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Google says that James Webb telescope cost a total of $10bn. That's not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. Private citizens could afford to put simil
by onion2k 4mo ago
Google says that James Webb telescope cost a total of $10bn. That's not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. Private citizens could afford to put similar things into space if they chose to. We don't need them to be cheaper.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> James Webb telescope cost a total of $10bn I’d love to see an estimate of what a JWST-class telescope would cost to design, build and launch in a world maintaining a million-satellite fleet. My guess is less than $2bn.
- HPsquared 4mo agoA big part of the complexity of JWST was the way everything had to fold and fit into a small launch vehicle. With larger vehicles (e.g. Starship) the JWST mirror could have been built in one piece, which is much simpler. The whole thing was engineered to the max to fit within tight constraints, which is very expensive.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> With larger vehicles (e.g. Starship) the JWST mirror could have been built in one piece, which is much simpler Not just the complexity of design, but also cost and complexity of cryo-vacuum testing hundreds of deployment mechanisms any one of whose failure critcially endangers the project. The mirror could also be conventionally manufactured versus requiring gold-plated beryllium [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_Telescope_Element https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_Telescope_Element
- m4rtink 4mo agoNot to mention it would be much cheaper and quicker to launch if it could have any form of robotic or human servicing/tuning available. Designing it to not fail at the start & then work without any help for decades must have also made it much more expensive.