12 ms·
It is - and that's $10b upfront cost for an asset that will operate for a decade. $1b a year is a steal for that compared to the other shit the US wastes feder
by paulmd 4y ago
It is - and that's $10b upfront cost for an asset that will operate for a decade. $1b a year is a steal for that compared to the other shit the US wastes federal money on.
I'd personally vote to 10x or 100x our hard-science funding in general, we spend an absolute pittance compared to military funding or corn subsidies or whatever other bullshit.
- M3L0NM4N 4y agoFull agree. I'd have been okay if this telescope cost us $50bn
- imperio59 4y ago* at least a decade, right? Or are the batteries going to run out at some point?
- l33tman 4y agoCurrent estimate is 2 decades (original worst case was 10 years depending on the accuracy of the launch, which turned out to be best case accurate!)
- thekiptxt 4y agoCurrent estimate is closer to 20 years until fuel to keep it in the Lagrange point is exhausted. Originally planned for 10, but the deployment was precise enough to leave enough fuel for many more years :)
- paulmd 4y agoI thought some of the instruments would run out of helium after a decade. Other instruments may be able to run longer of course. Even better.
- danny_codes 4y agoThe supply of coolant is finite. At the time of mission planning there was no spaceship capable of resupplying at the Lagrange point. As I understand it the coolant onbaord is good for 10 years. However, if starship is successful that situation will change and resupply becomes possible. So I suppose we'll see.
- OrvalWintermute 4y agoNASA is already doing resupply missions to easily-accessible orbits [1] and they have previous spin-offs less customized to repair/replace but capable nonetheless e.g. X-37/X-40 It is fully within the realm of possibility that a future OSAM mission will be capable of hitting far more distant points, since the Lunar stuff is just starting to heat up. [1] https://nexis.gsfc.nasa.gov/osam-1.html https://nexis.gsfc.nasa.gov/osam-1.html
- outworlder 4y agoJWST is limited by fuel, not by the cryocooler. Helium is not a consumable, although some level of leakage may occur. But only one of its instruments requires it.
- dmix 4y agoI'm guessing they didn't make it refuelable by automation, so it requires a human or custom robotics to refuel?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoHow many factory or construction jobs does "hard-science" funding create? I love science but defense invests in the entire "stack". It creates factory jobs but it also creates jobs for basically every STEM field. From a practicality standpoint- military spending is difficult to beat. Improves defense, improves the defense of allies, creates factory jobs, creates science and engineering jobs. It has everything. The only thing that comes close is if there were some green arms race where we are funding and building wind, solar, nuclear, fusion, etc.
- xg15 4y agoIf job creation is the only factor, why not invest the 10B into digging holes and filling them up again?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoWhere do I say that it's the only factor?
- vanattab 4y ago> From a practicality standpoint- military spending is difficult to beat. Improves defense, improves the defense of allies, creates factory jobs, creates science and engineering jobs. It has everything. I mean he explicitly said it was not the only factor...
- DaveExeter 4y agoCongratulations! You have discovered the broken-window fallacy! [1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
- hervature 4y ago"The belief that destruction is good for the economy" That's not at all what GP is saying. Government investment into industries have different return on investment. This is why governments heavily invest into healthcare. But, if we're talking investing in a military vs. university researchers, I think you have to be fairly elitist to say that adding 100,000 academics is better for society than providing a good life for 1M soldiers. At its core, military spending is the greatest experiment of UBI ever done. Now, downvotes from the left and right.
- snarfy 4y agoAnd we barely get anything for our military spending except fat defense contractors.
- vanattab 4y agoI mean I consider not being ruled by Nazis or Communists as at least somewhat valuable.
- mmmpop 4y agoIronically, isn't that just MAGA vs Antifa? Nationalists vs commies, they both suck tremendously.
- epicureanideal 4y agoNationalism isn’t the same as Nazism.
- RajT88 4y agoAnd Socialism is not Communism.
- mmmpop 4y ago> And Socialism is not Communism. A lot of that crew would call themselves Marxists, no doubt. Maybe not "commies" if you mean they're not shipping people off to gulags, ok. > Nationalism isn’t the same as Nazism. I agree, but I think you could ask you average college Democrat and they'd equate the two.
- RajT88 4y agoShipping people off to the gulags is not a feature of Marxism. My point here is that these terms get attached to political movements and then people mistake how the movement is practiced with the original thing. Lenin was influenced by Marx. He considered himself a Marxist for certain. What he practiced was Totalitarianism. The Nazi party's formal name was the "National Socialist German Worker's Party". You could argue they were influenced by Socialism, but you are being disingenuous if you make the leap to Socialism means exterminating the Jews. Now, there are people that say that! They are wingnuts. > I agree, but I think you could ask you average college Democrat and they'd equate the two. I doubt that very much.
- danny_codes 4y agoWhat's wild about cooperation on the scale of the US is that this project is almost free for the individual. 1billion is just $3 per American per year. So for a "subscription" cost of just 25¢ a month, we all get James Webb telescope.
- pirate787 4y agoThere are 144 million actual taxpayers so the cost is more like $70 per taxpayer. Worthwhile but definitely not free or low cost. Another way to look at it is the average taxpayer paid $10,649 in 2019, so Webb required the entire year of taxable effort from 939,055 average taxpayers.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- weaksauce 4y agoAnother way to look at it without making it look bigger than it is by omitting zeros from 144 million and including the zeros from the much smaller number: Assuming your average of 10,649 is correct, it's the entire taxable output for a year from 0.652% of the average tax of the tax paying population. 939,055/144,000,000 = 0.00652122
- 77pt77 4y ago> I'd personally vote to 10x or 100x our hard-science funding in general You dropped the ball on the SSC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider#Cancellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider...
- quest88 4y agoWhy is it an investment though? What's the expected return? How does that compare to other options?
- laxd 4y agoIt's hard to predict the consequenses of fundamental sciences. Nevertheless, it's the ground where applied sciences and engineering grow.
- ceejayoz 4y ago> What's the expected return? Knowledge? How would you value the early experiments that eventually led to, say, germ theory on a monetary basis?
- quest88 4y agoKnowledge for what? What do we want to know? Is it for the sake of putting in a text book or showing neat pictures in a museum that people will forget about by the next exhibit? What did spending billions getting to the moon get us, bragging rights? What tangible benefit have we gotten from the space station and other space missions?
- leothecool 4y ago"What is the use of a newborn child?" - Ben Franklin
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 4y agoAn enormous amount of human achievement comes from basic research that didn’t have an immediate obvious use case. Relativity gives us GPS, for example.
- accrual 4y ago
- Maursault 4y agoJWST cost each American $3/yr for it's mission life. They just would have wasted it on gum or an energy drink.
- spfzero 4y agoMilitary spending on advanced spy telescopes like Keyhole lead to Hubble.
- hajdjvkrj 4y agoaren’t NASA telescopes and technology garbage compared to the stuff NRO has?
- m463 4y ago> I'd personally vote to 10x or 100x our hard-science funding It's a slippery slope though. sometimes governments pick winners on non-scientific grounds. I wonder if maybe tax breaks might be a better way of funding, because folks who have ownership could be better.
- ratsmack 4y ago>... compared to the other shit the US wastes federal money on. You mean like roads, bridges, and other infrastructure? I like to view nice pictures of space as well as anyone else, but I can't agree that it is money well spent. If it was entirely privately funded it wouldn't be a problem, but money from taxes should go for the things that benefit society the most.
- throwaway6734 4y agoA lot of military funding goes to hard-science funding
- quickthrower2 4y agoThe morale and “good news” factor alone makes it worth it (at $3 per resident per year). Also spin off tech must be worth it too.