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James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

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Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you can use football fields as measurement unit, following that argument. Or bananas.

There's a reason things like football fields are commonly used as measurements in science communication: it actually helps the average person to get a sense of scale.

But it also makes it impossible to compare things. A lot of these articles switch from tennis court to football field to school bus to width of a hair. I would be ok if they wrote something like “100m long which is about the size of a football field”. But I really hate that they omit the numbers. I have no idea how many tennis courts fit into an football field and how that translates to school buses. And I bet most people don’t know either. But I know that 30 meters fits 3.3 times into 100 meters. This kind of writing manipulates people and keeps them dumb.

The same happens in politics. They often omit that when they write that something costs 100 billion that this is actually over 20 years. Another time they bring up a number that’s over 5 years 1 year. Whatever is more convenient for the story.

All this writing seems designed not to educate and inform but to keep people dumb and to appeal to the emotions the author wants to effect.

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

>>the imagined mission never happened

The X37s would like a word. Also, "Rods from God" has something to say

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37

https://endwar.fandom.com/wiki/Kinetic_Strike

---

Rods from god may be the source of "jewish space lasers" Fun stuff to speculate on.

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#63
Amazing how a few meters of mirror can make out objects billions of light-years distant. Yes it's big - insofar as human-built telescopes have been - yet is so relatively minuscule per what it observes. Having gone from first flight to JWST in such a short time is staggering (Wright Bros 120 years ago - I've been alive nearly half that time); how soon will we achieve orders-of-magnitude bigger telescopes? say, multiple 100x-wider JWSTs operating from multiple LaGrange points? Think big!

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#64
I think Destin of the Smarter Every Day YT channel had an interview a couple years ago with Dr. John Mather, the senior project scientist of the JWST, where he asked something like "will you be nervous during the launch and deployments", and Dr. Mather replied " I don't get anxious about stuff I can't deal with", and that they've tested everything they thought of to test.

I was super impressed with Dr. Mather, not only that he seemed so wise, but also that this super busy man took the time to do an hour long interview with a random You-Tuber. I think the JWST project is in good hands.

Edit: I guess Destin is not a 'random' You-tuber, but someone that was well-placed to connect with Dr. Mather. Still, he's not CNN or BBC - he's a guy with a handheld camera that doesn't ask fluff question, but questions intended to help inform himself and his audience. Still think Dr. Mather thinking it was important to spend so much of his schedule with Destin was impressive.

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#65

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.…

That animation seems right. Hubble space telescope is about the size and shape of a bus.

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-k...

https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/hubble-space-telescope-ho...

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The human is not to scale if that's the Webb telescope.

A human standing next to a full-size replica: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F... It looks the same to me.

Where is this replica located? Is it open to the public?

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#67

I think Destin of the Smarter Every Day YT channel had an interview a couple years ago with Dr. John Mather, the senior project scientist of the JWST, where he asked something like "will you be nervous during the launch and deployments", and Dr. Mather replied " I don't get anxious about stuff I can't deal with", and that they've tested everything they thought of to test. I was super impressed with Dr. Mather, not on…

Destin's channel is one of the older, best-known channels in the YT's educational sphere. Recently, the US Navy even let him on a multi-day tour of a nuclear submarine and tape classified information (later redacted). He himself worked in the military. I don't think that it's fair calling him a random youtuber, to me he seems like the perfect youtuber to interview such people (as Destin himself has a background in rocketry).

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#68

I think Destin of the Smarter Every Day YT channel had an interview a couple years ago with Dr. John Mather, the senior project scientist of the JWST, where he asked something like "will you be nervous during the launch and deployments", and Dr. Mather replied " I don't get anxious about stuff I can't deal with", and that they've tested everything they thought of to test. I was super impressed with Dr. Mather, not on…

Destin is far from a random YTer, he's a former Army Aerospace Engineer, worked with NASA if I'm remembering correctly, and has a VERY large audience. He would have been able to reach out to the right people and get the interview properly, not just random cold emailing like a real random YouTuber would.

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#69

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.…

May I please subscribe to the raw images of ANY space telescope... I mean * WE* /paid/ for them... I would like to access the data provided in real-time. Where can one get the raw images?

Once they're taking images, you'll have access to them.

Hubble's all went up (in raw as well as processed form) at https://hla.stsci.edu/, http://hst.esac.esa.int/ehst/, and several other places. Expect the same for JWST.

(Same for any other NASA mission. Here's the Curiosity rover: https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw-images/)

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A human standing next to a full-size replica: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F... It looks the same to me.

Where is this replica located? Is it open to the public?

I don't know where it is currently, but according to this 2008 article it was on a world tour at that time.

https://phys.org/news/2008-07-james-webb-space-telescope-ful...

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