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Comment by patrickthebold | Hacker News Reader

I'm still anxious about the James Webb Space Telescope though. Fingers crossed.

Keep in mind its an orbiting Infrared Observatory so not an alternative to Hubble. Of course it will be an amazing scientific instrument and we should hope that nothing happens during launch.

If the rocket explodes on the launch pad, it will be a bad day.

At the same time, it shouldn't take twenty years to build a space telescope, especially since it's not like it's the first one ever. The first atomic bomb was built in 4 years.

It's not the first space-based observatory, but it's still a _wholly novel_ device, containing instrumentation designed by scientists and engineers in concert to leverage every piece of bleeding edge technology available at the time, and some throughout the process. Everyone of the flagship observatories is moon shot. It's not a mass-produced helicopter or missile. This project in particular is easily one of the wildest feats of science and engineering _ever_ just like Hubble, Cern, and LIGO.

Regarding the bomb, we were trying to end a global conflict, so the comparison couldn't be further off base.

Plus the bomb was built with the literal opposite purpose of the JWST: blowing up!

Worst case scenario it doesn't blow up exactly right and you just build another one?

The worst case considered at the time was an uncontrolled chain-reaction annihilating the planet. It was calculated to be impossible, but it still weighed on the minds of many scientists involved, even well into the hydrogen bomb era.

https://www.insidescience.org/manhattan-project-legacy/atmos...

I see your point, but you could also argue that worst case scenario for atomic bomb malfunction is much more awful than worst case for JWST

With the mindset at the time, the worst case scenario for the atomic bomb would have been it not going off in anyway way, and then they just handed their greatest enemy dud version if a top secret weapon.

Since it likely would have just blown up (fizzle) even if it didn’t fully detonate that is a pretty remote possibility.

Second worst would be it went off on a base somewhere and nuked a US base. Considering the location of these bases and the nature of the war at that point, it would have been a footnote causality wise, but embarrassing.

The first atomic bomb was nowhere near as precisely-built as the James Webb telescope has to be.

It is a completely novel design for a space telescope though. On top of that there's no capability [0] to go patch up a sloppy job like we did with Hubble.

[0] Currently at least. Starship could I guess but it was planned way ahead of Starship even being a glimmer in Musk's eye. Do they have any grapple points on it as insurance? I would at this point, just put one of the posts they use on the ISS for Canada Arm to grapple.

Yeah, there is a docking ring as a "maybe we can design something to use this in the future". Since JWST is going out to a Lagrange point it would definitely be robotic servicing at this point unless our human spaceflight capabilities expand very significantly.

The Nancy Grace Roman (formerly WFIRST) space telescope also has grappling points for robotic servicing so it is something that is being considered in designs for programs of record.

And that is the problem with 20 year (30 year?) product lifecycles. A lot can change in 20 years. For example the ability to service it might now be feasible. But since it’s almost entirely built, good luck making it serviceable!

There is a docking ring on the JWST.

It took 25 years to replace the SF Bay Bridge, a much less complex endeavor.

It’s simply how things are done around here these days.

That is not a good comparison. The SF Bay Bridge replacement project was conducted as a competition. The design that won was so much more complicated than all the other entries that at first it was not clear that it could be built and in fact the finished product is flawed with cracks and other failures. There is nothing particularly complex about the basic problem and the simple viaduct design that was advocated by the Governor at the time was expected to involve an order of magnitude less cost and time of construction but was rejected for being too simple and not beautiful enough. This management structure and these considerations have not been used for any space missions.

there has never been and never will be anything like the Apollo or Manhattan projects. They had levels of productivity that are not normally seen.

Well, there were the Egyptian Pyramids, Great Wall of China, Roman Aqueducts and a whole bunch of Great Projects in the past and I certainly hope there will be lots more in our future.

Those projects took centuries to complete.

As far as I know, the pyramids were each constructed for a single pharaoh, and during their single lifetime. I don't know about all of them, but that's at least true of Great Pyramid of Giza.

Or just a few turns, depending on your difficulty setting. (-;

We don't know how some of the Egyptian pyramids were constructed, or when, or how long it took.

If the Starship program succeeds in reaching the moon in the next few years then I think that is comparable to Apollo. Ofc it is easier to do things the second time than the first but safety standards are higher and this time it will have been done at an enormously reduced price.

One reason JWT has taken so long and is so expensive is that launch costs used to be "astronomical".

In the SpaceX era of reusable rockets, those costs become 1-2 orders of magnitude smaller, and I expect a flurry of simpler space telescopes in the nearish future.

That's the theory. Does anyone know if such things are being worked on?

Not to my knowledge. Actually, it was said that lack of smaller space projects was catalyst for creation of Starlink. They expected tons of launches once launch prices dropped but it never materialized so they decided to become their own biggest client.

Who’s theory?

JWST costs upwards to 9 billion USD. An Ariane 5 launch maybe 200 million.

Just because the launch is cheaper doesn’t make the rest of the project less complicated and costly.

JWST costs $9B when NASA does it.

I think other actors can do similar things much cheaper and faster.

> I think other actors can do similar things much cheaper and faster.

Think again. JWST was criticised for being too ambitious and rightly so. It uses technology that was (and in some areas still is) cutting edge.

It baffles me how people always seem to assume that some company can miraculously solve scientific and engineering challenges quicker and cheaper than the teams that are working on it.

JWST was designed with no serviceability in mind, that is, unlike HST it absolutely has to work. Every detail, from the folding mirror, to the sun shield, to the computer systems to the instrumentation. ZERO room for error and no "fail early, fail often"-option here.

Most of the delays have been caused by engineers and scientists wanting to make 100% sure they get it right, because there's no STS servicing for fixing imperfect mirrors or switching out hardware.

We live in an age where companies can and do almost miraculously solve technical problems that the government has failed to do, so it isn't surprising to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkk9VIKWw2w

What's the profit motive you're suggesting? Fleecing the government for a telescope? Who else is going to pay for a telescope?

It wasn't "the government" that built JWST, though, it was companies (and universities). edit: I'm also getting tired of the "but rockets!"-trope. It's not a new invention, Saturn V was more powerful, and a rocket is not a space telescope.

I don't think you understand how contracting works, but ok.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or "Webb") is a joint NASA–ESA–CSA space telescope

Maybe you should look at what was actually done for JWST.

The ignorance is really getting on my nerves. The mirror required a primary mirror segment assembly capable of surviving a rocket launch and still being able to be deployed in space at precision. This technology didn't exist back when JWST was approved and had to be developed from scratch, which was (successfully!) done by NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

The prime contractor for the telescope (that includes building flight hardware) is Northrop Grumman, which, last time I checked, is not government owned.

ESA's main contribution is the launch vehicle, built and operated by Arianespace - also a private company. The other contribution from ESA is MIRI, a scientific instrument designed, tested, and built by a consortium also including some private companies like RUAG and EADS.

CSA contributes the Fine Guidance Sensor and the NIRISS instrument, both built by Honeywell, which, again is a private company. [0]

So while a ton of research and design work was done in government run labs, universities and NASA facilities, most of the actual construction was done by private companies.

So I really don't understand what you are trying to imply here. JWST was overambitious and pioneered way too many ground-breaking technologies at once while requiring absolute precision and "getting things right" due to its non-serviceability.

That's why all the delays and cost overruns happened and there was very little (of course not none) management and bureaucracy errors/overhead at fault here. NASA had simply bitten off more than they could chew with this one and there's absolutely no indication that any one company could've done better.

So you seem to have absolutely no clue what the heck you're even on about and what actually went into making of JWST and why it took so long.

[0] https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/jwst/canada-role.as...

If you say so. All I see is something they said would cost $500m and due to government involvement it is now unbelievably expensive. Since this almost always happens with NASA I can only think that it is something about how these projects are funded. Maybe there is more to it than it just being hard.

> All I see is something they said would cost $500m and due to government involvement it is now unbelievably expensive.

Again with the ignorance: I just showed that it's not the government involvement that drove cost. It was because it turned out to be much harder than anticipated.

> Maybe there is more to it than it just being hard.

In this particular case, no there really isn't as annoying as that might be to the anarcho-capitalist/neo-liberal anti-government crowd.

The thing about NASA is that they're open and that includes their successes and failures alike. Delays are commonplace in private industry as well, but failure in particular more often than not results in bankruptcy and thus you never hear about it.

Just ask a venture capitalist how many high-risk tech investments actually turned a profit and within the anticipated timeframe. You only hear about the unicorns that made it or the ones that crashed and burned so brightly it could be seen from orbit. The majority dies like a drowning child - quietly and unnoticed.

I understand your sentiment – I’d expect NASA to have some overhead – but, as you asked, who else is building space telescopes? How do we determine if the cost of a telescope is “too high”? What kind of mission profiles should be targeted?

I am sure someone can build a cheaper space telescope, but for whom and to what end?

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