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Isn't it worth it to launch another one? Wouldn't the cost be minimal given that zero R&D is required?
by mupuff1234 4y ago
Isn't it worth it to launch another one? Wouldn't the cost be minimal given that zero R&D is required?
- TIPSIO 4y agoIt would be so cool to have a Google Earth / zoom-like experience of everywhere you can see, like this: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-delivers-deepest-infrared-image-of-universe-yet https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-...
- 6510 4y agoThen have various tiers of telescopes that you can hire to zoom in on a spot.
- zaarn 4y agoBarely worth to launch another one. It would be more cost effective to invest some R&D into building a telescope with a different target wavelength to get more science than if you had two of the same telescope. The engineers will also absolutely want to fix any issues they found in Webb already.
- aalleavitch 4y agoThe degree to which science has advanced since the Webb project started can't be understated either. We have a fundamentally better understanding of the technology available and what we even want to look at. Much better to simply move onto the next project, of which there are currently very many.
- jacquesm 4y agoThis one is probably my favorite: https://www.space.com/nasa-telescope-far-side-of-moon.html https://www.space.com/nasa-telescope-far-side-of-moon.html Though I'm not sure if it will ever be built.
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoWhat’s the next project? Roman [1] doesn’t seem as groundbreaking as Webb was. [1] https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/ https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/
- aalleavitch 4y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proposed_space_observatories#Space_observatories_under_development https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proposed_space_obser...
- adgjlsfhk1 4y agoThere has been a lot of work on earth based telescopes (eg the 30 meter, giant Magellan, and some array based telescopes) that are going online in the next decade.
- ncmncm 4y agoAre superior terrestrial 'scopes even possible, anymore, with Starlink interference getting worse each week? Serious question. Or can its interference be filtered out effectively?
- dotnet00 4y agoFor the most part, yes, with adaptive optics and corrective measures being taken to deal with more satellites in orbit, ground telescopes are superior or at least comparable to space telescopes given their ability to be much larger. Space telescopes these days are primarily being designed for observations that simply can't be done while in the atmosphere (eg the wavelengths JWST and NGR look at). The value of a space telescope in the same wavelength range as what ground based telescopes usually use would mainly benefit in terms of being able to have much longer exposures.
- maskedinvader 4y agoMy understanding is ground based telescopes imaging in the same wavelengths also have to deal with distortion in the atmosphere, star link interference would be easier to filter out compared to the other stuff (which is why locations for these mega ground based telescopes are chosen with utmost care ) Disclaimer. Not a physicals or astronomer, just a enthusiastic backyard amateur astronomer who reads a lot about telescopes .
- noelrock 4y agoWas going to reply along these lines. I was fortunate to live with someone who was working on the James Webb and telling me excitedly about it — back in 2006! Surely even with the various upgrades/spec changes/delays, things have moved sufficiently that whatever is started even today will be a marked upgrade. In any event, many many areas to aim at, and relatively limited funding unfortunately.
- foobarian 4y agoI wonder how feasible it would be to count on Starship to succeed, so that each flight could deliver one hexagonal mirror segment, eventually culminating in a giant composite mirror
- delecti 4y agoBased on how JWST folded up, the width of the hexagonal segments is already a sizable chunk of its overall launch diameter. Doing what you suggest could absolutely result in a bigger overall telescope, but the complexity would be increased vastly more than the overall telescope diameter.
- ncmncm 4y agoYou would not need to fold it at all. Instead, launch dozens of Webb-scale scopes for a fraction of the price, able to point in that many directions at once.
- delecti 4y agoI don't think you understood what I meant. If you launch the segments by themselves, the width of a single segment would still be limited to the internal diameter of the launch vessel, we're not going to just bolt a naked mirror to the front of a rocket. If you compare how the JWST was folded, the width of the individual segments was already close to the maximum allowable diameter of the launch vessel. Leaving the rest of that launch vessel empty won't get you a much bigger final mirror.
- ncmncm 4y agoI understood perfectly. Starship is 9 meters wide.
- kortex 4y agoJWST folded is about 3 tiles wide, in a housing 4.7m in diameter, unfolding to 6.5m. So a JWST style fold in a Starship would be double. A one-mirror-segment-per-flight would be something like 36m, in the same arrangement. But since you would be constructing from separate sections, the diameter is theoretically limitless.
- vasco 4y ago> Barely worth to launch another one How do you figure? A fleet of space telescopes research teams could interact with through an API without much cost and zero approval, would for sure advance science by a lot. I find it weird to see a statement like this, so maybe you have something else in mind. It's a stretch to go from "building a different one would give new classes of insights" to "having more people being able to use this thing we only have 1 of a kind is barely worth it".
- Hallucinaut 4y ago"Why build one when you could build two for twice the cost?"
- falseprofit 4y agoThe cost is nothing next to what we spend on war
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- SiempreViernes 4y ago> A fleet of space telescopes research teams could interact with through an API without much cost and zero approval, would for sure advance science by a lot. 100 % someone would point at the sun by accident and burn all the sensors within six months if access is unrestricted and the api is powerful. In any case easy access to data will mostly result in data lying idle on disks somewhere because people are busy doing something more interesting. Analysing data is many months of work, and you don't get more months just because there is more data.
- drexlspivey 4y agoThe next one should ship with a react app
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- digdugdirk 4y agoAn absolute ton of the cost of this was down to the extremely precise manufacturing required to make it. Some of that would be reduced now that they've made it once, but we're still talking about one-off components here. It won't be an order of magnitude. One thing I am curious about is how many spare parts were produced - in small scale high precision manufacturing like this there's often multiples of components produced, with only the highest spec components shipped out. What could we cobble together with the rejects and leftovers? And what would that give us, results wise?
- nickff 4y agoThe other huge cost drivers are testing and calibration. Even if you have all the parts to make another one, you'll spend a lot on expensive labor to put it together, tune, calibrate, and verify it.
- jeffnappi 4y agoFor example check out this video from Smarter Every Day[1] Measuring the sun shield alone was a 5+ year long project. [1] https://youtu.be/Pu97IiO_yDI https://youtu.be/Pu97IiO_yDI
- samstave 4y agothat vid needs its own post
- grogenaut 4y agoMy understanding from that was they were measuring it to make and test a computer model to simulate the shield in 0 g, not to get exact measurements to "it to the right size". Now its in space, they know how it performs and how accurate the model is. I definitely could be wrong.
- samstave 4y agoyes that was the point. now we have that datum to extrapolate for future
- 4y ago
- somat 4y agoI think the ship has sailed on that one, the time to make(and test) a second one would have been at the same time the first was being manufactured.
- bryanrasmussen 4y agoFirst rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et4sMJP9FmM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et4sMJP9FmM
- chess_buster 4y agoThis burned into my brain when I was a teenager.
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- somat 4y agoHonestly this is probably true sigh. the temptation is to say most of the cost of manufacturing an item is in r & d, setup, confirmation testing, etc these are mostly one time costs, the actual price of manufacturing the item is fairly trivial in comparison, this is what makes economy of scale work. So one james web space telescope costs 10 billion and take 20 years to build. However two space telescopes cost 10 billion 100 million and take the same twenty years to build. three would be 10B 200M + 20Y etc. But this would of only worked if you built the second one at the same time you had the setup and test facilitys prepared for building the first one, I will be generous and assume the r & d is not so space and time critical. Personally I think the main argument for making a second is that you are putting this thing in a location where it cannot be serviced. The parable of having all your eggs in one basket comes to mind.
- dhosek 4y agoWhy build just one when for twice the price you could have two?
- BeefWellington 4y agoThis reminds me of that time NASA was just gifted two unused hubble-sized telescopes by the NRO[1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nasa-gets-military-spy-telescopes-for-astronomy/2012/06/04/gJQAsT6UDV_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nasa-...
- mulmen 4y agoMakes sense. Hubble is believed to be an adapted KH-11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN
- SiempreViernes 4y agoThey have different focal lengths, so even if the glass was originally for a KH-11 it couldn't have been used in Hubble "as is", which makes it nothing more than a rough polished mirror blank.
- mulmen 4y agoWhy would it need to be used in Hubble? We don't even know if these satellites are KH-11s. They might be some other design that is capable of fulfilling a NASA mission. The point is that Hubble is suspected to be based on a spy satellite so there is potential technology transfer. Maybe these are just useful as parts.
- Hallucinaut 4y agoHa I just made a similar comment. A fellow Contact fan I see!
- dhosek 4y ago
- causi 4y agoLaunching another one wouldn't let Bell and Northrop extract a 2,000% budget overrun so it's not gonna happen.
- _joel 4y agoI'd be keener to see some of the larger diameter rockets coming online soon be used as a housing. 9m to play with there and perhaps with NASA's amazing origami skills then that could really open the door to some huge space telescopes.
- moffkalast 4y agoYeah I think they'll be building LUVOIR with the tooling and software designed for the Webb, but much larger so it fits into Starship/SLS and for a wider range of wavelengths.
- BurningFrog 4y agoScientifically: probably Politically: no
- divbzero 4y agoThere aren’t plans to launch an identical telescope. Perhaps the costs of manufacturing and testing are high enough that we might as well launch a different telescope with different capabilities? The Roman Space Telescope is a wide field instrument that is now under development and slated to launch in 2026 [1]. The Astro2020 decadal survey from the National Academies also recommended “a large (~6m diameter) Infrared/Optical/Ultraviolet space telescope” to observe exoplanets [2]. [1]: https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-falcon-heavy-to-launch-roman-space-telescope/ https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-falcon-heavy-to-launch-ro... [2]: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/26141/interactive/ https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/26141/interactive...
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- ajuc 4y agoWait for starship, make a new bigger one that doesn't have to fold like crazy fragile origami, manufacture and send 10 of them for the price of making and sending this one.
- bmitc 4y agoThere's no way the cost would be minimal. I would even wager that it would be just as or more expensive to build a duplicate than to build a new design based upon what was learned. Given the decades over which the James Webb Telescope was developed, it has parts and designs in it that are, well, decades old. And the bill of materials is unlikely to have been the primary cost factor. Extensive research, development, and testing was performed.
- peter303 4y agoLUVOIR is a foldable mirror telescope, larger than JWST, UV to near IR, like Hubble. Congress has a bad test in mouth from JWST delays and overruns. Pehaps dozens of majornew discoveries will help. Roman is next in queue with many of its parts already built and operational around 2028.