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Comment by ido | Hacker News Reader

So why couldn’t they delay the lunch by a week so everyone could spend Christmas with their families and then launch it?

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There very specific times you can launch to establish desired orbits. Typically these windows only come once every month or two.

Is that the case for an orbit around the earth-sun Lagrange point? It seems like anytime should be GTG

True. I don't think this is an orbital launch window thing. Rather, the date seemed to be driven by operational necessities (range safety, weather, the practicalities of getting the rocket ready etc).

I believe the launch windows are fairly constrained due to the precise positioning requirements as well as the requirement to avoid eclipses throughout the lifetime of the telescope. This study [1] was for a planned 2018 launch, but I'm sure there were similar constraints in this time period too.

In addition, the fuel required to position the spacecraft varies a lot depending on the day - and any fuel saved can be used to prolong the operational lifetime of the telescope.

[1] https://issfd.org/ISSFD_2014/ISSFD24_Paper_S2-6_Yu.pdf

The launching of this telescope is FAR more important and beneficial to humanity than an arbitrary holiday that celebrates the winter solstice.

Christmas doesn't celebrate the winter solstice, it happens to be a few days after the winter solstice. In some places, the solstice is far more important holiday than Christmas, like for Buddhists in HK where I live, who celebrate the solstice with family

What's stopping anyone from staying with their family one or two weeks after Christmas?

What's up with this fixation people have with arbitrary dates for celebration?

Because those "arbitrary" dates are agreed on by many. So everyone can leave their works on the same day and gather together.

that may be, but I'm totally on board with staggered, a la carte breaks. Esp. considering how many work in places that are mission-critical (or service industry) and don't take the same time off.

Moreover, I find (for myself) very little celebratable about a time of year that :

- it's more expensive to fly during

- revolves around buying, just, stuff.

Viva la holiday revolucion. Let's all pick times that work for us and our loved ones and get off the monoculture train.

My employer has a pretty good policy for that: you can bank any holiday, work on it and take the date later as you wish. It's great for other religions, non-religious people, etc., you can choose to re-use any holiday as you wish.

Would that be a part of your holiday revolución? :P

Hells yeah it would! That's really great - it adds flexibility while not clobbering what other people value. What an elegant solution.

It's a Schelling point.

Kids have time off school on Christmas and not two weeks later. And all their friends share a particular experience for the holidays and they will be the only ones not to have that. If you’re not a parent it may not be as big a deal to not be there on major holidays.

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