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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

#71

Post by onceiwasthere »

Tenemo wrote: post #67
sillyquiet wrote: post #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 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 ro…

If I remember right, his dad was/is very involved in the JWST.

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

#72

Post by joshuahedlund »

LeonM wrote: post #25
pfdietz wrote: post #12

I'd be happier in a world where individual universities, or at least consortiums, could have their own space telescopes.

The JWT is famous for costing over 10b USD to develop. AFAIK it's the most expensive object ever to be launched into space. I don't think universities should (or could) spend that kind of money on research equipment.

Why can't universities launch space telescopes that don't cost as much as the most expensive one ever?

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

#73

Post by amelius »

gameswithgo wrote: post #32
inamberclad wrote: post #13

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!

Russians had the Buran, with more or less the same dimensions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)

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

#74

Post by Laremere »

Tenemo wrote: post #67
sillyquiet wrote: post #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 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 ro…

Destin has also peaked (or very close to it) in importance of person interviewed, as he interviewed Obama during their presidency. Though, sadly not an hour long. https://youtu.be/GpWQHFzrEqc

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

#75

Post by js8 »

bestouff wrote: post #4

It's funny how the excellent job of the French Ariane launcher is nowhere to be seen in this (and others) article.

Worse, journalists often compare Webb with Hubble, but they mostly ignore the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herschel_Space_Observatory, which had a larger primary mirror (for example, https://webb.nasa.gov/content/observatory/ote/mirrors/index....). It's a very subtle form of American exceptionalism.

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

#76

Post by dmd »

s5300 wrote: post #58
EMM_386 wrote: post #9

This was an absurdly teeth-clenching deployment. And no back-up, even if the Ariane launch failed. No back-up. Congrats to everyone across the board for getting this amazing telescope right where it needs to be. Now all we need is the mirror alignment and we're in for some seriously incredible science.

It’s really sad to think about how well NASA works when you consider how little funding they get and how hard they have to fight for it. It’s honestly quite ridiculous. I know a lot of military industrial complex boils down to being nationwide jobs programs, e.g. everything to do with the F-35. But NASA? I don’t think they’re anywhere near as close to being a “jobs program” Off the top of my head, I really can’t thin…

I saw a study a few years ago where people were asked how much funding various agencies get, and the majority of people thought NASA was more than 10% of the federal budget; some even went as high as 25%. (It's less than half of 1%.)

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

#77

Post by bbojan »

inamberclad wrote: post #13
PinkMilkshake wrote: post #3

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 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.

In perspective, you should keep in mind that the Space Shuttle was a failure as a launch vehicle, both in terms of safety and economics.

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

#78

Post by wongarsu »

amelius wrote: post #73
gameswithgo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Russians had the Buran, with more or less the same dimensions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)

I've heard the (probably unfounded) story that the Soviets saw the Space Shuttle, couldn't figure out why the Americans would build it but figured there surely must be a good reason; so they copied it to also have whatever capability the Americans were after.

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

#79

Post by NikolaeVarius »

bbojan wrote: post #77
inamberclad wrote: post #13

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.

In perspective, you should keep in mind that the Space Shuttle was a failure as a launch vehicle, both in terms of safety and economics.

And yet it allowed capabilities that we have lost in 2022.

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

#80

Post by Sharlin »

PinkMilkshake wrote: post #3

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 really easy to get a wrong intuitive sense of the size of these things! I don’t understand why space agencies don’t always have human figures for reference in their visualizations. Or even a simple scale bar! We just get these silly “the size of a tennis court” type textual comparisons. Few people realize how big the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers are, as another example.
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