5 ms·

Between James Webb and Ingenuity, major kudos to things that actually work. Can’t take any of these successes for granted, even if we spend $100 billion (!) on

Between James Webb and Ingenuity, major kudos to things that actually work. Can’t take any of these successes for granted, even if we spend $100 billion (!) on just one of them. Hope Webb is safe in its Lagrange point for a long life. Glad we actually had built the 100B of wealth to deploy. Now if we can only get those $800MM littoral combat ships to work, we’re building like 53 of them and they don’t launch up, they launch down a few feet. Not rocket science…

pengaru 5y ago
> Hope Webb is safe in its Lagrange point for a long life JWST has a 5-year science mission requirement, with 10-year propellant life. Unfortunately it has a relatively short upper-bound on its lifetime, compared to say Hubble. Though apparently there's ~20-years of propellant onboard thanks to a precise launch, still a far cry form Hubble's 31 years and still ticking. Should we consider 20-years a long life for such an expensive instrument?
- tux3 5y ago
  The glass half full haruspicy is that it might mean we'll be forced to start thinking about designing an even better one 5-10 years from now :)
  - ianai 5y ago
    I heard one option for addressing climate change is a huge sun shade between us and the sun. I figure that sounds like something that could be tuned into a radio telescope array or something. Maybe with the earth side being the side used for equipment? Idk.
    - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
      A radio telescope would perform best if it was shielded by the moon.
    - BurningFrog 5y ago
      From memory, that sunshade needs to be many orders of magnitude bigger than any telescope. Which probably means it would have to be a "cloud" of millions of smaller shades.
      - EZ-Cheeze 5y ago
        If enough of a star's light can be blocked by polarized filters, data transmission can occur when they are switched on and off in a pattern. Maybe with the JWST we'll be able to download many different civilizations' Wikipedias if they're blinking their suns at us.
- quantified 5y ago
  Let’s get $5B/year out of it. Your $1K smartphone is expensive if it only lasts 1yr for fun and not so much if it lasts 5 years and you get business income via it.
- wolfram74 5y ago
  The Mission extension vehicles (MEVs) are demonstrated technology[0] for some geostationary orbit. I think I've heard some talk in the press releases that now they know they've got as much time as they do, and that it even got past it's 300+ single point of failures, they're chatting about what kind of maintenance missions they can carry out to extend JWST's life span. [0]https://www.northropgrumman.com/space/space-logistics-services/ https://www.northropgrumman.com/space/space-logistics-servic...
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    > extend JWST's life span I recall a thread here when it was launched where I suggested building a twin simultaneously, and that the increment in cost was likely to be 10% of the cost of one. One of the critics of this idea said there was no need for another, as there was only so much the JWST could discover. But it's hardly been turned on before people are trying to figure out how to make it last longer. Sigh. P.S. I found out later that in the past NASA would build probes in pairs, and made extra parts in case one was damaged or didn't work. So it really couldn't be that expensive to have built a twin.
    - bryanlarsen 5y ago
      Perseverance was originally a twin of Curiosity, but it cost more than Curiosity. There's no way that a twin of JWST would cost only 10%.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        > Perseverance was originally a twin of Curiosity, but it cost more than Curiosity. I can't imagine how that could come about. > There's no way that a twin of JWST would cost only 10%. It's kind of the way building things works. The cost of the prototype is enormous compared to the next one. For one thing, the additional R+D cost is $0. The additional cost of the software (and I bet the custom software is a big chunk) is $0. The additional cost of committee meetings to discuss competing alternatives is $0. And on and on. When cutting parts, the cost isn't in cutting the parts. The cost is setting up the machine to cut the parts. The cutting cost is trivial.
- 41b696ef1113 5y ago
  20 years of expected propellant, but other critical parts that could fail before that time.
- ISL 5y ago
  One should not value the time of operation as much as the total value of science returned. If JWST can engage in science operations for even a year, it will transform our precision understanding of the universe. This is like switching on the first electron microscope when everyone has only ever had optical microscopes. We will see new and surprising things with unprecedented fidelity. The big question has always been, "will JWST's engineering actually work?" So far, it looks like it is working very well.
- mulmen 5y ago
  Maybe a shorter life is a feature if it adds capability. JWST was built to further investigate discoveries made with Hubble. Presumably whatever comes after JWST will similarly drill into discoveries we are about to make.
mturmon 5y ago
Your $100B figure should be $10B, for Webb. Ingenuity was an about $80M part of Perseverance which was $2.4B in total.
- quantified 5y ago
  Off-by-10 error, shame face here. Can’t edit now that replies have rolled in. W.r.t the comparison to other science and engineering efficacy, defense spending is for total shit.
nieve 5y ago
Shouldn't that be 10, not 100?
- quantified 5y ago
  Yes.
mulmen 5y ago
Military spending isn’t like buying groceries. The US Military is a jobs program. Even a failed program fulfills this purpose. No amount of spending is “wasted”.
- vgel 5y ago
  This is the Broken Window Fallacy (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window) -- without the military spending, those same jobs could have been created by the government to do something useful, like fixing our crumbling infrastructure.
  - astrange 5y ago
    The studies giving our infrastructure bad grades are mostly coming from the contractors we'd be hiring to fix them.
    - willis936 5y ago
      I drive on our roads. I drink our water. As anyone who does these things can tell you: our infrastructure is a god damn trainwreck.
    - Schiendelman 5y ago
      A bridge just collapsed in Pennsylvania. In Seattle we have a major chunk of the city cut off because a bridge cracked. Every city’s transit system is aging or needs expansion badly.
      - astrange 5y ago
        Wasn’t the bridge undermined by a gas leak? Not much you can do about that unless you want a spare bridge somewhere else.
- quantified 5y ago
  War is unfortunately real, if you read the papers. Our spending on stuff that isn’t people is massively kickbacks and back-scratching. Look at wasted energy inputs and unrecyclable materials as the true wastes, and the offshored/oligarch-concentrated money as a time bomb for when it gets actually deployed from its base in Virgin Islands.

pengaru 5y ago

> Hope Webb is safe in its Lagrange point for a long life JWST has a 5-year science mission requirement, with 10-year propellant life. Unfortunately it has a relatively short upper-bound on its lifetime, compared to say Hubble. Though apparently there's ~20-years of propellant onboard thanks to a precise launch, still a far cry form Hubble's 31 years and still ticking. Should we consider 20-years a long life for such an expensive instrument?

tux3 5y ago
The glass half full haruspicy is that it might mean we'll be forced to start thinking about designing an even better one 5-10 years from now :)
- ianai 5y ago
  I heard one option for addressing climate change is a huge sun shade between us and the sun. I figure that sounds like something that could be tuned into a radio telescope array or something. Maybe with the earth side being the side used for equipment? Idk.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    A radio telescope would perform best if it was shielded by the moon.
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    From memory, that sunshade needs to be many orders of magnitude bigger than any telescope. Which probably means it would have to be a "cloud" of millions of smaller shades.
    - EZ-Cheeze 5y ago
      If enough of a star's light can be blocked by polarized filters, data transmission can occur when they are switched on and off in a pattern. Maybe with the JWST we'll be able to download many different civilizations' Wikipedias if they're blinking their suns at us.
quantified 5y ago
Let’s get $5B/year out of it. Your $1K smartphone is expensive if it only lasts 1yr for fun and not so much if it lasts 5 years and you get business income via it.
wolfram74 5y ago
The Mission extension vehicles (MEVs) are demonstrated technology[0] for some geostationary orbit. I think I've heard some talk in the press releases that now they know they've got as much time as they do, and that it even got past it's 300+ single point of failures, they're chatting about what kind of maintenance missions they can carry out to extend JWST's life span. [0]https://www.northropgrumman.com/space/space-logistics-services/ https://www.northropgrumman.com/space/space-logistics-servic...
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > extend JWST's life span I recall a thread here when it was launched where I suggested building a twin simultaneously, and that the increment in cost was likely to be 10% of the cost of one. One of the critics of this idea said there was no need for another, as there was only so much the JWST could discover. But it's hardly been turned on before people are trying to figure out how to make it last longer. Sigh. P.S. I found out later that in the past NASA would build probes in pairs, and made extra parts in case one was damaged or didn't work. So it really couldn't be that expensive to have built a twin.
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    Perseverance was originally a twin of Curiosity, but it cost more than Curiosity. There's no way that a twin of JWST would cost only 10%.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      > Perseverance was originally a twin of Curiosity, but it cost more than Curiosity. I can't imagine how that could come about. > There's no way that a twin of JWST would cost only 10%. It's kind of the way building things works. The cost of the prototype is enormous compared to the next one. For one thing, the additional R+D cost is $0. The additional cost of the software (and I bet the custom software is a big chunk) is $0. The additional cost of committee meetings to discuss competing alternatives is $0. And on and on. When cutting parts, the cost isn't in cutting the parts. The cost is setting up the machine to cut the parts. The cutting cost is trivial.
41b696ef1113 5y ago
20 years of expected propellant, but other critical parts that could fail before that time.
ISL 5y ago
One should not value the time of operation as much as the total value of science returned. If JWST can engage in science operations for even a year, it will transform our precision understanding of the universe. This is like switching on the first electron microscope when everyone has only ever had optical microscopes. We will see new and surprising things with unprecedented fidelity. The big question has always been, "will JWST's engineering actually work?" So far, it looks like it is working very well.
mulmen 5y ago
Maybe a shorter life is a feature if it adds capability. JWST was built to further investigate discoveries made with Hubble. Presumably whatever comes after JWST will similarly drill into discoveries we are about to make.

mturmon 5y ago

Your $100B figure should be $10B, for Webb. Ingenuity was an about $80M part of Perseverance which was $2.4B in total.

quantified 5y ago
Off-by-10 error, shame face here. Can’t edit now that replies have rolled in. W.r.t the comparison to other science and engineering efficacy, defense spending is for total shit.

nieve 5y ago

Shouldn't that be 10, not 100?

quantified 5y ago
Yes.

mulmen 5y ago

Military spending isn’t like buying groceries. The US Military is a jobs program. Even a failed program fulfills this purpose. No amount of spending is “wasted”.

vgel 5y ago
This is the Broken Window Fallacy (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window) -- without the military spending, those same jobs could have been created by the government to do something useful, like fixing our crumbling infrastructure.
- astrange 5y ago
  The studies giving our infrastructure bad grades are mostly coming from the contractors we'd be hiring to fix them.
  - willis936 5y ago
    I drive on our roads. I drink our water. As anyone who does these things can tell you: our infrastructure is a god damn trainwreck.
  - Schiendelman 5y ago
    A bridge just collapsed in Pennsylvania. In Seattle we have a major chunk of the city cut off because a bridge cracked. Every city’s transit system is aging or needs expansion badly.
    - astrange 5y ago
      Wasn’t the bridge undermined by a gas leak? Not much you can do about that unless you want a spare bridge somewhere else.
quantified 5y ago
War is unfortunately real, if you read the papers. Our spending on stuff that isn’t people is massively kickbacks and back-scratching. Look at wasted energy inputs and unrecyclable materials as the true wastes, and the offshored/oligarch-concentrated money as a time bomb for when it gets actually deployed from its base in Virgin Islands.