5 ms·

A complex unfolding mechanism makes things a lot more expensive, slower to develop and more likely to fail. If you could get an improvement over JWST delivered

A complex unfolding mechanism makes things a lot more expensive, slower to develop and more likely to fail. If you could get an improvement over JWST delivered in 5 years at a tenth the cost that's a good option to have. Starship would theoretically allow for huge telescopes (like the 15m LUVOIR-A) but not all projects have the sort of budget or expertise for that.

vlovich123 2y ago
Would building another identical JWST be meaningfully cheaper? All the R&D work would be done and we could update just the sensor package. I feel like we don’t do enough reuse in space programs and every project feels like a “from scratch” effort.
- indoordin0saur 2y ago
  I'm not an expert, but I'd imagine a lot of it was R&D work, but also much of it was precision manufacturing that made it expensive. I do like the idea of making a bunch of identical telescopes to drive down cost and allow for more astronomers to have time on the best telescopes. We wouldn't need to make another JWST though, because Starship could just fit an unfolded telescope of that size in its fairing. The LUVOIR-A telescope is sort of a scaled-up JWST, with the folded mirrors, but from what I understand it is different enough that there are many new engineering challenges.
- dylan604 2y ago
  Doubtful. In the time it took to develop, build, deploy JWST, most of the people that worked on it would probably no longer be around to build 2.0. So tribal knowledge would be lost.
- mandevil 2y ago
  So a couple of things are happening here: most important is that the budget for multiple launches and physical spacecraft to do the same mission just isn't there, hasn't been there since the 1970's. Viking and Voyager each got two bites at the apple, but since then NASA has decided that their reliability is good enough to get away with one actual launch. And so the easiest form of reuse is off the table. And then since every mission is different, you end up needing different things for components. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Observer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Observer is what happens when you try and reuse components without fully taking into account the differences in mission. This was an early 1990's NASA Mars mission which failed because they reused an engine from Earth orbiting satellites which would always fire the engine shortly after getting into space. Probably its fuel tank failed because it was expected to lie dormant for months of travel and then fire. So the environment that HST, JWST, the Parker Solar Probe, and Juno are expected to operate in are enormously different from each other and re-using a component and having it fail because it was designed for a different environment would be really bad. Oh, and building a new JWST now would be pretty expensive, because a lot of the cost is in testing and certifying that it will do what it's supposed to do, and all of the people who built and tested the JWST have moved on and changed jobs, so all of that workforce would have to be re-created, and that's where the money goes, to pay people. If you wanted to build 8 JWST's at once, the cost wouldn't be that much more than building one JWST, but building a single new one now would be expensive.
  - bumby 2y ago
    a lot of the cost is in testing and certifying This is a fact that is often overlooked in these types of forums. Quality control is an enormous expense for high reliability systems. A bolt doesn’t necessarily cost $1k because it took a lot of R&D to make it. It costs a lot because they have to maintain a chain of custody, certifications, inspections. They have to keep raw material coupons for testing. Sometimes all of them need to be shipped and/or warehoused in tightly controlled environments, with security and so on. Those quality administrative costs are what add up to $1k per bolt.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      You say that, but then I counter with Boeing. Their testing and certifying are definitely not very expensive since they self-certify. There's a large part of any government awarded contract's budget that goes into institutional largess or bureaucratic accounting practices that divert monies from intended purposes. With Boeing and the evidence showing their diversion from standard engineering into more MBA style management, I would not be surprised to learn that a small fraction of government awarded money went to actual engineering with the largest portion going to management. Are all government contractors as bad as Boeing? I hope not, but it wouldn't be shocking if they came close. But I'm guessing that $1k bolt wasn't strictly from design/testing costs as much as managerial costs being a large factor.
      - bumby 2y ago
        >Their testing and certifying are definitely not very expensive If you're referring to the 737-Max, that's a different animal because: 1) it's a different division than their aerospace and 2) it was taking advantage of a previously certified airframe. It doesn't mean they got rid of all the upstream quality requirements. Also, you might need to qualify what you mean by "not very expensive" because I don't think they would agree. If you're talking about Starliner, there is no "certification" process like what the FAA requires. And NASA was heavily involved in the testing, especially after the mishaps with the Demo flight. They (NASA) felt the need to levy on many more requirements after the fact because of the (real or perceived) increase in risk. >But I'm guessing that $1k bolt wasn't strictly from design/testing costs as much as managerial costs being a large factor. That's my point. A large part of the cost isn't R&D but administrative. The difference I think we're making is you're considering the "managerial" costs to go to some C-suite, but I'm saying there are lots of quality requirements that would also go into the bucket of "adminstrative" or "managerial" costs. Look at what it costs to ship a flight article: you have to have a quality engineer inspect it and a photographer document it. There's all kinds of tracking documentation. You have to have special packing and labeling. Of course, the shipping itself is more expensive; it may have to have be shipped in a certified/refrigerated/climate-controlled truck and have accelerometers attached to the package to measure g-forces in transit. Then once it's received, you have to have a quality engineer open it, a photographer document it, more tracking paperwork, and a climate controlled, secured warehouse. All that paperwork has to be managed for the duration of the mission (and beyond). And this isn't just for the big items like a assembled satellite; this is often the case for the small parts too. You can get rid of all those requirements and just drop it to the UPS guy, but then you might risk being back in the same place after a mishap, like SpaceX.
dylan604 2y ago
But it shouldn't. Like we know we have a limitation on the size of things at launch, so why not have a tried and true method of unfolding things in space? Pretty much every thing launched into space that requires solar panels does this. JWST did it for the primary mirror. Unfolding should be something that is just part of what we do when going to space. Unfurling heat shields like JWST is not something that we would need for the vast majority of things.

vlovich123 2y ago

Would building another identical JWST be meaningfully cheaper? All the R&D work would be done and we could update just the sensor package. I feel like we don’t do enough reuse in space programs and every project feels like a “from scratch” effort.

indoordin0saur 2y ago
I'm not an expert, but I'd imagine a lot of it was R&D work, but also much of it was precision manufacturing that made it expensive. I do like the idea of making a bunch of identical telescopes to drive down cost and allow for more astronomers to have time on the best telescopes. We wouldn't need to make another JWST though, because Starship could just fit an unfolded telescope of that size in its fairing. The LUVOIR-A telescope is sort of a scaled-up JWST, with the folded mirrors, but from what I understand it is different enough that there are many new engineering challenges.
dylan604 2y ago
Doubtful. In the time it took to develop, build, deploy JWST, most of the people that worked on it would probably no longer be around to build 2.0. So tribal knowledge would be lost.
mandevil 2y ago
So a couple of things are happening here: most important is that the budget for multiple launches and physical spacecraft to do the same mission just isn't there, hasn't been there since the 1970's. Viking and Voyager each got two bites at the apple, but since then NASA has decided that their reliability is good enough to get away with one actual launch. And so the easiest form of reuse is off the table. And then since every mission is different, you end up needing different things for components. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Observer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Observer is what happens when you try and reuse components without fully taking into account the differences in mission. This was an early 1990's NASA Mars mission which failed because they reused an engine from Earth orbiting satellites which would always fire the engine shortly after getting into space. Probably its fuel tank failed because it was expected to lie dormant for months of travel and then fire. So the environment that HST, JWST, the Parker Solar Probe, and Juno are expected to operate in are enormously different from each other and re-using a component and having it fail because it was designed for a different environment would be really bad. Oh, and building a new JWST now would be pretty expensive, because a lot of the cost is in testing and certifying that it will do what it's supposed to do, and all of the people who built and tested the JWST have moved on and changed jobs, so all of that workforce would have to be re-created, and that's where the money goes, to pay people. If you wanted to build 8 JWST's at once, the cost wouldn't be that much more than building one JWST, but building a single new one now would be expensive.
- bumby 2y ago
  a lot of the cost is in testing and certifying This is a fact that is often overlooked in these types of forums. Quality control is an enormous expense for high reliability systems. A bolt doesn’t necessarily cost $1k because it took a lot of R&D to make it. It costs a lot because they have to maintain a chain of custody, certifications, inspections. They have to keep raw material coupons for testing. Sometimes all of them need to be shipped and/or warehoused in tightly controlled environments, with security and so on. Those quality administrative costs are what add up to $1k per bolt.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    You say that, but then I counter with Boeing. Their testing and certifying are definitely not very expensive since they self-certify. There's a large part of any government awarded contract's budget that goes into institutional largess or bureaucratic accounting practices that divert monies from intended purposes. With Boeing and the evidence showing their diversion from standard engineering into more MBA style management, I would not be surprised to learn that a small fraction of government awarded money went to actual engineering with the largest portion going to management. Are all government contractors as bad as Boeing? I hope not, but it wouldn't be shocking if they came close. But I'm guessing that $1k bolt wasn't strictly from design/testing costs as much as managerial costs being a large factor.
    - bumby 2y ago
      >Their testing and certifying are definitely not very expensive If you're referring to the 737-Max, that's a different animal because: 1) it's a different division than their aerospace and 2) it was taking advantage of a previously certified airframe. It doesn't mean they got rid of all the upstream quality requirements. Also, you might need to qualify what you mean by "not very expensive" because I don't think they would agree. If you're talking about Starliner, there is no "certification" process like what the FAA requires. And NASA was heavily involved in the testing, especially after the mishaps with the Demo flight. They (NASA) felt the need to levy on many more requirements after the fact because of the (real or perceived) increase in risk. >But I'm guessing that $1k bolt wasn't strictly from design/testing costs as much as managerial costs being a large factor. That's my point. A large part of the cost isn't R&D but administrative. The difference I think we're making is you're considering the "managerial" costs to go to some C-suite, but I'm saying there are lots of quality requirements that would also go into the bucket of "adminstrative" or "managerial" costs. Look at what it costs to ship a flight article: you have to have a quality engineer inspect it and a photographer document it. There's all kinds of tracking documentation. You have to have special packing and labeling. Of course, the shipping itself is more expensive; it may have to have be shipped in a certified/refrigerated/climate-controlled truck and have accelerometers attached to the package to measure g-forces in transit. Then once it's received, you have to have a quality engineer open it, a photographer document it, more tracking paperwork, and a climate controlled, secured warehouse. All that paperwork has to be managed for the duration of the mission (and beyond). And this isn't just for the big items like a assembled satellite; this is often the case for the small parts too. You can get rid of all those requirements and just drop it to the UPS guy, but then you might risk being back in the same place after a mishap, like SpaceX.

dylan604 2y ago

But it shouldn't. Like we know we have a limitation on the size of things at launch, so why not have a tried and true method of unfolding things in space? Pretty much every thing launched into space that requires solar panels does this. JWST did it for the primary mirror. Unfolding should be something that is just part of what we do when going to space. Unfurling heat shields like JWST is not something that we would need for the vast majority of things.