Just use glass mirrors that can roll up into a tube
So what do you guys think of the James Webb Space Telescope? Any chance we might make a huge discovery with it...
Nolan Brooks
Ethan Price
Glass is a poor choice at low temperatures.
Isaiah Davis
If they can roll up, they are too easily deformable and won't make as sharp or stable of an image.
Elijah Taylor
>the James Webb is late and over budget
>implying that its per-year budget wasn't slashed in the 08 crisis
>implying that that didn't force push the expected launch date from 2011 to 2017 (now 2019)
>implying that the extra delay from 2017 to 2019 wasn't because when Obama took over his new NASA administrator (Charlie Bolden) decided to mandate two new instruments to be added, with no extra budget to support them
>implying that 8 extra years on the ground doesn't mean 8 more years of costs for:
>>storing the parts
>>testing, inspecting, and maintaining the parts
>>paying the salaries of people who are involved with the telescope
>>paying people to stick around as "consultants" even after their job is done in case something goes wrong with a part they worked on
>implying that the scientists involved didn't warn Congress of all of this as they cut the per-year budget
>implying that all of these extra expenses don't overwhelmingly go to private contractors that lobbied for the extensions
>implying that this isn't the only example of a NASA mission going over budget since the 90s
>implying that James Webb isn't turning over in his grave because the administration he built into an efficient powerhouse that brought us to the moon is getting strangled by bureaucracy, trickle-down corruption, and cronyism, all under his name
>invoking the name of Satan (Elon Musk) as a solution
>implying that using private contractors is ever a good idea for space exploration
Kevin Morales
NASA employees are government employees that will just sit on their asses all day
Having private contractors bid for contracts introduces competition that keeps down prices
Are you a fukkin commie or something?
Isaac Johnson
>implying that the extra delay from 2017 to 2019 wasn't because when Obama took over his new NASA administrator (Charlie Bolden) decided to mandate two new instruments to be added, with no extra budget to support them
That's completely untrue. JWST has always had 4 instruments. The only change was the Candian TFI changing to NIRISS due to technical problems with the tunable filter etalon. Source:
www.jwst.nasa.gov/resources/JWST_SSR_JPG.pdf
A paper from 2006 showing all 4 instruments.
Thomas Powell
NASA employees tend not to be NASA employees for the government paycheck and benefits
They tend to be there because they love space and are passionate about it
They're not just underqualified normies sucking off the system, these are qualified scientists and engineers working their dream job
Competition and the free market only work in the limit of many suppliers and many demanders
If you have a single customer and 2-4 suppliers, the free market breaks down
Especially when the single customer is the government / Congress, which doesn't care about quality or price or getting a good deal, they just want it to be flashy and look good so they can campaign on it and get reelected, or the bribes/kickbacks they've gotten in return
Would you rather have space exploration be guided by scientists and engineers who are passionate and want to find/build/discover cool shit?
Or would you rather it be guided by CEOs, shareholders, boardmembers, and the congressmen they've bribed?
IMO the public and private sectors should never be mixed. Capitalism and Government tangle each other up and everyone is worse off in the end.
Daniel Perez
>It is currently built, tho. They finished testing it in a big vacuum chamber recently.
That's just the instrument. The telescope needs to be integrated with the spacecraft bus, which features guidance, control, and the sun shield that keeps the optics cool.
Adam Jones
These are detectors.
Yes there are and always have been four detectors.
Yes, detectors are usually called instruments, so I probably misspoke
It would perhaps be more accurate to say that there were two new "features" added
One was a coronagraph added to the optics assembly.
the other was an improvement to the cryosystem
both of these, tbf, improved the final telescope
Christopher Thomas
Those are instruments, that is the term in astronomy.
jwst.stsci.edu
Detectors are parts of the the focal planes. The instrument is the whole package.
>One was a coronagraph added to the optics assembly.
The NIRCam coronograph predates Obama.
trs.jpl.nasa.gov
>the other was an improvement to the cryosystem
And the change in the MIRI cooling also predates Obama.
ircamera.as.arizona.edu/MIRI/miricooler.pdf