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There is also SOFIA [1] (2.5m telescope on an airplane), which can do certain far-IR things (mid-IR as well iirc). For the VLT (8m ground-based telescopes) there is also VISIR [2] which is an mid-IR imager/spectrometer (and uses the same detector chip as one of the JWST instruments iirc).

[1] https://www.sofia.usra.edu/ [2] http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/paranal/instruments/visir....

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Oh yeah, those do cover the same wavelength range. The atmosphere of the Earth absorbs a lot of the light and has a strong thermal background though. The sensitivity of JWST is orders of magnitude better than ground/airborne observatories [1], so things that JWST want to do will be basically impossible from the ground.

[1] http://ecuip.lib.uchicago.edu/multiwavelength-astronomy/imag...

Oh I am perfectly aware. It's just not all projects require JWST-level sensitivity and they are somewhat less known.

Also I think SOFIA in visitor-mode is hard to beat when it comes to the coolness-factor.

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