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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

#201

Post by barkingcat »

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!

re military mission never using the size, there could always have been classified payload launches that ended up using it.

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

#202

Post by jrockway »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #187
throwawayboise wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And sweeping von Braun's Nazi complicity under the rug while others were hanging from the gallows at Nuremberg.

As A German this really bugs me. Von Braun and friends knew exactly what was going on in their production facilities, didn't care and never had to confront their role in this.

"Once the rockets are up who cares where they come down, that's not my department" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro

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

#203

Post by _yoqn »

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.

You can actually go see Endeavor in real life at the L.A. Science Center. Admission is like $2. Regardless of the size, the spectacle is breathtaking.

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

#204

Post by aksss »

spookthesunset wrote: post #172
echelon wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The classified autonomous X-37 [1] has a cargo bay [2] and there are (were?) plans to scale it up to double the size to accommodate larger payloads and crewed missions [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 [2] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36440/this-is-our-firs... [3] http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/aerospace-engineering/spa...

That X-37 photo in the wiki article had me go down the "payload fairing" rabbit hole. Still don't quite know what the "bubble wrap" is on the inside. I assume it is part insulation to protect from extreme heat and part, well, bubble wrap. According to wikipedia those things cost around $6 million to manufacture and spacex was the first to ever bother retrieving them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_fairing

Gosh, the section on "Mission failures caused by payload fairings" is understandable but not something I've ever heard of before. The launch crew error of failing to remove two lanyards.. ugh. To be "that guy" must've sucked.

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

#205

Post by walrus01 »

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 largest geostationary telecom satellites are also quite huge, if you were to stand next to one. In the range of 6500 kg weight and about the size of a school bus.

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

#206

Post by pfdietz »

jedberg wrote: post #182
nexuist wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling the Space Shuttle "mostly reusable" is laughable. It cost 1.5 billion dollars per launch [1] whereas a reused Falcon 9 costs 50 million to launch. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9

The shuttle could cary 29,000kg to orbit, the Falcon 9 can only carry 22,000kg (30% more capacity) plus 8 astronauts (Falcon can only carry 3), and was designed and built in the 70s. So yeah the Falcon is an improvement and I'm sure will be better one day, but the Space Shuttle was a huge achievement for its time, and as of today there is no lift system that can match it for both capacity and reusability.

At no point in the history of the Shuttle program would it have been a mistake to shut it down. By any metric, I'd call it a failure.

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

#207

Post by pfdietz »

Steltek wrote: post #156
nexuist wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling the Space Shuttle "mostly reusable" is laughable. It cost 1.5 billion dollars per launch [1] whereas a reused Falcon 9 costs 50 million to launch. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9

I don't get the need to bag on the Shuttle program here. The Shuttle was designed nearly 50 years ago with drastically different requirements and stakeholders.

It's because people still defend it, or imply it was more worthy than it actually was. And because the same mistake is being repeated right now (SLS).

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

#208

Post by adamc »

gameswithgo wrote: post #117
spaetzleesser wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The space shuttle is a sad story. On the one hand the military’s money made it possible but they also influenced the design in a very bad way.

This is the case with almost all large scale human endeavors. To get things done with lots of people takes compromises. Apollo program was the same way. I assume the pyramids and roman roads and so on as well. Though to be fair at some point once the shuttle program got going someone could have aborted on it and said that really this doesn't make sense.

Right, this is basically a "human politics" thing.

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

#209

Post by jl6 »

aksss wrote: post #196
Sharlin wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe the banana is the Internet standard for visual scale.

Also radioactivity, which also suits a Mars rover comparison.

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

#210

Post by cecilpl2 »

jedberg wrote: post #182
nexuist wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling the Space Shuttle "mostly reusable" is laughable. It cost 1.5 billion dollars per launch [1] whereas a reused Falcon 9 costs 50 million to launch. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9

The shuttle could cary 29,000kg to orbit, the Falcon 9 can only carry 22,000kg (30% more capacity) plus 8 astronauts (Falcon can only carry 3), and was designed and built in the 70s. So yeah the Falcon is an improvement and I'm sure will be better one day, but the Space Shuttle was a huge achievement for its time, and as of today there is no lift system that can match it for both capacity and reusability.

Slight nitpick - Crew Dragon currently carries 4 crew members and there's no particular reason it couldn't carry more (ie the rocket could handle it).
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