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JWST would still have been an extremely novel and therefore expensive on Spaceship. We just don't build anything that uses that kind of sun shield or those sens
by Retric 3y ago
JWST would still have been an extremely novel and therefore expensive on Spaceship. We just don't build anything that uses that kind of sun shield or those sensors etc and everything needs to work on one shot, thus serious engineering effort.
- Teever 3y agoWith Starship flights it should be the right combination of cheap enough, frequent enough, and big enough to enable whole new paradigms of construction in space. We'll be able to design modular space telescopes that benefit from economies of scale, so that we'll be shipping up the sun shield in separate pieces anyways so if any particular one is lost that's okay we'll have an assembly line to produce more.
- Retric 3y agoLaunching several doesn't solve the issue of needing a design and construction that actually works. For something nobody has ever built before and we can't really test in zero g without launching etc. Unfolding the heat shield was a relatively minor design issue compared to say the instruments, we just had less ability to actually test it on the ground.