"Today NASA released the first image from the Webb Telescope."

lol....

Friend of mine's dad is a retired astronomer and college professor.  He is excited as hell about this.  I hope everything goes perfectly with the launch.

If all goes well, this is going to be as big of a leap over the Hubble as the Hubble was to what we had before it.

Yeah, it’s going to be awesome

getting out there isn't the hard part.

getting back is.

especially because it will be orbiting around the L2 point.

IIRC the problem is getting there, slowing down to match its orbit then having enough fuel to get back, because you can't assist off nothing.

state of the art today, or state of the art 20 years ago when it was designed?

that's why we need a orbital refueling station in space.

As long as they take debit and credit without a surcharge

Short sighted smooth brain comments like that are what killed the super conducting super collider in Texas. The USA could be leading the world in physics, but we've ceded it to the Euros at CERN. The smooth brains in Congress couldn't comprehend the importance of such a device.

La Grange?
Just let me know if you wanna go
to that home out on the range.
They gotta lotta nice girls.

Have mercy.
A haw, haw, haw, haw, a haw.

I am almost certain the IR sensors were developed by my ex-brother in-law.  I messaged him but don't really expect any answer back this year.  I worked at the Los Alamos lab for 6 years and go to see some amazing things the scientist work on, and what they were hoping to see with this bad boy.

Why L2 ?
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/webb-l2.html

NASA spawned the semiconductor and passive medical device technology.  AFAIC, we need more NASA boondoggles to push the state of the art.  What needs to happen is to get the politicized buearocracy out of NASA so ti can be more efficient.

Did they get the grind right this time?

Parking it at L2 (lagrange pt #2) about 930,000 miles from earth.  The moon is 240,000 miles.  It doesn't require much fuel to stay in position.

considering the numbers and types of fuel and how many don't have long lives I think that might be a very, very expensive proposition.

like it would be cheaper to just send a new space telescope up especially since we know way more about how to build it then we did in the past.

The cost of this telescope is equal to 5 virginia class submarines.

So it's now outdated and new technology will render it useless.

To what new technology are you referring?

Probably all the stuff they had to invent while making James Webb.

This just made me spit my lunch out

I’d rather it be spent on immigrant relocation programs...

How many illegals can you yeet into space with $9B?

Aren’t L1 and L2 points somewhat unstable... like you need monthly course corrections to stay there?

How long will this telescope be stable?

Is it safe to hope it is bolted to something heavy so it can't fall over?

It orbits the L2 point and has fuel for about 10yrs.

what planit it gonna drive round on?

maybe just keep the LOx out there?

HOLE ON....all the money and this fuckin thing is only gonna last 10 years?

Its complicated....



If you want to dive deeper https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/55309/james-webb-telescope-limits-to-propellant-lifetime

Its schedule lifetime is 10yrs.  If everything goes perfectly they will have fuel for a much more than 10yrs, but I have no idea if other parts of the telescope have short lifespans.

Like almost every device sent to space, their actual lifespans usually greatly exceed their planned lifespans if there are no failures.

Yeah, seeing as NASA budget info includes the guy who changes the toilet paper rolls.

da fuq....it's painfully obvious this project has been a giant clusterfuck from the get go...the icing on the cake is that shitty ass French rocket it's gonna be bolted to.

It made me laugh too.  Nice wording.    

...in a cow pasture in Texas.

There, FIFY.

many of these things go WAY beyond their lifepsan.

Hubble has already doubled its lifespan.

those little mars rovers kicked ass.

many of the others that orbit planets get extended lives but have to be destroyed to prevent contamination of planets if fuel gets too low.

they'll probably learn more about the orbit and change firmware to reduce fuel consumption in the long run.

these are some of the only projects that teach us enough to make it worth our time. besides the space science, the material and production science we learned in the process is huge.

I'm not for most gov spending, but at least these things have a substantial return. sending the money to asscrackistan or idiots to study transmice effect on climate science is just a big ass scam.

that being said the cost overrun on this one are insane. I hope at least its a resounding success.

I am all for stuff like this, but man. NASA really needs a restructuring.

Attached File

Dude.. you and I both know he's dead serious.

Good explanation here:

yes, they need to follow SpaceX's lead.

Starship would have a very hard time getting there.

no disagreeing there. worst part is they're probably one of the more efficient gov agencies

I find this kind of technology amazing , really looking forward to images.  I hope in my lifetime they find something that answers the origins of life and  forming of universe.

The worst 10 years of my career at Boeing was working for NASA 2nd hand, mostly on Space Station.  Talking about walking, talking continual cluster-fuck.  

And Boeing itself even back then wasn't much better.  The executives back stabbing each other back in the early 90's was juvenile and ridiculous.  Moronic leadership.  

Quite simply, the way it seems to me. Elon's philosophy seems to be, "I don't care how it gets done. Just get it done!"

Boeing philosophy seems to be, "you gotta squeeze EVERY penny."

NASA's philosophy seems to be, "we do not work here. We labor in the vineyards of knowledge, pushing the boundaries of wisdom, you miserable unwashed cretins."

It was initially designed before SpaceX was even a thing.  The launch/deployment system and payload are developed as a unit, as I understand it.

oh god

Look at the 3.5T Dem spending bill and 10B for a space telescope is genius.

I'm just glad that NASA is finally looking up again. They've been spending far too much time worrying about domestic political issues.

I live it every day. NASA program leads love to speculate and hear themselves talk while cutting off the engineers that could actually provide them with real data and answers.

I hope it lives up to it's billing. It should, and it should be awesome, but the program is... concerning.

Also, if it hasn't already been pointed out (we're in GD, so I skipped most of this), the EU is paying for the launch, which is partially why it's on Ariane 5.

Also, the immense delays mean it was started before Falcon 9/Heavy was even a glimmer in Elon's eye. The Fairing thing really isn't that much of a problem; SpaceX could solve that easily, and probably still be the low bidder. Remember that FH is significantly more capable than Ariane 5, which is much more comparable to Falcon 9 than FH. F9, in expendable configuration, is only slightly less capable at most tasks than Ariane 5, it's just that F9 doesn't fly those missions because you're better off at that point with a reusable FH.

Quicky Launcher stats (Keeping in mind, nothing has really pushed FH yet, so it's all very theoretical - that said, it's an order of Magnitude bigger than anything else flying. The Falcons are more efficient the lower the orbit is because of the relatively High Thrust but low Specific Impulse of the Merlin engine)

Launcher                     Mass to GTO             Mass to LEO
Ariane 5                      ~24,000#                 44,000#+
F9, Expended              ~18,000#                 50,000#
F9, Reuse                    ~12,000#                 34,000#
FH, Full Reuse             ??                            ~60,000#
FH, Core expended*     ??                            ~114,000#
FH, Expended              47,000#+                ~141,000#+

*-There are a couple Core-expended FH launches on the Manifest for Geosynchronous orbit... but they're DIRECT to GEO, not to a transfer orbit. For cost reasons, in the past, that just wasn't done. FH seems to make it more economical to expend the center core than to go to GTO and use a kicker to get to GEO. That may be an artifact of them not having 3 East Coast Barges to land on (thus necessitating throwing away the Center core if the side boosters can't return to the Cape) or it may just be that single F9 cores just aren't that expensive. The Gov't is paying less for an expended-center-core FH launch than the Average Ariane 5 launch, for what it's worth.