Its so hard to explain to people not in the know just how miraculous JWST is. the fact that it wasnt canceled after blowing budgets and deadlines, after massive

Its so hard to explain to people not in the know just how miraculous JWST is. the fact that it wasnt canceled after blowing budgets and deadlines, after massive setbacks from accidents, and that the extremely complicated launch and deployment went off without a hitch. Hell even the functional resolution of the scope ended up higher than predicted. A project that started in 1996! I remember reading about it in some science magazine when i was 7 years old, and saw its first image when i was 27. I will forever remember the interviews with the team in the weeks up to launch. Some high level direct i cant remember the name of made it clear that this is the last time he expects we will have a project formatted like this because it was the pinnacle of complexity. Alternatively, future projects will be multiple simple deployments of parts into space where they are remotely and semi-autonomously assembled. So nail biters on the scale of JWST launch day are probably only going to be seen again with manned exploration missions, and even then, the amount of complexity and factors that can go wrong should be significantly reduced.