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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

#271

Post by pfdietz »

mulmen wrote: post #256
pfdietz wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

SLS isn’t the currently-in-development spacecraft that utilizes hundreds of ceramic tiles to aerobrake through the atmosphere. SLS is basically a modern Saturn V. A complete departure from the Shuttle, with the exception of-re-using the SRB design. On paper a very conservative choice. Starship looks a lot like Shuttle 2.0 to me. Except the landing is somehow even more terrifying. As far as I can tell the idea with St…

The point of SLS is that it's a politically motivated boondoggle. This is also what the shuttle was. Nixon ok-ed it not because it was a good idea, but because of aerospace votes in California.

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

#272

Post by wolverine876 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #160
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.

A pretty typical big government project to me. Lot's of power centers pulling in different directions, little focus on actual needs. Space X does better work in part because it can make its own decisions and focus on long term goals.

That's the stereotype of government promoted by private business like SpaceX, so they can get the funding shifted from NASA to them. But no private business has accomplished in space anything approaching what government has. NASA has been spectacularly successful, orders of magnitude beyond any explorers in human history.

We're talking about just one of many successses on this page.

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

#273

Post by wolverine876 »

cronix wrote: post #163
wongarsu wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not unfounded, and they knew about it before it ever flew once. A family member was in the CIA at the time (later at NSA and RAND) and played a role after they were sent to the USSR after graduating college to study Russian (paid for by CIA, they know 8 languages). They translated the technical Russian Buran plans/documents and decoded them for our scientists to compare to their own, as well as help slip design…

They told you about these highly classified operations?

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

#274

Post by mulmen »

p1mrx wrote: post #269
mulmen wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, about 1.6. 600,000 kilometers is 1.5 times as far from Earth as the Moon. Interesting to think how much longer it took Webb to cover that distance than Apollo. A consequence of not being able to slow down under power.

JWST is around 1.5 million km, but that just illustrates my point. Being off by a factor of two makes no practical difference if you're not working on the mission.

Haha, I multiplied by 0.6 instead of 1.6. Good enough to crash a climate orbiter.

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

#275

Post by wolverine876 »

gunsle wrote: post #246
ademup wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Probably because this project has been in development for decades and overran it’s timelines and budgets multiple times (to my knowledge). Congress already hates funding NASA, can’t imagine they were lining up to give them more money when I’m sure they had been asking when’s this thing even gonna come out? Also, FWIW, this thing has 100+ points of failure along its route to being fully deployed and getting to the L2…

> Congress already hates funding NASA

? They seem to fund it quite a bit, for generations.

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

#276

Post by Angostura »

ravi-delia wrote: post #155
egeozcan wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

My mental image until I looked it up was around the size of a dog. No, I don't know why

Because it's called rover? :)

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

#278

Post by wolverine876 »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #249
snakeboy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just out of curiosity, is it considered best practice these days to use the gender-neutral "their" even with a specific subject (Obama) who is known to use masculine pronouns for himself?

As someone tuned in to queer twitter I can say that if you know someone’s pronouns you should use them, so ideally for Obama you would use he/him. But also we’re all using they/them a lot more for people when we’re not sure and that can bleed in to people even when we do know their pronouns, and generally that’s not a big deal. Only becomes a problem when a trans person has a clear preference for she/her or he/him (o…

OT: I use they/their by default, unless I know otherwise, but what to do with other common gendered terms such as Mr./Ms./Mrs, Sir/Madam/Ma'am/Miss?

These aren't avoidable problems: e.g., in the greeting for a business letter ('Dear ...'), or when getting the attention of a member of restaurant waitstaff whose name I don't know, etc.

Someone needs to come up with a plausible set of gender-neutral terms. They/their/them works for she/hers/her/he/his/him circumstances, but the needs are broader than that.

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

#279

Post by wolverine876 »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #195
WithinReason wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason I expected it to stay in Earth's shadow. L2 is probably too far from Earth for that.

They specifically avoid earth's shadow because they use solar panels (by shadow here, I mean penumbra, they're too far away to be in total shadow).

I've been wondering about that same issue and someone suggested that as a possibility. Do you know where NASA actually states it?

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

#280

Post by wolverine876 »

pfdietz wrote: post #271
mulmen wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SLS isn’t the currently-in-development spacecraft that utilizes hundreds of ceramic tiles to aerobrake through the atmosphere. SLS is basically a modern Saturn V. A complete departure from the Shuttle, with the exception of-re-using the SRB design. On paper a very conservative choice. Starship looks a lot like Shuttle 2.0 to me. Except the landing is somehow even more terrifying. As far as I can tell the idea with St…

The point of SLS is that it's a politically motivated boondoggle. This is also what the shuttle was. Nixon ok-ed it not because it was a good idea, but because of aerospace votes in California.

What is that based on?
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