Watching the launch made me feel the wonder of spaceflight I felt as a child- and the holiday timing felt even more perfect.
“Development began in 1996 for a launch that was initially planned for 2007”
“Construction was completed in late 2016, after which an extensive testing phase began”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
While it’s great that it’s finally up, we should re-evaluate why it takes such a long time to develop these projects.
The pace of innovation appears to have slowed greatly in recent decades.
If, instead, we would build stuff in orbit it would be much cheaper and faster as you don't need origami like folding, high Gs resistance, and a malfunctioning piece can be replaced easily.
It’s not just this project, NASA, for example, hasn’t had the capability to put humans in space since the Shuttle retired.
Anyway, we are all aware of the Manhattan Project, Space Race, SR71 development, …
Someone mentioned this book yesterday, maybe it has some of the answers
https://www.amazon.com/Where-Flying-Car-Storrs-Hall/dp/19539...
Are you sure it would be cheaper? Building orbital build facility would be so expensive. Housing staff to build in the orbit or investing in robotics isn't cheap (or possible) either. So it's cheaper to include hardening against high-G launches than build orbital facility for the amount of launches that need this kind of preparations.
I am expecting still is much more cheaper to create bigger rockets then move the factories,the workers and everything they need in orbit.
Not to mention crazy long range VLBI radio setups or telescopes at the edge of the solar system using the gravity lensing of the Sun to observe things.
Sure, maybe in very limited capacity, like why not build stuff in giant parts like giant lego blocks on the planet and have some robots and a few people assemble it in orbit.
Rather then have 10K people work extremely inefficient and dangerous in zero gravity(I am assuming you mean we capture asteroids and we build stuff from bare minerals up). Imagine what extremely expensive factories you need that work in zero gravity(things fly everywhere at a small bump) , so maybe first we build a giant rotating space station using parts made on Earth.
In the long term we should have better rockets , maygbe we pt a space station in the important points in our solar system and send them this big lego parts so they can just assemble them.
Personally I see no way humans can live and work more efficient in space compared to live and build stuff on Earth and pay some guys to build big rockets and move the stuff into space, even in long term. What we are missing today is the ability to have guys present when the telescope unfolds to help with problems and manually do fine calibrations, if we could have that we could build a giant mirror made from small parts and have people just help connect the parts
The picture becomes rapidly less impressive when we look at where that processing goes, in many cases much of it is consumed with processing that's not directly related to useful output, though one area that has benefitted greatly has been usability: a computer user used to be a very highly skilled and trained position, now infants and those with severe cognitive or other impairments can make productive use of computers --- a lot of processing power goes into simply expanding the potential user-base.
(This isn't a slight or dig at who computer users are at present, though I admit some frustrations with how this transforms mass-market platforms, devices, and software away from power-user capabilities and interests.)
Network-dynamics systems (which microprocessors arguably are) can also see similar types of dynamics, at least over a range of scale.
In many other domains though, the engineering possibility frontier is one of sharply diminishing returns, after even only a fairly trivially small amount of initial progress. Occasionally there are bursts of progress, often as two separte areas of technological develoopment are integrated together, but even that often provides only a brief period of high returns.
What I see lacking is even a rudimentary model of what domains within technology do and do not afford for accelerating returns to scale, or what the bounds and limits of the exceptions might be, or what the actual delivered net benefit of such accelerating returns might be.
Precision generally is an area of positive feedbacks just as you describe. I only know a small amount about the practices, but the ability to measure and control with high degrees of precision have brought forth a tremendous set of advances, microprocessors being amongst them, but hardly the only.
The pharmaceuticals industry relies on precise control over feedstocks, process, consistency, and logistics chain (especially where temperature-controlled distribution is required).
Metallurgy similary developed with control over the quality of feedstocks, temperatures, pressures, and overall processing, as well as the ability to directly assess outputs, crystal structures, and the like.
Microsurgery relies on tools, sensors, and measurement, as well as coordination amongst a surgical team.
Tunnelling and mining can now occur with phenomenal precision through solid rock.
That's just a handful of examples off the top of my head as someone outside the field. I'm missing numerous highly notable examples I'm sure.
Fusion power harder than Fission, Webb harder than Hubble, bigger particle smashers harder than smaller. Sometimes earlier innovations allow you to accelerate the next innovation but eventually you get diminishing returns.
We older tech and science nerds need to be careful not to fall in the “kids these days” traps. The kids are allright, the innovations of the past were full of chaos irrationally and mistakes as well.
Innovation happens when there is a threat to civilization or national prestige.
Moving quickly requires very specific managerial skills & risk appetites.
Legacy scientific institutions (like NASA, or most universities) have basically succumbed to extreme Peter Principle: everyone has been promoted to their level of incompetence. Excellent thinkerw can make catastrophic managers.
This is a known issue in startup land, and mitigations have a been learned. Examples: independent, deep career paths for mangers and contributors. A funding model that is milestones based with minimal barriers to entry.
SpaceX of course being some sort of proof in this regard.
It's not just NASA of course. Look at ITER--a fusion project started in 2007 with an expected completion date of 2025. Or the Second Avenue Subway, or any number of infrastructure projects.
If you wrote a company manual designed to maximize the odds of failure, you'd end up with something pretty close to the way academic and govt projects are run.
The same way when you see news of large drug busts, the numbers floated around are based on how much the confiscated load could fetch on the street (iow. end of the chain, with addicts paying through the nose) - not on how much it cost to manufacture.
Project like Webb and ITER are doing things that simply haven't been done before which makes it much more difficult. They are also beholden to politicians for funding.
Especially with the rudimentary computers and calculations of the time. The James Web Telescope, is a great feat, but not in the same league as the moon landings.
Building an observatory is VERY difficult. Nevermind the "avionics" for an L2 mission, the manufacturing of the sensors, mirrors, and all the other mechanical parts are one-of-a-kind.
Webb is without a doubt an amazing feat of engineering and the engineering teams had to confront problems that were not even thought of for Apollo. Massive respect to them.
Why not? It seems an amazingly complex bit of engineering. The Apollo missions are impressive in their own right, but are they really that much more complex from an engineering perspective? The tolerances and precision required for JWST to be functional must be incredibly tight.
Indeed, we must keep in mind that the tolerance for failure was higher even as the cost of failure was higher. Do not forget the astronauts taken by Soyuz and Apollo.
Like... Apollo was utterly bonkers, bordering on full-Kerbal, in so many ways. It cost lives (5 training flight accidents, 3 in Apollo 1 fire), almost lost another 3 in Apollo 13.
JWST is proving out tons of new science and technology, but at a much more pedestrian peace.
This is a novel masterpiece of science and engineering, not a jet fighter or rocket destined for mass production and deployment. There will only ever be one, so there's literally zero room for error. Better to measure twice and cut once, so to speak.
These projects are subject to incredibly rigorous post-mortem investigations, and each cost and time overrun is _already_ documented thoroughly and publicly. Congress doesn't give this money away lightly. We know exactly why, and when, things took longer than expected, and those lessons learned are already being applied to subsequent observatories like Roman.
Nope. We as a society have just re-evaluated what is the innovation we want. In the old days it was moon programs and nuclear technology (for good and bad). Later we deemed circumventing financial regulation and getting people click ads more important.
Cathedral Notre Dame was begun in 1163, took 182 years to complete. We moderns recognize it as a thing of beauty (pre-blaze), but I'm sure it was a tour de force for technology of the times, with many unexpected problems that delayed the project.
I'm glad each project's sponsors saw them through to completion. I hope humanity continues to sign up for hard goals that take time to reach.
JWST took so long because it was so ambitious. Hubble has a 2.4m mirror. JWST has a 6.5m mirror. No rocket can launch that fully assembled so you've automatically added a bunch of complexity to unfurl and assemble that in space.
There's a whole bunch of other new things that simply have never been done before. Any one of these is a challenge. Doing them all at once with almost no margin for error and no possibility of intervention and repair drastically increases the complexity and cost.
Another example: the instruments are so sensitive that after fairing release it has to be rotated to keep them away from direct sunlight. That'll continue on the journey to its final orbit.
Also the sunshields are tennis court sized.
It is mind-bogglingly complex.
Arguably what they should've done is launch something slightly less ambitious sooner.
100 years ago, they would pick up trash on horse carriage.
500 years ago, they'd burn witches if the cows caught a virus in the village.
2000 years ago, Europe didn't write, in most countries...
It took 20 years to build this insane machine. Did we truly slow down :D Maybe americans have become biased, but as a French, just launching this thing in a machine that can launch 80 successive and productive payloads in space is a positive sign of progress compared to how far our country was 2000 years ago compared to its peers in Asia and Africa.