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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

#231

Post by jvanderbot »

arcticfox wrote: post #33
tunap wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is absolutely true but entirely uninformative in this context. It's also a bit hilarious as it reinforces GP's suggestion that you can't involve or invoke SpaceX without a breathless-sounding shower of accolades stealing the show from the main payload / mission.

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

#232

Post by ur-whale »

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.

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

US ego is already badly bruised that they've had to launch this highly visible project on a foreign rocket, and now you'd want them to sing the frenchies praises?

That's a huge ask.

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

#233

Post by jacquesm »

entrep wrote: post #212
jacquesm wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only position, also deformation by pulling or pushing on the center of the mirror changing it's curvature.

Correct. And since the beryllium mirrors are 8 times harder than steel, it's probably a tough job.

Not really. They are quite thin and the deformation is minute, on the order of less than a micron at the largest point.

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

#234

Post by [deleted] »

egeozcan wrote: post #122
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.

> Few people realize how big the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers are To be fair, Perseverance looks as big as I imagined it would be, about the size of an SUV but wider (because even in 2020s, they still don't have streets in mars, what a bummer): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/science/mars-2020-rover-n... Or did my googling fail me? :) edit: direct image link around paywall: https://static01.nyt.com/images/202…

[deleted]

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

#235

Post by ashes-of-sol »

spookthesunset wrote: post #185
_joel wrote: post #51

I really can't wait until the have proper first light. They say June will be the earliest after phasing has completed, but it can't come soon enough. That being said, I've waited 25 years so far, a few more months won't hurt

I'm sure there will be "test photos" that get published in the interim. I'd be seriously disappointed if there wasn't.

No post body was provided.

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

#236

Post by ur-whale »

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…

> 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.

I do agree with you, but have you maybe considered that you're looking at it the wrong way?

Isn't there a saying that armies that eat bad food win more battles?

Could it be that because NASA is not funded at the level they deserve, they have to be more efficient?

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

#237

Post by ademup »

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.…

I marvel at how small they are. Why not add 20, 100, or 1000 more mirrors to JWT? Or launch 10 more of these and go full interferometry? Maybe I've just been playing to much Dyson Sphere Program, but it feels to me that NASA et al are committing the cardinal sin of making the production loop too small.

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

#238

Post by ur-whale »

Maxburn wrote: post #192

Question; why is the Where is Webb page saying current speed is .1255 miles/second? There's a blurb in the explainer that says that speed is Earth relative. https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html?s=...

I always find mentions of "speed" of spaceships in the press very strange: they never specify the reference frame.

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

#239

Post by andrepd »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #61
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Does it make a difference if it's 100m or 110m or 90m?? For a general audience? Obviously it does not, the point is to convey the scale/order of magnitude. Is it about the size of a person? An elephant? A bus? A football pitch? That's what is being communicated here.

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

#240

Post by divbzero »

Sharlin wrote: post #80
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.

> Few people realize how big the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers are

… and how much larger they are than Sojourner from the Pathfinder mission. Perseverance was sent with a metal plate depicting profiles of all five Mars rovers to date: Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance. [1].

[1]: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/mars-rovers/en/mars-rovers_metal...

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