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After JWST ran thousands of percent over budget and decades behind schedule I'm tempted to suspect any new telescope project of being a grift. If they get Congr
by causality0 4y ago
After JWST ran thousands of percent over budget and decades behind schedule I'm tempted to suspect any new telescope project of being a grift. If they get Congressional approval for a fifteen billion dollar lunar telescope it's going to end up costing fifty billion and somehow that won't result in anybody going to prison.
- dylan604 4y agoJWST was being built with the knowledge that there would be no way we could ever get to it to make repairs. A telescope on the moon would be something we could send the Maytag repair guy to make a house call. The risk is much smaller
- midoridensha 4y agoExactly: once we have a Moon base, it won't be hard to send technicians to the dark side to repair the radio telescope there. They'll be sending people to the dark side anyway to deal with the nuclear waste dump there. Unfortunately, we'll lose both when an accident at the dump turns it into a giant rocket and propels the Moon out of the solar system.
- whatshisface 4y agoBy "maytag repair guy" do you mean a billion dollar manned lunar program? ;)
- XorNot 4y agoDepending on the outcome of a SpaceX launch later today/early tomorrow, that number could start shrinking considerably (the SLS works, but I don't think anyone at NASA is particularly happy about building it overall - initial designs definitely didn't want to be using solid fuel boosters, but here we are).