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Honestly if you are not excited about this, you should be. This is a massive milestone and could change the world for the better like very few things we’ll see

Honestly if you are not excited about this, you should be. This is a massive milestone and could change the world for the better like very few things we’ll see this century.

foreverobama 3y ago
[dead]
riffraff 3y ago
How would it change the world? I'm very excited about rockets that could take us to Mars but we already manage to send a ton of stuff in orbit. I'm not really buying the "daily rocket from SF to Hong Kong" idea and I don't have an obvious idea of how the world would be directly improved.
- Already__Taken 3y ago
  you could launch a jwst every month because it wouldn't have to be the most complicated folding contraption ever. A ton of stuff to orbit might be about to be thousands of tons. it's like why do we have terrabit subsea cables
  - imtringued 3y ago
    I don't know why you people have to make up these lies. I really don't know what drives you guys to stick your head into the sand this deep. You are fully aware that the launch cost of the JWST is an insignificant part of the mission budget. You are fully aware that there is no factory that mass produces telescopes like that and you are fully aware that there is no demand for launching the same telescope over and over again. What you might not be aware of is that the folding contraption that you deride so much is probably the simplest and most reliable part of the telescope. What is particularly perplexing is that people hate on the mission and worship the launch vehicle.
    - Valgrim 3y ago
      What would be needed to have a significantly better space telescope than the JWST? A monolithic mirror might be an good improvement, but we would still be limited by the size of the fairing. Even better than that would be to create and grind the mirror directly in space, but this would require orbital manufacturing abilities. And this means big infrastructures, so big launches. Or maybe we need to send a telescope a few hundred AU away from the sun tp make a solar gravitational telescope! Once again, big rocket required. JWST is a fine telescope, but the bottlenecks we face going forward require better launching capacity.
    - friend_and_foe 3y ago
      10 years ago we didn't have reusable rockets, or mass produced satellites, or single constellations more than double the number of all others combined. We are on the cusp of having reusable launch vehicles bigger than the space station. There is no factory that mass produces telescopes yet.
      - happytiger 3y ago
        Yet being the operative word. Plus if we have learned anything from startups consider that we will be able to afford to experiment when launch costs drop 99 percent or whatever…
    - Uzza 3y ago
      > You are fully aware that the launch cost of the JWST is an insignificant part of the mission budget. The reason for that is the folding contraption. And the sunscreen. And the very delicate instruments. And the requirement to be extremely lightweight. All those things combined is what led to the decades long development timeline, and the incredible cost. If you instead have 150 metric ton of payload capacity to orbit, you don't care that you could shave 100 grams of one component. Not even several metric tons of extra weight would be an issue, when you have so much spare capacity you could just add an extra 10-20 metric ton of fuel to compensate. Starship allows a paradigm shift in spacecraft design where weight is no longer your most important target. Nor your second or even third. Instead you can use off the shelf components that might be twice the weight, but 1/10th the cost. If JWST was designed today with Starship just around the corner, the final cost would have been a lot lower. Yes, the cost would probably still have been much higher than the launch cost, but it would probably have been a lot closer $1-2 billion than the $10 billion it costed in the end.
  - riffraff 3y ago
    ok, but you still didn't give me any direct idea of how the world would be directly improved. JWST is cool, as is starlink or whatever, but what do we plan to put in orbit that would "change the world for the better like very few things we’ll see this century" ? Nuclear fusion, better batteries, better PVs, cancer cures, tailor-made vaccines, phage therapy, quantum computing, genomics, robotics, AIs.. all seem to have a more likely direct impact as this century's innovations.
sevg 3y ago
I mean these launches are fun to watch, but this century we could see advances in AI and robotics that change the way we work or the way we see the world or lead to social and economic reforms, advances in quantum computing that change the way we have to do encryption or make certain computations possible that seemed impossible before, transportation innovations (hyperloop?), advances in the fight against climate change (renewable energy, carbon capture, battery technology, sustainable agriculture, international cooperation etc) such that our planet doesn't enter a death spiral, advances in healthcare (solutions for antibacterial resistance, new cancer treatments or preventions). The list goes on. Hard to see this launch being in quite the same category if I'm honest! But I'd be keen to hear your case.
- oceanplexian 3y ago
  Space colonization will be a turning point in a way that few other events in history can match. A few million years from now no one will know what social reforms we came up with any more than we know about the dinosaurs. But they will be looking at our footprints on the moon. Leaving our planet is equivalent to when life grew legs and crawled out of the oceans, or the invention of fire, perhaps the implications are even greater if we learn that the Fermi Paradox is real and we are one of the few to get around it.
  - Voultapher 3y ago
    As much as I'm a space nerd and avid sci-fi reader myself, I'm not that convinced. We have plenty of places on earth that are more hospitable and cheaper to get to compared to space, like the bottom of the ocean and mountain tops. Some of those places even have valuable metals to mine. And I don't see people rushing to live and work there. I'm not saying space colonization can't make sense, or that it won't happen. My gut feeling is, it will happen but not in the way we envision today, similar to the vision of flying cars. Where the technology is there to make it possible, but the economics make it impractical as of now. Also the whole biosphere destruction is not gonna put our focus elsewhere, except for those that want to flee into some expensive escape fantasy.
    - 3y ago

Honestly if you are not excited about this, you should be. This is a massive milestone and could change the world for the better like very few things we’ll see this century.

foreverobama 3y ago

[dead]

riffraff 3y ago

How would it change the world? I'm very excited about rockets that could take us to Mars but we already manage to send a ton of stuff in orbit. I'm not really buying the "daily rocket from SF to Hong Kong" idea and I don't have an obvious idea of how the world would be directly improved.

Already__Taken 3y ago
you could launch a jwst every month because it wouldn't have to be the most complicated folding contraption ever. A ton of stuff to orbit might be about to be thousands of tons. it's like why do we have terrabit subsea cables
- imtringued 3y ago
  I don't know why you people have to make up these lies. I really don't know what drives you guys to stick your head into the sand this deep. You are fully aware that the launch cost of the JWST is an insignificant part of the mission budget. You are fully aware that there is no factory that mass produces telescopes like that and you are fully aware that there is no demand for launching the same telescope over and over again. What you might not be aware of is that the folding contraption that you deride so much is probably the simplest and most reliable part of the telescope. What is particularly perplexing is that people hate on the mission and worship the launch vehicle.
  - Valgrim 3y ago
    What would be needed to have a significantly better space telescope than the JWST? A monolithic mirror might be an good improvement, but we would still be limited by the size of the fairing. Even better than that would be to create and grind the mirror directly in space, but this would require orbital manufacturing abilities. And this means big infrastructures, so big launches. Or maybe we need to send a telescope a few hundred AU away from the sun tp make a solar gravitational telescope! Once again, big rocket required. JWST is a fine telescope, but the bottlenecks we face going forward require better launching capacity.
  - friend_and_foe 3y ago
    10 years ago we didn't have reusable rockets, or mass produced satellites, or single constellations more than double the number of all others combined. We are on the cusp of having reusable launch vehicles bigger than the space station. There is no factory that mass produces telescopes yet.
    - happytiger 3y ago
      Yet being the operative word. Plus if we have learned anything from startups consider that we will be able to afford to experiment when launch costs drop 99 percent or whatever…
  - Uzza 3y ago
    > You are fully aware that the launch cost of the JWST is an insignificant part of the mission budget. The reason for that is the folding contraption. And the sunscreen. And the very delicate instruments. And the requirement to be extremely lightweight. All those things combined is what led to the decades long development timeline, and the incredible cost. If you instead have 150 metric ton of payload capacity to orbit, you don't care that you could shave 100 grams of one component. Not even several metric tons of extra weight would be an issue, when you have so much spare capacity you could just add an extra 10-20 metric ton of fuel to compensate. Starship allows a paradigm shift in spacecraft design where weight is no longer your most important target. Nor your second or even third. Instead you can use off the shelf components that might be twice the weight, but 1/10th the cost. If JWST was designed today with Starship just around the corner, the final cost would have been a lot lower. Yes, the cost would probably still have been much higher than the launch cost, but it would probably have been a lot closer $1-2 billion than the $10 billion it costed in the end.
- riffraff 3y ago
  ok, but you still didn't give me any direct idea of how the world would be directly improved. JWST is cool, as is starlink or whatever, but what do we plan to put in orbit that would "change the world for the better like very few things we’ll see this century" ? Nuclear fusion, better batteries, better PVs, cancer cures, tailor-made vaccines, phage therapy, quantum computing, genomics, robotics, AIs.. all seem to have a more likely direct impact as this century's innovations.

sevg 3y ago

I mean these launches are fun to watch, but this century we could see advances in AI and robotics that change the way we work or the way we see the world or lead to social and economic reforms, advances in quantum computing that change the way we have to do encryption or make certain computations possible that seemed impossible before, transportation innovations (hyperloop?), advances in the fight against climate change (renewable energy, carbon capture, battery technology, sustainable agriculture, international cooperation etc) such that our planet doesn't enter a death spiral, advances in healthcare (solutions for antibacterial resistance, new cancer treatments or preventions). The list goes on. Hard to see this launch being in quite the same category if I'm honest! But I'd be keen to hear your case.

oceanplexian 3y ago
Space colonization will be a turning point in a way that few other events in history can match. A few million years from now no one will know what social reforms we came up with any more than we know about the dinosaurs. But they will be looking at our footprints on the moon. Leaving our planet is equivalent to when life grew legs and crawled out of the oceans, or the invention of fire, perhaps the implications are even greater if we learn that the Fermi Paradox is real and we are one of the few to get around it.
- Voultapher 3y ago
  As much as I'm a space nerd and avid sci-fi reader myself, I'm not that convinced. We have plenty of places on earth that are more hospitable and cheaper to get to compared to space, like the bottom of the ocean and mountain tops. Some of those places even have valuable metals to mine. And I don't see people rushing to live and work there. I'm not saying space colonization can't make sense, or that it won't happen. My gut feeling is, it will happen but not in the way we envision today, similar to the vision of flying cars. Where the technology is there to make it possible, but the economics make it impractical as of now. Also the whole biosphere destruction is not gonna put our focus elsewhere, except for those that want to flee into some expensive escape fantasy.
  - 3y ago