3 ms·

You got much more detailed explanations in that thread. It simply doesn't scale like that. These are extremely bespoke systems, and the entire process is gated

You got much more detailed explanations in that thread. It simply doesn't scale like that. These are extremely bespoke systems, and the entire process is gated on vendors and facilities that are both unique in the world and under high demand. There is simply no way you get a 2nd unit at the kind of discount you're assuming.

WalterBright 4y ago
I didn't those explanations compelling. The cost of the design and development of the JWST was surely enormous, along with the design and construction of test facilities. None of that needs to be repeated for #2. Just for fun, buy two IKEA flatpacks for, say, bookshelves. Build one, then the other. I bet you spend half the time building the second, even though you're doing exactly the same thing, by hand. Reminds me of when in March 2020 I was also told I didn't know what I was talking about when I pointed out how a Covid vaccine could be made available in 6 months rather than the conventional 18 minimum times. The vaccines were available in 7 months. The airplane I worked on the design of, the Boeing 757, would have cost at least 100 times as much per-plane if it was a one-off design.
- majormajor 4y ago
  I assume the 757 was designed to be produced in bulk. It's not clear to me that designing something that needs to be assembled successfully once vs twice vs 10 times doesn't introduce some more cost tradeoffs in itself. Just around tolerances and yield even, how many pieces are required to be made to give one complete set of parts that all work together vs 10 complete sets that all work together. I could see some extra pain and assembly from having to get more permutations of part variances all working together and validated. A while back, at least, a lot of the testing processes for space components were VERY manual so you'd either need to invest more for automation or accept linear costs on all the extra production/verification. This is partly quibbling over trivial details - I would imagine the savings is closer to 50-75% than 90% - but at a certain point those differences in tens-of-percentage points are lots of billions of dollars. Here's the real kicker to me: why spend even an extra 10% up-front before even deploying one of them? Why not spend the marginal costs on building an additional unit only if the first fails? Then you can learn from the failure too? And if it works the first time, those billions can be spent elsewhere instead.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    As one respondent here wrote, the "why" is that due to the long time it took to develop the JWST, much tooling has been scrapped and the teams who did it have dissolved. You lose a lot of the cost savings if you don't build #2 right away. You're right that the 757 was meant to be built in bulk, and hence one has to pay attention to tolerances so the parts are interchangeable.
- OrvalWintermute 4y ago
  > Reminds me of when in March 2020 I was also told I didn't know what I was talking about when I pointed out how a Covid vaccine could be made available in 6 months rather than the conventional 18 minimum times. The vaccines were available in 7 months. Conventional vaccines are sterilizing, have good safety records, and protection in years, or decades. This "vaccine" is none of above. These MRNA "vaccines" required a change in the definition of a vaccine, and have atrocious safety records. The new Novavax vaccine [1], which is a conventional vaccine, may prove to have much longer effectiveness period, and not require boosters every 3 months. It also took much longer to develop. [1] https://www.novavax.com/science-technology/recombinant-protein-based-nanoparticle-vaccine-technology https://www.novavax.com/science-technology/recombinant-prote...
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    The vaccine probably saved a million lives in the US alone. It's great that newer, vaccines are being developed. But in the meantime, the Novavax vaccine is not available. I'll take the one that is available. I'm not really interested in dying waiting for the perfect vaccine.
  - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
    > Conventional vaccines are sterilizing Many vaccines do not provide sterilizing immunity. Just to give one random example: flu vaccines do not provide sterilizing immunity. > have good safety records The various SARS-CoV-2 vaccines have very good safety records. They've been administered to billions of people, and the rates of serious side-effects are on the order on one per several hundred thousand - orders of magnitude lower than the rate of serious complications from infection. > The new Novavax vaccine, which is a conventional vaccine I don't know how you're defining "conventional" here, but Novavax also uses a new vaccine platform.
    - OrvalWintermute 4y ago
      > The various SARS-CoV-2 vaccines have very good safety records. They've been administered to billions of people, and the rates of serious side-effects are on the order on one per several hundred thousand - orders of magnitude lower than the rate of serious complications from infection. I know 2 people with severe adverse events from the vaxx. Considering how many vaccinations I have received my life due to military service, that is an order of magnitude worse than any vaccination, ever.

WalterBright 4y ago

I didn't those explanations compelling. The cost of the design and development of the JWST was surely enormous, along with the design and construction of test facilities. None of that needs to be repeated for #2. Just for fun, buy two IKEA flatpacks for, say, bookshelves. Build one, then the other. I bet you spend half the time building the second, even though you're doing exactly the same thing, by hand. Reminds me of when in March 2020 I was also told I didn't know what I was talking about when I pointed out how a Covid vaccine could be made available in 6 months rather than the conventional 18 minimum times. The vaccines were available in 7 months. The airplane I worked on the design of, the Boeing 757, would have cost at least 100 times as much per-plane if it was a one-off design.

majormajor 4y ago
I assume the 757 was designed to be produced in bulk. It's not clear to me that designing something that needs to be assembled successfully once vs twice vs 10 times doesn't introduce some more cost tradeoffs in itself. Just around tolerances and yield even, how many pieces are required to be made to give one complete set of parts that all work together vs 10 complete sets that all work together. I could see some extra pain and assembly from having to get more permutations of part variances all working together and validated. A while back, at least, a lot of the testing processes for space components were VERY manual so you'd either need to invest more for automation or accept linear costs on all the extra production/verification. This is partly quibbling over trivial details - I would imagine the savings is closer to 50-75% than 90% - but at a certain point those differences in tens-of-percentage points are lots of billions of dollars. Here's the real kicker to me: why spend even an extra 10% up-front before even deploying one of them? Why not spend the marginal costs on building an additional unit only if the first fails? Then you can learn from the failure too? And if it works the first time, those billions can be spent elsewhere instead.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  As one respondent here wrote, the "why" is that due to the long time it took to develop the JWST, much tooling has been scrapped and the teams who did it have dissolved. You lose a lot of the cost savings if you don't build #2 right away. You're right that the 757 was meant to be built in bulk, and hence one has to pay attention to tolerances so the parts are interchangeable.
OrvalWintermute 4y ago
> Reminds me of when in March 2020 I was also told I didn't know what I was talking about when I pointed out how a Covid vaccine could be made available in 6 months rather than the conventional 18 minimum times. The vaccines were available in 7 months. Conventional vaccines are sterilizing, have good safety records, and protection in years, or decades. This "vaccine" is none of above. These MRNA "vaccines" required a change in the definition of a vaccine, and have atrocious safety records. The new Novavax vaccine [1], which is a conventional vaccine, may prove to have much longer effectiveness period, and not require boosters every 3 months. It also took much longer to develop. [1] https://www.novavax.com/science-technology/recombinant-protein-based-nanoparticle-vaccine-technology https://www.novavax.com/science-technology/recombinant-prote...
- WalterBright 4y ago
  The vaccine probably saved a million lives in the US alone. It's great that newer, vaccines are being developed. But in the meantime, the Novavax vaccine is not available. I'll take the one that is available. I'm not really interested in dying waiting for the perfect vaccine.
- DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
  > Conventional vaccines are sterilizing Many vaccines do not provide sterilizing immunity. Just to give one random example: flu vaccines do not provide sterilizing immunity. > have good safety records The various SARS-CoV-2 vaccines have very good safety records. They've been administered to billions of people, and the rates of serious side-effects are on the order on one per several hundred thousand - orders of magnitude lower than the rate of serious complications from infection. > The new Novavax vaccine, which is a conventional vaccine I don't know how you're defining "conventional" here, but Novavax also uses a new vaccine platform.
  - OrvalWintermute 4y ago
    > The various SARS-CoV-2 vaccines have very good safety records. They've been administered to billions of people, and the rates of serious side-effects are on the order on one per several hundred thousand - orders of magnitude lower than the rate of serious complications from infection. I know 2 people with severe adverse events from the vaxx. Considering how many vaccinations I have received my life due to military service, that is an order of magnitude worse than any vaccination, ever.