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How much would it have cost to send and return a chunk of some kind of airogel to measure micrometers before the mission. You probably don't even need to return
by vanattab 4y ago
How much would it have cost to send and return a chunk of some kind of airogel to measure micrometers before the mission. You probably don't even need to return it just have cameras send back the data. It seems like the science would have been simple and it becasiclly would have just been an extra launch right?
- yetihehe 4y agoNot even cameras, three microphones and a plate would be enough. But spending several million dollars for "measurement of micrometeoroids density at L2" is too much, they just relied that they have valid models.
- topynate 4y agoThis is a little cynical, but it's not something they'd want to have known. Suppose the worst case is true and the Webb has a useful lifetime of three or four years. What were they going to do if they'd learned that in 2015? Redesign the entire mission? It was already too expensive. One might say that they should have made the measurement back in the '90s, but the Webb was anticipated to be significantly cheaper back then and the cost of a pathfinder mission would have been proportionately greater.
- vanattab 4y agoDoes anyone know if we have ever done direct meteoroid detection at any Lagrange point? With how critical the Lx points are for huge numbers of missions and orbital mechanics we would have thought we would have studied it extensively already.