So what do you guys think of the James Webb Space Telescope? Any chance we might make a huge discovery with it? I've been watching some vids on it and i'm very impressed at it's capability.
It will be able use IR light to see behind dust clouds, thus enabling us to see further back into space. It will also be able to measure the atmospheres of some exoplanets.
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It'd be neat if we could use it to spot habitable exoplanets.
Though I doubt we'll ever leave this rock.
An impressive tool --- if they ever get it built and launched.
Project has been very poorly managed; 'way behind schedule and 'way over budget.
it would be a major fuckup if those sunshields don't unfold right
I'd lol if it became Ariane 5s second failure
i visited where it was being built. looks cool as fuck. giant clean room. i hope it works
Neat capabilities, but it's a severe misallocation of resources. The $10 billion budget is comparable to the projected development cost of SpaceX's BFR, a fully-reusable superheavy rocket intended to lower launch cost by orders of magnitude, with a payload bay big enough to launch the same size mirror in one piece.
Even with the prospect of cheap launch on F9/H, what they're doing makes no sense. Launch 2 telescopes with single-piece 5-meter mirrors and point them at the same thing. Launch them into Earth orbit with consumable coolant, just launch more when they run out.
The whole thing is dumb because they've got this overcomplicated design like they only get one try, so they should lavish effort on it no matter how many more telescopes they could afford if they made it simpler.
In short, it's SLS-tier waste. We should be planning to launch lots of space telescopes as launch costs drop, and iterating the design based on experience, not spending $10 billion on some one-try flagship.
It is currently built, tho. They finished testing it in a big vacuum chamber recently.
Ground-based telescope on the moon, when?
Yup, and it's spending a week in the vibration chamber now. Making sure the whole assembly will survive launch without any issues, and it'll still be able to unfold properly when all is said and done.
Solar wind kicks up enough lunar regolith we'd need a team of humans there to clean it constantly so it doesn't jam up.
But would be great for science!
more like why you would build a lunar ground based telescope instead of putting it in a L point
Ground-based telescopes are good because they are easily upgradable and modifiable. Want to test a new instrument? Just slap it onto the end. Space-based telescopes must be self-contained and automated. Much harder to upgrade/update or modify for specific observations. Space-based telescopes don't have to worry about weather or distortion from the atmosphere. A lunar ground-based telescope would be the best of both worlds, but it would need a dedicated team of engineers to keep it running in the harsh environment of the lunar surface.
Space dust ain't no joke.
>A lunar ground-based telescope would be the best of both worlds
...if there were a few million people living on the moon, sure.
>Ground-based telescopes are good because they are easily upgradable and modifiable. Want to test a new instrument? Just slap it onto the end.
How the hell does that apply to the moon when everyone's living on Earth?
Obviously you wouldn't build a ground-based telescope there until you have a decent size science base established.
>if there were a few million people living on the moon, sure.
Yes, that was my point.
Ground-based anything on the moon when more like ::::: (((((
>huge discovery
>Wow! We thought first planets formed 12.8 billion years ago. We now know it was 12.9 bln.
Still hope it works.
You know nothing Jon Sno.
Keeping your craft at L point requires constant fuel usage.
>Webb will carry fuel for a 10-year lifetime (with margin)
And its too far out to ever go to fix it
>The $10 billion budget is comparable to the projected development cost of SpaceX's BFR, a fully-reusable superheavy rocket intended to lower launch cost by orders of magnitude, with a payload bay big enough to launch the same size mirror in one piece.
SpaceX hadn't launched anything when JWST (then NGST) was approved. Making payloads for powerpoint rockets is a bad idea when the design changes. Astronomy shouldn't wait a decade because a cheaper option might exist by then.
>Even with the prospect of cheap launch on F9/H
Falcon Heavy has also never flown. You don't put a flagship mission on a rocket with no launch history. Secondly you don't build a massively expensive payload which can only fly on one launcher, if it becomes unavailable your mission is dead.
> Launch 2 telescopes with single-piece 5-meter mirrors and point them at the same thing.
You don't get the resolution. You can't just do interferometry in a computer. Secondly a 5 meter mirror is still too large to fit in any fairing that exists today, you can't have a mirror which fills the whole payload envelope.
>Launch them into Earth orbit with consumable coolant, just launch more when they run out.
Coolant will make the telescopes much heavier. Putting them in Earth orbit will mean they now have massive cryogenic baffle like Spitzer which must encompass the optics, which means you will never get 5 meters in todays rockets. It also means it's massively fucking heavy, which drives up the cost. What you describe is not cheaper. It will also massively reduce the sensitivity in the mid infrared, because the baffle will be warm and cause a thermal background.
What you suggest just isn't feasible as a replacement, it's dumb. It would be massively reduced in performance and likely still be hugely expensive. Look at WFIRST, a simple telescope by comparison to JWST and still a multi billion dollar mission.
>brainlets STILL think you need to colonize planets at all
Just use glass mirrors that can roll up into a tube
Glass is a poor choice at low temperatures.
If they can roll up, they are too easily deformable and won't make as sharp or stable of an image.
>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
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?
>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.
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.
>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.
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
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
>NASA employees tend not to be NASA employees for the government paycheck and benefits
>They tend to be there because they fucking love science
Bunch of useless tits, people more excited about being on the team than getting the job done.
Anyway, after five or ten years, that enthusiasm fades, and they're mostly concerned with the government paycheck and benefits. NASA's an organization of old boomers trying not to rock the boat before they start collecting their pensions. Everyone who had better prospects elsewhere has left. They're not an agency that hires who they need, they're one that does what they can with who they're stuck with.
As for the kids, they're mostly diversity hires. They're trying to balance out the old useless white guys by hiring young useless women and minorities instead of looking at who can do the job. Remember, we just came off of eight years of the Obama administration. They haven't hired anyone worth having in that time.
...oh, and by the way, most of the cool stuff you hear about "NASA" doing, with planetary science, is actually JPL (or a couple of other similar academic labs). JPL is *not* NASA. NASA just passes the funds along, and sometimes sends useless people to annoy and hinder the guys doing the real work. Similarly, ULA (that launches the rockets) isn't NASA either.