41–50 of 350 posts
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Then you can use football fields as measurement unit, following that argument. Or bananas.
'Football fields' seem particularly vague as there are half a dozen different sports called football, and each of these have different sized fields.
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That is an interesting observation I never considered. If it were a SpaceX rocket, it would have been mentioned once per paragraph, minimum.
If it was a SpaceX rocket, it would be getting ready to fly again. Expendable rockets have been putting up payloads for 60 years at this point, SpaceX has been flying reusable rockets for less than a decade.
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The space shuttle blows my mind every time I see one. It's huge - the size of an airliner - and would glide back at Mach 25. It's a humbling level of accomplishment.
To show the comparison (737 for example here) https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/shuttle-948x1500.jpg?v...
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-01...
Also, the comparison with the Statue of Liberty is also misleading. The Statue of Liberty is on a huge pedestal that makes it stand much, much higher; the orbiter and boosters wouldn't reach the top of the SoL.
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The space shuttle blows my mind every time I see one. It's huge - the size of an airliner - and would glide back at Mach 25. It's a humbling level of accomplishment.
original plan was smaller, but military had a mission in mind that required it be bigger, so they went bigger to get military buy in. And of course the imagined mission never happened. I wonder how much money would have been saved!
I'm a little embarrassed to say this and I don't know exactly what I pictured in my head, but I had no idea these telescopes were so big[1]. I guess I never saw one pictured next to a human. I've only seen pictures of satellites being worked on so I expected something more human sized? It seems so stupid now, especially since earth telescopes are huge. [1] https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a013500/a013522/JWST_v.…
The human is not to scale if that's the Webb telescope.
It looks the same to me.
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To show the comparison (737 for example here) https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/shuttle-948x1500.jpg?v...
Those size comparisons are super misleading. I've seen the shuttle and it's not that big. A 737 is pretty small. The shuttle can ride piggy-back on a 747--in fact it was designed to: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-01... Also, the comparison with the Statue of Liberty is also misleading. The Statue of Liberty is on a huge pedestal that makes it stand much, much higher; the orbiter and booste…
Not sure what size you'd expect the shuttles to be, but being in the same ballpark as the statue of liberty (without pedestal) seems a great deal larger than my expectations.
I'm a little embarrassed to say this and I don't know exactly what I pictured in my head, but I had no idea these telescopes were so big[1]. I guess I never saw one pictured next to a human. I've only seen pictures of satellites being worked on so I expected something more human sized? It seems so stupid now, especially since earth telescopes are huge. [1] https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a013500/a013522/JWST_v.…
It's funny how the excellent job of the French Ariane launcher is nowhere to be seen in this (and others) article.
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If launch costs are 1% or less per mass of the Ariane 5, mass budgets could be greatly increased, and engineering could become easier. I see no reason ultimately why space telescopes should be much different in cost than terrestrial telescopes. Ultimately I see telescopes being maintained and upgraded in space much as terrestrial telescopes are.
The Webb telescope didn't go several times over budget from growing several times heavier. Novel telescope are expensive because they must address unique engineering challenges with unforeseen costs. You can't just grab a sunshade off the shelf – everything's built bespoke. Of course, the flip side here is that it would be cheaper to build a second Webb telescope. Maybe we could mass produce a hundred more for a tent…
