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The launch costs of James Webb were an insignificant part of the spending on the telescope.
by vanattab 5y ago
The launch costs of James Webb were an insignificant part of the spending on the telescope.
- bjelkeman-again 5y agoIndeed, but with a bigger launch vehicle, much of the complexity of JW would have been simplified and the cost of building it gone down.
- boxed 5y agoWell yes. But that's partly because the launch weight was restrained, and the launch cost high. It's a bit unituitive! The limits on launch weight means enormous costs to remove every single grma they can. This makes the launch cost go down in percent. If thy could just make it 50% heavier they could cut development costs by a lot. They could also build one much faster and allow it to fail constructively where you learn a bunch and then build number 2, 3, 4 with the things you learned. So now you have 3 telescopes instead of one. Launch cost changes everything.
- krisoft 5y agoYes. But the telescope cost as much as it did because they needed to origami it into the available space. If you have much more volume and weight you can design a simpler structure which achieves the same goal. Simpler structures cost less.