
James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test - dnetesn
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-james-webb-space-telescope-emerges.html
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NikolaeVarius
Man, I really want this telescope to succeed its mission, but I just can't get
over how complex its deployment procedure is. I am extremely pessimistic about
it actually managing to deploy as planned.

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d33
Could you elaborate on the complexity, comparing it to other complex science
projects that succeeded? I'm a layman, curious if this is actually riskier
than what humanity has done so far.

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FrojoS
This video explains it very well.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8yRDrl76d0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8yRDrl76d0)

Half way through the video, I understood why it's so expensive and risky.

On the other hand, Apollo 11 had many 'firsts' that couldn't be tested before
the actual mission and it worked out 'first shot'. Of course there were some
problems and Apollo 13 showed that the odd's where not too good.

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NikolaeVarius
Huge difference is that Apollo had highly trained human beings on board to fix
things that could not be planned for. There were also 10 previous missions to
Apollo 11 to work out the kinks, with one failing with loss of life.

JW is not designed to be fixed or fail, nor are there training runs. It HAS to
work first shot.

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petschge
Regarding the 10 missions before Apollo 11: It's a little more complicated.
Apollo 1 is the name that was given to honor the astronauts who died in the
pad accident. Apollo 2 and 3 didn't exists. But a whole bunch of other tests
did exist testing Saturn 5 before we got to the unmanned Apollo 4, 5 and 6
tests. And starting with Apollo 7 humans were included. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions)
for details.

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NikolaeVarius
I probably should have known this. I've read alot on Apollo, but never really
internalized some of these facts.

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ethbro
People forget there was an entire series leading up to the Saturn V:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V#Saturn_development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V#Saturn_development)

They've got a Saturn IB at an Alabama rest stop outside of Huntsville.
Surprisingly small, but still towers above you!

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DuskStar
> People forget there was an entire series leading up to the Saturn V

Well, sooorta. The Saturn V was the third in that series, after the Saturn I
and Saturn IB. [0] While there were proposed intermediate Saturns (and ones
past V, too) only two first stages were developed, and the V was the only
launcher to fly with the F-1 engine.

0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_(rocket_family)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_\(rocket_family\))

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skizm
Anyone know if there are any well paying jobs in space programs of any kind?
I've been seeing a growing number of reputable universities offering a wider
range of space / aerospace / engineering offerings* and I've been getting
curious what's out there. Only issue is, a lot of places I looked pay well
below market rates :/ (at least for software engineers). I'll admit my
expectations might be off considering I've been in the NYC area for a while
now, and am used to seeing NYC salaries, but the pay is well below half of
what I would make now and the cut seems too drastic even in a LCOL area.

* I'm mostly talking about masters programs here.

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jcadam
Just a bit of warning: Software Engineering in Aerospace is NOT fun. You're
basically in a supporting role to the hardware and system engineers designing
the spacecraft. It's pure drudgery... process to the point of absurdity, specs
and tasks being spoon fed to you with little room for creativity and/or
problem solving, etc.

The pay, benefits, and level of respect on the job reflect all of that.

If you really want to work in space, I'd go and get a MS (or higher) in
aerospace engineering or space systems engineering and work at the systems
level.

I got out of aerospace and am much happier for it.

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mdorazio
To be fair, the reason for this is that if you try to be creative and don't
follow strict processes, things fail a million miles from Earth or blow up
entirely.

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JudgeWapner
You mean the strict processes that strictly demanded mixing imperial and SI
units ?

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Crespyl
The strict processes that got _even more strict_ after they realized they
weren't being _strict enough_ when they mixed imperial and SI units.

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java-man
what puzzles me all the time is why not build two instead. it looks like the
R&D portion of the budget might be greater than the actual manufacturing cost,
so building two would be less than 2x the price.

if one launch fails, we've got a backup. if both launch, we have two
instruments deployed.

why don't we do it??

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mhb
Is there any economy of scale? Why not wait until the first one fails to build
another one?

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TeMPOraL
Because that requires keeping all the specialized machinery and knowledge
alive for the duration of the whole project.

Given the length of this project, I wouldn't be surprised if at this point
NASA _couldn 't_ order a second one built even if they wanted to.

The unfortunate thing about advanced technology is that if you don't use it,
you lose it. More specifically, you lose the research and machining setups and
people with knowledge about them in their head; the main problem here being
that documentation doesn't capture _everything_ \- a lot of tacit knowledge is
captured in e.g. tuning of the machines, undocumented fixes made on-site,
idiosyncrasies in manufacturing steps, etc.

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Rebelgecko
Unfortunately that's already the case with many long running projects. A
friend of mine that works on JWST recently fixed a mistake that was made by
someone who retired 10 years ago.

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nn3
At this price point it better be good. It has to make up for all the other
astrophysics missions it killed with its (near) endless budget overruns.

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afpx
That's a bit cynical. There are many examples of NASA missions that had far
exceeded the original expectations.

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afpx
Plus, check out some of the engineering on this $10B masterpiece.

[https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/201800...](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20180003965.pdf)

In my opinion, much better for Human advancement than the typical $10B
infrastructure project

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gameswithgo
indeed, I would take a bunch of 10billion scientific instruments over trillion
dollar fighter jets or mid east military incursions any day.

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sandworm101
Obligatory xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/2014/](https://xkcd.com/2014/)

2026? Probably not. 2021? I doubt it. My money is on 2023-24.

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zanny
They already built the damn thing, how hard could it be to land it in stable
orbit 1.5 gigameters from the planet? This ain't rocket science, people. Wait
a second.

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dzhiurgis
I had !remind me in 2 years setup for it. Didn't really know why, but figured
out eventually by how long it's taking them.

Also - isn't the tech behind it is going to be obsolete pretty soon?

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jbay808
Obsolete in what sense?

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sandworm101
It is a big digital camera. They dont stay cutting edge for very long.

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leeoniya
> one step closer to its 2021 launch

boy, that's gonna be a nail-biter. who's gonna insure that launch?

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NortySpock
No one. Or, more accurately, the government self-insures most launches, and
eats the cost of a failed launch.

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mkoryak
How many megapixels is this one?

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gjm11
The main imager is the Near Infrared Camera. It has ten 2048x2048 sensors.
They're configured in two kinda-independent groups with separate optics. Each
group uses one of those sensors for longer wavelengths (so you get two lots of
2048x2048), and four of them for shorter wavelengths (so you get two lots of
4096x4096). The two modules can (and I guess usually will) be pointed at
adjacent regions of the sky; I expect they'll overlap them a bit so you'll get
slightly under 4096x2048 for the long wavelengths and slightly under 8192x4096
for the short. These are monochrome sensors but they have an array of filters
they can swap in to measure different wavelengths.

There are several other instruments, including some other imagers.

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maxxxxx
Considering how much camera sensors have improved in the last few years I
wonder how outdated these sensors are (or not)

Edit: makes me also wonder if with all the delays they upgrade any equipment
in the meantime.

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okket
Hard to tell, since you can't use off-the-shelf sensors. They have to
withstand the harsh environment in space, for a very long time, without any
maintenance.

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3JPLW
They're also specifically designed to operate in absurdly low temperatures —
one in fact requires temperatures under 7 Kelvin and so in addition to the sun
shield there's a mechanical cooler.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRI_(Mid-
Infrared_Instrument)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRI_\(Mid-
Infrared_Instrument\))

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ausbah
This is so cool!

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de_watcher
And hot.

