid of failure allow to simplify, accelerate the process and reduce the cost by an order of magnitude
- api 5y ago
  This is how the Soviets beat us to orbit. They were less afraid to blow up a few rockets.
  - disillusioned 5y ago
    And dogs.
    - RugnirViking 5y ago
      Ah yes killing dogs. Much less ethical than the animals that NASA used right?
    - api 5y ago
      NASA did animal tests too.
- XorNot 5y ago
  If you were able to launch and rendezvous in orbit, I wonder how much cheaper something like the JWST gets if it could be built up piecemeal? The unfurling mechanism itself exists because of payload width limits. How much cost is bound up in "we can't just keep launching rockets because rockets are expensive" and how much is bound up in "precision technology for precision observations"?
- irjustin 5y ago
  I dislike this comparison because we want many of SpaceX's rockets, but we don't really want many Webbs. The rapid iteration argument isn't amazing. I mean it'd be awesome to have many, but not realistic in any real sense. But I 100% agree w/ the cost overruns being a massive problem.
irjustin 5y ago
The analogy - I'd rather have 1 sharp knife than 100 dull ones - seems apt. I'm not smart enough to know if something like Webb can be horizontally scaled into 100 or 1000x small sats to produce the same result. My guess is not. I think we need a super sharp knife and it's worth the investment.
- elihu 5y ago
  I agree with that, but still it's sometimes worthwhile to have a few dull knives around as well as backup. I mean, Hubble isn't huge; it's a 2.4 meter aperture. Building and launching something equivalent shouldn't be that big a deal these days, especially if you can launch a couple different versions with slightly different capabilities rather than trying to build one space telescope that tries to do everything well.
  - irjustin 5y ago
    The argument today is, additional Hubble(s) won't get "more science" per dollar put in. i.e. it's better to put those dollars elsewhere. We've basically maxed out what Hubble can do. While a sharper visible light telescope would be nice, we need longer wavelengths to see "further back" in history. i.e. Webb Another thing Hubble did was kick off Dark Energy, but then we needed different instruments to know more about the things that Hubble started. GAIA, Plank satellites are doing nutso things in that space. All to say, Hubble is f'ing great, let's bring it home and put it in a museum to help inspire the next generation.
    - p-e-w 5y ago
      > We've basically maxed out what Hubble can do. My understanding is that all major observatories, and certainly Hubble, are overbooked by a factor of 3 or more for months, and sometimes years, in advance. Which implies that having 3 Hubbles would allow us to do more research than we can do today. It's not ready for the museum while astronomers still battle over who gets to use it. An instrument doesn't have to be cutting edge in order to be useful and produce valuable results. Even today, amateur astronomers are still making discoveries (asteroids, sometimes comets) with telescopes that major observatories would have laughed at 100 years ago already. "The telescope that ate astronomy" (Webb) will undoubtedly make important discoveries. Whether it will be worth its cost considering what we could have built for the same price (such as 10 ELTs!) remains to be seen.
wumpus 5y ago
> It's also made me wonder if there's a way for humanity to pivot to more "horizontally" scaled science. We do a lot of that already. The purpose of flagship observatories is to do what can't be done with many cheap, easily produced instruments.
lacker 5y ago
I have an intuition that we'll increasingly run up against practical limitations in undertaking ever more complex projects of this kind in the coming years. This is already happening - Webb took 7 years longer than expected and cost $10b instead of the projected $5b. Specifically for space telescopes, I am optimistic for the future because launching mass into orbit is getting cheaper and cheaper. One main reason Webb has to be extremely expensive is that it also has to be extremely lightweight. If it becomes 10x cheaper to stick things in orbit then we can save money on construction too because we won't have to optimize weight as much. Of course, once space telescopes become cheap and normal, it'll be time to think about constructing a radio telescope array on the far side of the moon.... :D
- stargazer-3 5y ago
  The cost of Ariane 5 rocket is below $200m, which is a rather small fraction of the overall budget of $5-10b. If the main reason for the huge cost is to make it so lightweight, why didn't they go with more capable heavy-lift rockets to cut some R&D costs already? At least, Delta IV Heavy seems to have a significantly larger max. payload [1]. The JWST was still in re-planning phase as of 2005 and Delta IV Heavy was already operational at that point. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy-lift_launch_vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy-lift_launch_vehicle

holoduke 5y ago

We do actually. One area in which we make enormous progress is simulation. The entire perseverance trip was almost perfectly simulated in a simulator. It's predecessor only partly. The JW launch and deploy steps are also simulated in a very detailed way. Many different (fault) scenarios are tested. I have good faith everything will go as planned.

indolering 5y ago
That's sounds really interesting! Any resources for the layman that would provide more detail?

bumby 5y ago

I think these are large vertical projects because of the nature of the problem. I.e., the data we're after is inherently obfuscated by our earthly dwelling so we need to get our instruments a long ways "out-there". And to do so incurs a lot of risk and, generally speaking, the only institutions large enough to incur a risk that large without much profit upside are governments. Now maybe we'll find clever ways to get different data cheaply that meets similar ends, but that seems to be hinged on hope at the moment.

Denvercoder9 5y ago
That's part of the problem, another part is lack of scale in the space launch market, which results in relatively small and expensive launchers. Lots of complexity and thus cost in JWST could've been avoided if it could be heavier and larger.
- bumby 5y ago
  How would you propose to fix that problem? I suppose we could get some asteroid barons that bring in a profit motive but fundamental science rarely has a profit since, by definition, it hasn’t found an application yet
  - XorNot 5y ago
    SpaceX dropping launch costs with Falcon 9 already did that. The IXPE mission launched last week went up in a gigantic, barely filled fairing, because SpaceX bid below what the previous "cheap" launch was going to be.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    Two tools: One, commoditize your complements. The complement of satellites is rockets, make rockets cheaper and you simplify the process of getting to space. Second, build towards economies of scale. A one-off is going to be ludicrously expensive, even the Apollo program saved money by reusing technology from military missiles. SpaceX has built more than a hundred rockets and launched more than a thousand satellites. Asteroid barons launching megatons to orbit would certainly make launching a 6.5 ton payload a non-issue. The complexity in the smartphone in my pocket boggles the imagination, I bought it for $200 but if it was a one off you'd have to be Bruce Wayne to afford it.

mwattsun 5y ago

I can't even follow the news because I know how disappointed I'll be if the launch crashes. Wake me up when it's over.

sen 5y ago
Couldn’t agree more. I’m a huge space nerd and this is the LEAST I’ve followed a project because I’m so worried it’ll fail. I keep up with the headlines but I’ve found it very difficult to get excited over it as I’m pretty much expecting the worst and anything more than that will be a bonus to enjoy later.
- lazysheepherd 5y ago
  Ditto! As we approach the launch date, the feeling in my stomach when I read about Webb is getting worse. JWST is going to revolutionize our understanding of cosmos, but only because it's target spectrum, which requires operating temperatures around 45K(-228°C!), to completely eliminate blackbody radiation. Which means that tender layers of sunshield must... OHMY panic attack ...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
joshuahedlund 5y ago
I’m less nervous about a launch crash than about the hundreds of moving parts that have to perfectly unfurl the thing between the launch and L2

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

barkingcat 5y ago

Sometimes there just is no substitute.

908B64B197 5y ago

> It's also made me wonder if there's a way for humanity to pivot to more "horizontally" scaled science. Today with F9 (and Starship not too far) yes. Launch costs are a fraction of what they were just a few years ago. When Webb was planned? No way. Keep in mind that it's the same agency that gave us the SLS.

alfor 5y ago

SpaceX is showing the way. No being afraid of failure allow to simplify, accelerate the process and reduce the cost by an order of magnitude

api 5y ago
This is how the Soviets beat us to orbit. They were less afraid to blow up a few rockets.
- disillusioned 5y ago
  And dogs.
  - RugnirViking 5y ago
    Ah yes killing dogs. Much less ethical than the animals that NASA used right?
  - api 5y ago
    NASA did animal tests too.
XorNot 5y ago
If you were able to launch and rendezvous in orbit, I wonder how much cheaper something like the JWST gets if it could be built up piecemeal? The unfurling mechanism itself exists because of payload width limits. How much cost is bound up in "we can't just keep launching rockets because rockets are expensive" and how much is bound up in "precision technology for precision observations"?
irjustin 5y ago
I dislike this comparison because we want many of SpaceX's rockets, but we don't really want many Webbs. The rapid iteration argument isn't amazing. I mean it'd be awesome to have many, but not realistic in any real sense. But I 100% agree w/ the cost overruns being a massive problem.

irjustin 5y ago

The analogy - I'd rather have 1 sharp knife than 100 dull ones - seems apt. I'm not smart enough to know if something like Webb can be horizontally scaled into 100 or 1000x small sats to produce the same result. My guess is not. I think we need a super sharp knife and it's worth the investment.

elihu 5y ago
I agree with that, but still it's sometimes worthwhile to have a few dull knives around as well as backup. I mean, Hubble isn't huge; it's a 2.4 meter aperture. Building and launching something equivalent shouldn't be that big a deal these days, especially if you can launch a couple different versions with slightly different capabilities rather than trying to build one space telescope that tries to do everything well.
- irjustin 5y ago
  The argument today is, additional Hubble(s) won't get "more science" per dollar put in. i.e. it's better to put those dollars elsewhere. We've basically maxed out what Hubble can do. While a sharper visible light telescope would be nice, we need longer wavelengths to see "further back" in history. i.e. Webb Another thing Hubble did was kick off Dark Energy, but then we needed different instruments to know more about the things that Hubble started. GAIA, Plank satellites are doing nutso things in that space. All to say, Hubble is f'ing great, let's bring it home and put it in a museum to help inspire the next generation.
  - p-e-w 5y ago
    > We've basically maxed out what Hubble can do. My understanding is that all major observatories, and certainly Hubble, are overbooked by a factor of 3 or more for months, and sometimes years, in advance. Which implies that having 3 Hubbles would allow us to do more research than we can do today. It's not ready for the museum while astronomers still battle over who gets to use it. An instrument doesn't have to be cutting edge in order to be useful and produce valuable results. Even today, amateur astronomers are still making discoveries (asteroids, sometimes comets) with telescopes that major observatories would have laughed at 100 years ago already. "The telescope that ate astronomy" (Webb) will undoubtedly make important discoveries. Whether it will be worth its cost considering what we could have built for the same price (such as 10 ELTs!) remains to be seen.

wumpus 5y ago

> It's also made me wonder if there's a way for humanity to pivot to more "horizontally" scaled science. We do a lot of that already. The purpose of flagship observatories is to do what can't be done with many cheap, easily produced instruments.

lacker 5y ago

I have an intuition that we'll increasingly run up against practical limitations in undertaking ever more complex projects of this kind in the coming years. This is already happening - Webb took 7 years longer than expected and cost $10b instead of the projected $5b. Specifically for space telescopes, I am optimistic for the future because launching mass into orbit is getting cheaper and cheaper. One main reason Webb has to be extremely expensive is that it also has to be extremely lightweight. If it becomes 10x cheaper to stick things in orbit then we can save money on construction too because we won't have to optimize weight as much. Of course, once space telescopes become cheap and normal, it'll be time to think about constructing a radio telescope array on the far side of the moon.... :D

stargazer-3 5y ago
The cost of Ariane 5 rocket is below $200m, which is a rather small fraction of the overall budget of $5-10b. If the main reason for the huge cost is to make it so lightweight, why didn't they go with more capable heavy-lift rockets to cut some R&D costs already? At least, Delta IV Heavy seems to have a significantly larger max. payload [1]. The JWST was still in re-planning phase as of 2005 and Delta IV Heavy was already operational at that point. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy-lift_launch_vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy-lift_launch_vehicle