4 ms·
> But the JWST was not designed or tested in a vacuum this is false. NASA has a house-size vacuum chamber that was used for testing. Also the author got th
by fnord77 5y ago
> But the JWST was not designed or tested in a vacuum
this is false. NASA has a house-size vacuum chamber that was used for testing. Also the author got the price tag wrong.
I wonder what else about the article is incorrect.
- flyyingbarron 5y agoYes, the price error was a typo which has been fixed. "not designed in a vacuum" was a figure of speech, meaning that testing it was done in the context of previous missions.
- CartyBoston 5y agopeeps here can be very literal, it's I suspect no accident
- smoe 5y agoIn the NASA live stream yesterday, during one of the interview a engineer mentioned, that one of the harder aspects about the primary mirrors (if I remember correctly), was figuring out how to test the equipment in the cryogenic vacuum chamber. What they mentioned they couldn't fully test, was deployment in zero gravity. So far I think NASA has done a great job, trough blog posts, videos, websites explaining and visualizing different aspect of JWST in a way that is tangible for laypeople.
- guenthert 5y ago> What they mentioned they couldn't fully test, was deployment in zero gravity. Just test it once right side up and once upside-down ;-)
- kortex 5y agoIt's a figure of speech. Looks like TFA clarified: > But the JWST was not designed or tested in a vacuum (pun only partially intended) It's not the clearest writing, even though they are going for a joke. JWST was not "designed or tested in a vacuum" [in isolation without knowledge of prior art]". But it was designed for vacuum and its parts were tested in a vacuum, including I believe bringing the whole assembly down to cold vacuum. Designing in a literal vacuum sounds painful for the designers. :)