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The James Webb Space Telescope has passed the final mission analysis review

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Re: The James Webb Space Telescope has passed the final mission analysis review

#41

Post by lapetitejort »

marcusverus wrote: post #36
OrvalWintermute wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even 5B for a novel, and uniquely powerful observation platform would be a bargain! When you are engineering a unit of 1 pushing the boundaries of science, with multiple conflicting constraints, funded by a variety of self-interested stakeholders, and are forced to do commercial production, rather than govt production, even when it is most cost effective, it isn't like you are heading towards lowest cost, technically…

It's easy to throw these big numbers around, but do you ever stop to consider the actual cost? Let's do some back-of-the envelope calculations to help us consider the human cost of a 5B telescope. The Median US household income is ~68,000/year[0] The Average income tax paid by someone in the 50-75K income range is $4,600/year.[1] The average working career is probably around 40 years. 5,000,000,000 / 4,600 / 40 = 27,…

Using the same numbers, 3,824,456 people worked their entire lives to fund the USA's military for 2021.

https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/26...

Re: The James Webb Space Telescope has passed the final mission analysis review

#42

Post by callesgg »

sonograph wrote: post #33

I remember getting excited about this telescope a decade ago. I haven't heard of it since; but I thought it's budget was cut and it was over. I'm excited NASA is finally going to get it up in space!

I bet it will fail to deploy properly. But I hope not.

Re: The James Webb Space Telescope has passed the final mission analysis review

#43

Post by bpodgursky »

baggy_trough wrote: post #2

Going to be amazing if this thing can actually unfurl, but I'm scared.

I almost want the unfurling to get stuck, just b/c SpaceX launching a manned Starship out to a LaGrange point to hotfix it would be super cool.

Re: The James Webb Space Telescope has passed the final mission analysis review

#44

Post by elihu »

slownews45 wrote: post #28
Jabbles wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a nice table with the history of the budget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Cos...

Clicking through we get this "JWST is now estimated to cost approximately $9.7 billion and launch in October 2021, which represents cost growth of 95 percent and 88 months of schedule delays since the project’s cost and schedule baselines were first established in 2009." So around $10B. Amazing.

I wonder what the marginal cost would be to build a second one?

Re: The James Webb Space Telescope has passed the final mission analysis review

#46

Post by cnlevy »

detritus wrote: post #18
baggy_trough wrote: post #2

Going to be amazing if this thing can actually unfurl, but I'm scared.

I don't know why, but I've had this gut-wrenching feeling for a couple of years now that Something Terrible is going to happen to this before it gets into position at L2. I really hope not, obviously, but this seems like an All Your Eggs In One Basket lesson in the making. We need to commodify this tech, make them somewhat disposable, and sent oodles of them up on Starships.

Using 3 COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) components with 90% reliability can ensure 99.9% redundancy instead of having a Unique very reliable and even costlier 99.9% custom component can really lower costs. But it can happen only if mass is not a constraint.

From Casey Handmer's blog: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/03/04/sls-what-now/

The Perseverance Mars rover cost $2.4 billion, which works out to a few thousand salaries for just under a decade. Thousands of people are needed to build this rover because landing stuff on Mars is so hard that subsystem masses must be tracked to a tenth of a gram, on a system that weighs a tonne. The whole thing is meticulously handcrafted from custom silicon, PCBs, titanium tubes, motors, cameras, and other awe-inspiring instruments. Starship will be able to land 100 of them per flight. Now what? How can NASA feed a team that makes one feather light rover per decade for a billion dollars if the demand just jumped by a factor of a thousand and the unit cost fell by the same amount? Set up a production line? Work out how to make them with a team of ten? Build one every two weeks?

Re: The James Webb Space Telescope has passed the final mission analysis review

#47

Post by ProAm »

slownews45 wrote: post #4

Does anyone remember the initial proposals for this. The cost was supposed to be $500M. At most something like $1B. Given this is standard govt contracting - I'm sure it's come out much higher.

Wait until you see what they claimed the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were supposed to cost....

Re: The James Webb Space Telescope has passed the final mission analysis review

#49

Post by RaiausderDose »

fnord77 wrote: post #25

what's the biggest risk? rocket failure during takeoff or telescope malfunction?

Ariane 5 rockets have accumulated 109 launches since 1996, 104 of which were successful, yielding a 95.4% success rate. Between April 2003 and December 2017, Ariane 5 flew 82 consecutive missions without failure, but the rocket suffered a partial failure in January 2018

from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5

Re: The James Webb Space Telescope has passed the final mission analysis review

#50

Post by pkaye »

sonograph wrote: post #33

I remember getting excited about this telescope a decade ago. I haven't heard of it since; but I thought it's budget was cut and it was over. I'm excited NASA is finally going to get it up in space!

Actually the budget was overrun quite a bit. I think it will cost $10B at this point.
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