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I hesitated posting this because my very moderate east coast American perspective seems to be appreciated less and less here. I posted this on a lazy Sunday mor

I hesitated posting this because my very moderate east coast American perspective seems to be appreciated less and less here. I posted this on a lazy Sunday morning and it got a lot of positive initial comments and discussion. Then a few hours later it turned negative. Science is great but launch vehicle innovation is where the problem is so that’s why I focused on SLS. We could easily have 100 JWSTs today if something like starship were operational. NASA dragging its feet for decades, building silly things likes SLS, trying to find token uses to justify it, doesn’t inspire me anymore.

cma 1y ago
Can you expand on what you mean by token uses? Wasn't Saturn V used for golf on the moon?
- BobbyJo 1y ago
  Putting the first people on the moon, the first people on any foreign celestial body, as a show of power during the cold war isn't what I'd consider "token". Putting people on the moon today is a lot less substantive, and doing it with decades old technology makes it even less so. I see the correlation you're trying to draw: "neither is of any practical use", but I think even that ignores the very deliberate effects the first space race had on the USSR.
- eagerpace 1y ago
  I’m speaking of SLS. It’s a solution in search of a problem.
  - spauldo 1y ago
    SLS is a solution for the problem of the US needing a large launch vehicle. That's not the issue. The issue is that it's taken way more time and money than anticipated and hasn't shown good results. Budget and schedule overruns are expected with any large project - it's just the nature of contracting. But there are limits, and SLS blew past them quite a while ago. I'm not sure how much of it is NASA's fault given how much congressional meddling has gone on, though.
    - eagerpace 1y ago
      That’s fair, it’s gone on so long that the problem it was solving for has evolved. Someone has to be strong enough to know when to cut the sunk cost and shift gears and that’s how I’m choosing to look at the current situation.
  - waz0wski 1y ago
    It's worse than that - SLS siply can't do what it was supposed to on paper even after 10's of billions, resulting in the secondary boondoggle of the Lunar Gateway which will waste billions more and still fail to achieve lunar-relevant
mulmen 1y ago
NASA didn't want SLS and was very vocal about that. Congress earmarks funding for pet projects which is the only reason we have SLS. I'm not sure how you can say NASA is "dragging their feet" while also claiming to care about space. NASA's list of accomplishments is long and there isn't a gap.
potato3732842 1y ago
>Then a few hours later it turned negative. Happens all the time. Europe vs us east vs us west.
nytesky 1y ago
I’m afraid I don’t understand how Starship could help proliferate JWST. It was launched with Ariana 5 which is a mature launch system. The bottleneck is actual manufacturing of JWST - the folding mirror was especially fraught; I think the sunshield as well.
- eagerpace 1y ago
  So many ways. The current paradigm is that it gets one chance and it has to be perfect. Starship (which I'm only referencing as the bleeding-edge launch vehicle) compared to Ariane 5 could be a fraction of half the cost, with double the volume and 4x the mass. With those constraints removed the science missions had a lot more flexibility in their design.
  - nytesky 1y ago
    JWST cost $10B. The launch was expensive at $1.5B; but getting that down to $750M won’t really change the availability.
    - eagerpace 1y ago
      I'm a firm believer that if the mass and volume constraints were relaxed the design of such an instrument could be greatly simplified.
      - nytesky 1y ago
        Hmm, I didn’t consider that, very good point. With 10x the volume, maybe the mirror and sunshine origami could have been avoided or much simpler. I wonder how to figure out how much the cost was because of that complicated mechanics…
    - bradyd 1y ago
      The Europa Clipper mission saved $3B+ just by switching from SLS to Falcon Heavy.

cma 1y ago

Can you expand on what you mean by token uses? Wasn't Saturn V used for golf on the moon?

BobbyJo 1y ago
Putting the first people on the moon, the first people on any foreign celestial body, as a show of power during the cold war isn't what I'd consider "token". Putting people on the moon today is a lot less substantive, and doing it with decades old technology makes it even less so. I see the correlation you're trying to draw: "neither is of any practical use", but I think even that ignores the very deliberate effects the first space race had on the USSR.
eagerpace 1y ago
I’m speaking of SLS. It’s a solution in search of a problem.
- spauldo 1y ago
  SLS is a solution for the problem of the US needing a large launch vehicle. That's not the issue. The issue is that it's taken way more time and money than anticipated and hasn't shown good results. Budget and schedule overruns are expected with any large project - it's just the nature of contracting. But there are limits, and SLS blew past them quite a while ago. I'm not sure how much of it is NASA's fault given how much congressional meddling has gone on, though.
  - eagerpace 1y ago
    That’s fair, it’s gone on so long that the problem it was solving for has evolved. Someone has to be strong enough to know when to cut the sunk cost and shift gears and that’s how I’m choosing to look at the current situation.
- waz0wski 1y ago
  It's worse than that - SLS siply can't do what it was supposed to on paper even after 10's of billions, resulting in the secondary boondoggle of the Lunar Gateway which will waste billions more and still fail to achieve lunar-relevant

mulmen 1y ago

NASA didn't want SLS and was very vocal about that. Congress earmarks funding for pet projects which is the only reason we have SLS. I'm not sure how you can say NASA is "dragging their feet" while also claiming to care about space. NASA's list of accomplishments is long and there isn't a gap.

potato3732842 1y ago

>Then a few hours later it turned negative. Happens all the time. Europe vs us east vs us west.

nytesky 1y ago

I’m afraid I don’t understand how Starship could help proliferate JWST. It was launched with Ariana 5 which is a mature launch system. The bottleneck is actual manufacturing of JWST - the folding mirror was especially fraught; I think the sunshield as well.

eagerpace 1y ago
So many ways. The current paradigm is that it gets one chance and it has to be perfect. Starship (which I'm only referencing as the bleeding-edge launch vehicle) compared to Ariane 5 could be a fraction of half the cost, with double the volume and 4x the mass. With those constraints removed the science missions had a lot more flexibility in their design.
- nytesky 1y ago
  JWST cost $10B. The launch was expensive at $1.5B; but getting that down to $750M won’t really change the availability.
  - eagerpace 1y ago
    I'm a firm believer that if the mass and volume constraints were relaxed the design of such an instrument could be greatly simplified.
    - nytesky 1y ago
      Hmm, I didn’t consider that, very good point. With 10x the volume, maybe the mirror and sunshine origami could have been avoided or much simpler. I wonder how to figure out how much the cost was because of that complicated mechanics…
  - bradyd 1y ago
    The Europa Clipper mission saved $3B+ just by switching from SLS to Falcon Heavy.