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Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

science.nasa.gov

91–100 of 115 posts

Re: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Is this a joke or just a demonstration of ignorance? The name Obamacare was not given to it by Obama, but by opponents of the law. The Obama administration just leaned into it. Blame conservatives if the name bothers you, not Obama and his administration from the time.

Wrong. Obama himself uses that name https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/obama-i-like-t...

Re: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

#92

I will never understand why NASA doesn't build at least two copies of expensive space telescopes like this. One single launch failure and boom (literally), the entire project is a failure? It wouldn't double the cost assuming they do it with even a modicum of efficiency and intelligence. And hey - assuming that the launch goes smoothly, you can get double the benefit

Because the incentives are not properly aligned. The US has historically wagered big money on singular missions, which given the cost per launch makes perfect sense. Now that costs per launch are decreasing rapidly, and critically launch availability is also increasing, the opportunity for scale is presenting itself.

Re: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

#94
post #2

For some tasks, surveys in particular, field of view is critical. You would need many Hubble telescopes to do what Roman can do mapping everything out there. "What really makes Roman stand out is that it is designed for wide-field imaging. The cameras on telescopes can often only detect objects in a very small patch of sky. If we use the size that the full moon appears in the sky as our guide, Hubble’s field of view…

The Rubble and NGR have the same size mirror but they are constructed differently. The former is not sharp over the entire field of view, the latter is - that coupled with a much, much larger camera (nearly 300MP) lets it record images at least equal to to HST but over a very wide field of view.

As to speed, it is not just the camera view that makes NGR faster but also physical factors such as not having to wait for earth to get out of the way.

Re: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

#95

I will never understand why NASA doesn't build at least two copies of expensive space telescopes like this. One single launch failure and boom (literally), the entire project is a failure? It wouldn't double the cost assuming they do it with even a modicum of efficiency and intelligence. And hey - assuming that the launch goes smoothly, you can get double the benefit

what if both of them blow up?

Re: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

#96

I will never understand why NASA doesn't build at least two copies of expensive space telescopes like this. One single launch failure and boom (literally), the entire project is a failure? It wouldn't double the cost assuming they do it with even a modicum of efficiency and intelligence. And hey - assuming that the launch goes smoothly, you can get double the benefit

I worked briefly in a satellite lab, and we did indeed have duplicate parts for most things.

Any space telescope with a mirror, is a different story, e.g.

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/webbs-mirrors/

The RST has an 8ft mirror. The mirrors have to be ground and polished in a clean room to tolerances that are the highest in the world. I vaguely recall it's a square law or worse - for radius-to-time-to-polish. So you're paying for time, and you're paying for the expertise of one or two custom built places that can manufacture them.

Re: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

#98

Part of the story is everyone being shocked at being under budget and ahead of schedule. I don't know everything, but I think this is reasonably attributable to the fact that this is a retrofit of an obsolete spy satellite. The leftovers of the security sector will be the most advanced scientific space surveyor. I have to wonder what things would look like with different priorities.

If we’re playing what-if, consider the contributions those spy satellites made to keep the Cold War cold and provide for decades of Pax Americana and a security umbrella over Europe that they didn’t have to pay for.

Re: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

#99
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! From talking to a contact working with JWST, it sounds a bit trickier in practice. The data are public, but with Roman the idea is that you must process them on their computers rather than download everything locally, and you pay for the compute/storage you use.

that's horrifying! what if you want to work on the processing algorithms themselves? can't you access the raw input data?

If their platform allows any kind of processing as it sounds then anyone could just dump the data. So I don't see why they would not allow downloads for local processing.
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