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Webb flies Ariane 5: watch the launch live on 25 December

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Re: Webb flies Ariane 5: watch the launch live on 25 December

#4

Post by jpgvm »

foobarian wrote: post #3

Decades of meticulous planning and they couldn't give their teams a day off on Christmas? Of course it could be that consensus was this beats any other kind of activity that day in which case fair enough. :-)

I think spending Christmas wringing your hands unsure if your $10B decades-in-development baby is going to make it to orbit sounds incredibly stressful...

It's going to be awesome for us to watch but I feel for all the folks that worked on this.

Re: Webb flies Ariane 5: watch the launch live on 25 December

#5

Post by _ph_ »

foobarian wrote: post #3

Decades of meticulous planning and they couldn't give their teams a day off on Christmas? Of course it could be that consensus was this beats any other kind of activity that day in which case fair enough. :-)

Well, according to the original planning it should have launched before Christmas. It was only the weather delaying it by one day. I guess once they were ready for the launch, they want to avoid to delay it any longer than needed. Not sure, how long the rocket can be "stored" in launch-ready state before it has to be serviced again.

Re: Webb flies Ariane 5: watch the launch live on 25 December

#6

Post by sp332 »

foobarian wrote: post #3

Decades of meticulous planning and they couldn't give their teams a day off on Christmas? Of course it could be that consensus was this beats any other kind of activity that day in which case fair enough. :-)

It was scheduled for Wednesday and then postponed for bad weather.

Re: Webb flies Ariane 5: watch the launch live on 25 December

#8

Post by ajross »

jpgvm wrote: post #4
foobarian wrote: post #3

Decades of meticulous planning and they couldn't give their teams a day off on Christmas? Of course it could be that consensus was this beats any other kind of activity that day in which case fair enough. :-)

I think spending Christmas wringing your hands unsure if your $10B decades-in-development baby is going to make it to orbit sounds incredibly stressful... It's going to be awesome for us to watch but I feel for all the folks that worked on this.

FWIW: given the extraordinarily complicated mechanical design, merely reaching orbit is the "easy part". The real imagined disasters won't happen until the mirrors assemble.
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