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Comment by artimaeis | Hacker News Reader

I'm just a space nerd, all the below is conjecture.

Lots of talk about refueling even with the 20 year lifespan, from what I've gathered having watched a lot of the NASA conferences and livestreams this past year, with this amount of operational fuel capacity the problem in 20 years will be on operational lifetime of wear components, not just the fuel.

The reaction wheels are _large_ moving parts on the JWST. The cryocooler for the MIRI is a very finely calibrated moving part. It's a closed system, but still relies on pumps and electronics. After 2 decades of operation it's very likely that these will be experiencing some issues.

While in 2 decades it might be feasible to refuel the JWST, it seems very unlikely it'd be worth it given the operational wear of every other component. Had we used too much fuel to correct the course to get where we are the math may have been very different. Seems to me that we're fortunate that we can instead dedicate resources to the next-gen observatories!

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With SpaceX Starship the space industry is going to be very different in 20 years time. Launching new telescopes, even larger ones, will be much easer.

Attempts to refuel will be completely unneeded.

Edit:

This seems to be a controversial opinion (based on down votes). To clarify, my expectation is that if launch costs have come down as much as people suggest, launching a new and improved (potentially significantly larger) space telescope would be a better use of funds than a complicated and risky refuelling mission. There will be many lessons learnt from JWST that by then there will be an appetite for something new.

My hope also is that if the cost to launch has come down so would the development costs of any new satellites, leading to reduced costs for science missions.

That's negating the cost of the telescope itself, though. JWST may be more expensive than something you could launch with e.g. Starship, due to the need to fit into an Ariane 5 payload, but it's still an insanely high-precision instrument that would surely have cost $billions even without the unfolding procedure. If you could refuel it for, say, $250 million, because Starship, why not do that instead of launching a new telescope for $5 billion?

I agree with your point but I think that $5 billion is an overestimate for a telescope as capable as JWST which is much less mass/volume constrained. ELT, a ground based telescope vastly more capable than JWST, is expected to cost €1.3 billion.

I don't think ground-based telescopes are really comparable to space-based. Just one of the issues with JWST is the exotic construction required for heat management, which would be an issue for any space telescope even if it was teleported into orbit. This is comparably not an issue with ground-based stuff where you have infinite power, coolant, and heat sinks; e.g. for the ELT: "ESO is aiming to implement proven technologies and commercial off-the-shelf components to build the cryogenic infrastructure for the ELT instruments. A combination of open loop Liquid Nitrogen cooling and low-vibration mechanical cryo-coolers will be installed to provide the required temperature levels and cooling capacities."[0]

I grew up at Lick Observatory in the Bay Area, and really love ground-based stuff, but I'm somewhat familiar with their operations and I guarantee it's got nothing on space 'scopes.

[0] https://www.eso.org/sci/libraries/SPIE2018/10706-47.pdf

You yourself are making a good argument for why massive reduction in launch costs (like 3 or 4 orders of magnitude compared to Ariane) changes things dramatically. Heat management becomes easier when you can afford liquid cryogens like Spitzer or a larger and cheaper (more ground-like) cryocooler.

You literally could have 1000 tons of liquid nitrogen delivered to your telescope if you needed to, if it saved $1 billion.

I think people still aren’t understanding the ambitions of Starship. We’re not talking about a 30% improvement in cost. But a 300000% improvement in part because you could even afford human technicians…

I'm well aware of the capabilities SpaceX is promising! This is why I said, "even if the telescope was teleported into orbit." If a new ground-based telescope is still $1 bil then something which has to operate in hard vacuum, high radiation, and with even greater temperature differences, with far less provision for repair (even with Starship), will be hard-pressed to come in at an even smaller budget. Then again, $1 bil ain't what it used to be.

On the other hand, you don’t need a massive, expensive structure to keep the mirror from deforming under gravity, everything is already vacuum insulated for you, humidity isn’t a problem, you get 24/7 energy from the Sun using just solar panels (no diesel generators), you don’t have concerns for building on sacred land, you have like 3-4 times the observing time per day (which directly impacts cost per observing hour), independent of weather, access to both hemispheres, and no (or much less) need for expensive adaptive optics and laser systems to partially correct for the atmosphere.

All true! And mostly better for the ultimate purpose of a telescope, which is why we prefer to put them in space. However none of those advantages offset the greater cost, e.g. your "expensive structure to keep the mirror from deforming under gravity" is simply a steel scaffolding. Admittedly to higher precision than an office building, but not extraordinarily so. I think perhaps you are not respecting the challenges of space and the cost to operate reliably in it, even if launch costs were zero and mass unlimited, so I'd encourage you do do a little more research.

> vastly more capable than JWST

... not at the same wavelengths. The earth's atmosphere is largely opaque to IR, for instance.

And even if not opaque, the thermal signature of the atmosphere itself would degrade signal from distant objects.

There are some things you can only do beyond the atmosphere.

Dust also greatly degrades earth based telescopes abilities.

Skyglow, atmospheric distortion, atmospheric absorption of specific frequencies, wind, the Earth's inclination, orbit, and rotation (limits time-on-target for any specific target of interest), local conditions (static electricity being a major issue for the ESO in Chile, given elevation and lack of humidity, all electronics must be static-tolerant or resistant), etc., etc.

Not that space isn't also hard, but each environment has both affordances and limitations.

really though, if Starship is that capable, and JWST is still usable, I think you do both. If only to test really crazy things that you haven't been able to look at before because the time was too valuable.

Lower launch costs could enable cheaper R&D for the satellite itself by enabling more testing of components in orbit rather than trying to nail the calculations ahead of time.

Refuelling satellites is currently a hot topic in the aerospace world. No matter how cheap launch gets (and there are some very real limits to how cheap it can get for orbits like what the JWT is in), the hardware itself is quite expensive and it's often worth maintaining older scientific missions for continuity.

Propellant is often a key limitation to life of a satellite, especially for earth-observations sats in low earth orbit (the opposite of the JWT), and it's well worth refuelling a satellite in principle.

The JWT is a _lot_ of expensive hardware. It's not crazy at all to think about refuelling, especially if it's expending significant propellant to say in a stable orbit +/- maneuver for imaging operations.

All that having been said, refuelling is still a long way from reality, and despite a lot of companies marketing refuelling ports and similar things, it will be a long while time until it's a realistic solution. Over the lifetime of the JWT, it probably will become feasible, though.

Refuelling seems to be more like to be done by bolting another engine + propellant, than actually refuelling the in-service engine, based on current concepts.

Some commercial companies (e.g. Orbit Fab) are selling refuelling ports for satellites, FWIW. NASA put a lot of research into it as well, IIRC. For the JWT it's probably quite different, but for commercial earth observation sats, there are lots of folks considering including some of the refuelling port designs in current hardware even though the actually "refuel in space" service isn't available yet.

I too am a big fan of SpaceX but I think it is fair to say things like "If SpaceX Starship" rather than assume it is going to work and work affordably.

Agreed. Also a fan of SpaceX, but I think NASA's approach is 100% reasonable: quietly prepare plans to take advantage of starship (see: LUVOIR) but wait until Starship is proven to do the high level push to switch.

I suspect you're being excessively dinged for the absolute statement that refueling will be completely unneeded.

It's fair to say that over two decades, additional capabilities will exist.

Given the advances in launch systems, both in situ assembly (large structures w/o complex packaging and deployments), and planned servicing and replaceability could mean that both arguments are true:

- We'll have bigger, more capable, and/or simply more observatories.

- Those themselves will be capable of being serviced and upgraded over their own lifetimes.

Keep in mind that one element of science that's advanced by such projects is engineering systems for space environments themselves. Vacuum, radiation, micrometeorites, station-keeping, gravitational flux and variance, materials handling (cold-welding, lubrcation, moving parts, etc.), thermal management, and design-for-servicing itself, all factor in to considerations.

It seems highly probable to me that any such servicing itself will all but certainly be robotic. At L2, speed-of-light issues are a factor as there is a one-way signal time of five seconds, long enough that direct control of physical manipulators is no longer feasible, or very slow. (Imagine that you reach for a wrench, and ten seconds later, see that your hand has actually extended and contacted it.) And putting humans in such a location, only reachable over many days or weeks, well out of Earth's magnetosphere radiation projection, would be fantastically expensive.

> - We'll have bigger, more capable, and/or simply more observatories.

The LUVOIR is the next generation - https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/luvoir/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Ultraviolet_Optical_Infr...

The design for it is really impressive.

> LUVOIR Architecture A (LUVOIR-A) features a 15-m diameter primary telescope aperture and four serviceable instruments

JWST has a 6.5 meter mirror.

In 20 years we might be able to spamcraft a bunch of ~3m space telescopes and be able to measure their positions with sufficient precision to enable long baseline interferometry in the IR and optical spectrum. We might never build this large of a single instrument again.

The difference is the light gathering size.

The larger the aperture, the smaller the resolved object that we can look at. For example, looking at the central black hole of M87 which is on the order of "diameter of the solar system" ( https://xkcd.com/2135/ ).

However, the only reason we are able to resolve it is that it is so bright.

But if you want to look at dim objects, then the area of the light gathering is the important value. That is why Arecibo was so important ( https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005AAS...207.2907D/abstra... )

For the HSA - it used the largest of the radio dishes available - https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/vlba/HSA

The Green Bank Telescope 100m and the Effelsberg 100m telescopes are much more sensitive than the VLA... but the VLA can resolve 0.2 and 0.04 overall.

So yes, we could send up a bunch of 3m space telescopes out to the L2 point - but how many individual miniature instruments are we going to need to make for each, how much propellant will be needed for each, how will you keep the cold side cold (size matters)?

While I'm not a rocket scientist, I'm not sure that those are easy problems to solve... and I feel like they're much harder problems to solve than ones that the JWST and the current line of telescope proposals have.

>the absolute statement that refueling will be completely unneeded.

>It's fair to say that over two decades, additional capabilities will exist.

Capability doesn't create need, in either a technical or economic/resources sense.

Too many people are interpreting "unneeded" as: "a satisfactory amount of fuel for a long-enough lifespan, but more would be better"...

When it really means: "fuel is no longer the most likely controlling/ limiting factor as to what ultimately triggers the end of webb's usable/useful lifespan".

Even if fuel ends up being the actual limiting factor, no ability to extend the (likely) lifespan of ALL the other critical components makes refueling a high-risk, high-cost, low-return venture.

So, I agree that there are likely multiple paths to end-of-mission for JWST.

And that fuel itself, over 20 years, could prove not to be the limiting factor.

There remains the point that you've stated, and are again asserting, an absolute condition, that refueling is completely unneeded. Given that a now + 20 years JWST that is still functional except for fuel might exist, that categorical absolute remains unjustified, regardless of how probable it might be. And again, it's specifically how you're communicating this that seems to be raising objections.

None of us have a perfect view of the future. JWST itself offers only an improved view of the past, after all.

If refueling was already a highly questionable proposition given 5 or 10 years of fuel, having ~20 years of fuel certainly doesn't increase the reward in risk-vs-reward analysis.[0]

In what hypothetical scenario does fuel deplete at a greater than expected rate, in a way that wouldn't also call into question the reliability and expected lifespan of the remaining limiting factors?

Accidental commanded release? A leak? Station-keeping being more demanding than expected? Those would all move risk-v-reward in the wrong direction.

And it doesn't substantially decrease the cost or risks, other than what might be gained by an extended development period, which would need to be weighed against simultaneous advances better applied to and spent on a successor.

So maybe not an absolutism, but an already highly-unlikely proposition who's chances of implementation just decreased dramatically due to the new information at hand.

[0] By ending up with an older/ closer to failure but refueled satellite, and a decreased relative value of remaining potential science/observations, presuming highest value science is done first.

These are good points.

They are not the elements of your initial nor follow-up comments with which I've had issue. And you continue to not address those.

As for what might lead to low-fuel-but-serviceable observatory: reaction-wheel degreadation shy of failure (there are multiple redundant wheels for each axis of rotation), possibly some kind of solar-storm or solar-wind interaction which increases station-keeping requirements.

It's difficult to foresee what previously anticipated scenarios might emerge, for all the obvious reasons. But if I had a $10 billion low-on-fuel observatory on my hands, it was still turning in good science, and my capabilities to provide it with fuel had improved markedly, and there was nothing else obviously imminantly limiting lifetime ... I might opt for the top-up. Even at a cost of a few sheckles.

Keep in mind that the opportunity cost isn't the amortised value of the observatory, but its projected future life and the cost of replacing that functionality. I don't know what the associated values here are. I could envision a reality in which those turned favourable for a refueling mission.

Which, again, contradicts your original, and several-times-sustained, "completely unneeded" assertion.

The horse seems quiet well flogged, and in the interests of a peaceful death, I'm begging off further beating of it.

I think we'd be pretty much in agreement if only 5 years of fuel were left.

> Capability doesn't create need, in either a technical or economic/resources sense.

Of course it does! Today we have all kinds of needs that people 20, 100, 1000 years did not have. That's because the capability to do something created the need for it.

For an obvious example, people need iphones. Nobody had one 20 years ago.

For another, deodorant wasn't needed 100 years ago. The need for it was totally created by the ability to manufacture it.

Semantics, I suppose.

Capability allows the market to exist and creates potential for demand.

For certain levels of actual demand and saturation, social/cultural normalcy and expectations might lead to "need" as you describe it.

But in this case, I meant specifically that Webb, given 20 yrs of remaining fuel, won't suddenly "need" refueling if the experimental technology suddenly becomes avaliable in 19 years, as the remaining system also approaches end of life.

Fuel is no longer the most likely point of failure for determining lifespan. That might have been different if Webb had to use more fuel on its trajectory burn, had only a few years of fuel, and the technology was extant/eminent and cheap.

The risk-v-reward calculus would completely different, but unlikely to change at this point.

If my truck throws a rod on a roadtrip in Alaska and I limp upon a gas station as my 20yo dying truck burns the last of its gasoline... I don't "need" gasoline, I need a flight home and a new truck.

How dare you share your opinion and positive outlook about SpaceX.

I wouldn't worry about the junks, they're fake internet points that mean nothing.

I suspect the only "controversy" in your comment is that you said something positive about SpaceX.

I believe the GP is correct: wear and tear on existing components means that fuel won't be the only issue in 20 years. Hubble has been serviced 5 times [1] for example.

Part of the complexity (and thus cost) for JWST was all the issues introduced by trying to fit a 6.5m mirror on existing rockets. All those moving parts and points of failure have design costs.

What you may find in 20 years is that we'll want to launch an even larger mirror and/or use interferometry between multiple telescopes to improve effective resolution.

[1]: https://www.space.com/15892-hubble-space-telescope.html#:~:t....)

It's weird, Musk was the golden child on HN about 2 years ago when he was electrifying cars, now a pariah because of his wealth.

its very hard to build something. its really easy to tear something/someone down

There's two things that go into that IMHO:

1. People like to hate on things and people just because they're popular when there's literally no other reason; and

2. A large number of people will let their personal opinion drive their behaviour. Elon is a dick, no question. Because of that some people will just downvote or speak ill of SpaceX or Tesla. Worse, this dislike can be used to rationalize pretty antisocial behaviour (eg doxxing, swatting).

What SpaceX has done is nothing short of astounding whether you like him or not. I'm not sure of the exact number but I believe SpaceX has raised <$20B and brought launch costs from >$50k/kg (Space Shuttle) to $1-2k/kg to LEO. It seems highly likely that Starship will drive that below $1k/kg, possibly by a lot.

By comparison, a single SLS/Artemis launch is likely to cost more than that.

And if you think it's just a question of throwing money at the problem, just look at the abject failure that is Blue Origin (fun fact: Blue Origin was founded 3-4 years before SpaceX).

I don't see him being treated as a pariah on here. He is being judged by the many things he does which as times goes on will vary more and more. Some will attract praise and some will attract scorn.

I would bet big that most people on here have a fairly balanced opinion of him that roughly would look like:

- Almost single handedly accelerated the electrification of cars by a couple of decades

- Together with many amazing engineers, scientists and more, led to huge reductions in launch costs and increased frequency of launches

- He acts carelessly online with respect to the law around securities

- He acts carelessly online when he wants to insult someone

- He doesn't really care much about light pollution that affects astronomers

- Overhypes many of his ideas and doesn't recognise any criticism of his failures

- Has an implausible idea that we can colonise Mars this century

I am both impressed by the man and have a few misgivings. Like any human being he is multifaceted.

Hyperloop BS was a big turning point for me. That flipped my opinion of him from a smart guy with a lot of resources to do what he wanted to a rich idiot that got lucky hiring great people.

Listen to some in depth interviews with him on technical subjects. He’s a jerk, but certainly not an idiot.

He certainly comes across as a jerk at times but I am wary of thinking we have a good handle on what he is really like at all.

I think the one thing we can be sure of is that he is no idiot. He's very very smart at many things.

But like anyone he does idiotic things at times but I suppose they are amplified by his strange life.

It makes more sense if you consider it's just a cover for developing habitat construction tech.

> It's weird, Musk was the golden child on HN about 2 years ago when he was electrifying cars, now a pariah because of his wealth.

I wouldn't say he's a "pariah because of his wealth." If anything, he's probably a pariah for consistently, wildly over-promising (overshooting "optimist" to land in "liar" territory) and being a jerk (e.g. defaming that the cave diver, among other things).

Then add to that obnoxious fanboys who've made him a weird tech Jesus, and who defend him and bring up his brain farts at every opportunity. I, at least, wouldn't mind never hearing about him again. Lets hear about the cool people who actually did the cool stuff (and just happen to work for companies he's invested in) instead.

Elon has stated that his main goal is to save humanity with technology - so he's made himself tech Jesus.

I think a certain Thai rescue plan and attacking an individual may have something to do with that. Musk is a great entrepreneur, but not a nice person.

The kids were lucky they didn't need his help in the end (less flooding than worst case scenario) and the old white expat wasn't even a rescuer.

yeah, the capabilities of JWST was limited by its size which was limited by payload capacity. Also its cost was driven up by lots of things to deal with the size problems, like all of its folding stuff. We could put up something cheaper and better today if we just had the payload capacity.

Additionally, you might prefer to leverage the low launch cost to use a different approach than JWST uses. Basically, Big Spitzer.

Instead of a huge sunshade, use a telescope tube and a huge amount of liquid helium (even the relatively small amount in Spitzer lasted many years, and this is one instance where mass directly translates into time). Instead of big unfolding mirror, use a monolithic one.

This would actually be technically superior to Webb (colder mirror and instruments than you can get with the typical Webb cryocooler, less starlight impacting the instruments as your telescope tube with baffles shields it better, less diffraction off the mirror segment interfaces) and ought to be potentially much simpler and cheaper. And you could afford to build more than one, allowing you to reduce risk aversion slightly and increase telescope time.

I’m not sure if the launch cost was a driving factor in JWST’s price tag. Granted a lot of the engineering was constrained around how to deal with the massive forces involved in launch but I suspect those forces will still be in play with starship.

Yeah you might be able to get bigger and heavier but it still needs to contend with launch forces.

Now assembling it in space might change things… but I’m sure that has its own challenges. And even then you’d probably want a space elevator instead of rockets to get your people and equipment int local orbit.

I think the idea is that if the launch cost is so much lower you can take more risk with the design as you can more easily justify launching again or take a more iterative design approach.

The Arian 5 costs around $185M to launch, they therefore need to make sure it works first time.

Starship is estimated to be $2-10M.

The JWST cost nearly $10 Billion and 24 years to build on earth. This is not a launch cost problem.

How much of that time and money was R&D and prototyping, and how much of that was the bespoke production of this single unit?

There is some previous discussion on what it would cost to manufacture a copy of JWST in this discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29725799

Speculation is somewhere in the 70%-90% of original cost.

If you were making the same thing at the same time, it'd be about 30%. That is, previous space missions that have built 2 flight articles have spent about 30% more.

Doing it after the fact--- some design work would be saved, but how much of the tooling and supply chain still exists? Parts are going to need re-engineering, etc.

JWST, like all things in space, has all sorts of complications caused by the launcher.

Size constraints are particularly obvious. For instance, it's 6.5M diameter mirror needed to fold up for launch to fit inside the less than 5.4M diameter fairing. That would fit comfortably without folding in Starships 9M diameter. The sunshield wouldn't quite fit unfolded (14m x 29m), but you can almost guarantee that it would have had a simpler deployment mechanism.

Mass constraints are maybe more important, but less obvious. JWST weighs 6161 kg, Starship is aiming for a payload of more like 100,0000 kg, and by taking advantage of orbital refuelling the capability to put that anywhere instead of it being severely reduced past LEO. That means you can use heavier mirrors instead of optimizing them for weight, you can build your structures out of easy to work with materials light metal, instead of hard to work with ones like carbon fiber. You can oversize parts, and include redundant ones if you think they might be needed.

Even if you totally ignored the cost of the launch, the capabilities of a super heavy launcher would make a huge difference. The cost is the icing on the top. It means that as long as you can build a second version for substantially cheaper than the first, you don't have to design the first so that it never fails. For instance, you don't have to design your heatshield on earth and never test the design in 0G until it's on your 10 billion dollar satellite that has to work...

The question is how much of that cost was involved in getting it to fit the launch constraints? The materials chosen, the unfolding method, etc. On top of all of that, it has to be made so that it absolutely cannot fail.

Imagine instead launching components that could be docked together in orbit, tested, and then boosted to it's destination orbit.

> I think the idea is that if the launch cost is so much lower you can take more risk with the design as you can more easily justify launching again or take a more iterative design approach.

You can also remove large categories of risk by freely spending mass and volume.

> Starship is estimated to be $2-10M.

Don't believe the hype. If Starship works out, they can beat other paths to orbit by a fair margin, but it's not going to be a >10x reduction. Much likely much less than that, too.

The launch costs weren't a driving factor but the launch restrictions made the engineering costs a driving factor.

There should never be such an expensive program again because hopefully we'd realize its easier to also build a massive 1-off rocket for it instead of years developing awesome folding things. Has all the money SpaceX have ever spent so far even come to 10 billion yet?

The JWST can fit in Spaceship’s cargo area unfolded. Although I’m partial to the idea of putting a giant telescope in a crater on the dark side of the moon

cost to refuel JWST: $500M

cost of a new JWST without a foldable mirror and a static sunshield: $2B

why not do both?

Please at least let it reach orbital flight before we start dreaming.

Cost is important, certainly, but the available space inside of the payload fairing is going to be a huge boon for future telescopes. From what I recall, a tremendous amount of effort went into folding up the JWST just so it would fit in the small space provided by the biggest rocket they could get in 1997.

Given the forthcoming availability of larger diameter rocket fairings, I think we'll see a number launched that will make JWST obsolete at the end of 20 years, but who knows!

the large rocket you're talking about has been said to possibly make that particular company bankrupt if they don't manage to ramp up their engine production soon. and the market for heavy launch vehicle is tiny. only 3 FH were flown as far as i know.

also the irony here is that the only the only client this company has now is itself to launch his telecom satellite swarm, which in turn will have a negative effect on ground observations, both in VIS and RF bands. astronomers heavily rely on ground based observations, because on the contrary to space telescope the can modify their instruments easily.

you can do a lot with other technologies, for instance diffractive lenses, chronographs as a separate spaceship, etc, etc... the best for a telescope is not always to have the biggest single piece mirror.

i know i know, i'll get heavily downvoted for the above, i just don't like that the said company test their stuff in a middle of a natural reservation.

> has been said to possibly make that particular company bankrupt if they don't manage to ramp up their engine production soon. and the market for heavy launch vehicle is tiny.

I read Musk's statements regarding this towards his workforce as a pure power play to put pressure on them working even harder on ongoing issues like you mentioned.

So is there any indication his statements aren't true?

I don't have any insights into this but that wasn't my point. I simply pointed out my opinion, that the message was so intense, that it was looking to me as a pressure play.

That being said - if you can produce n amount of engines per time frame, I am positive that they manage to achieve n*x amount of engines per the same time frame as well.

I see, I was wondering why an intense message would indicate a pressure play rather than a grim reality.

> i know i know, i'll get heavily downvoted for the above, i just don't like that the said company test their stuff in a middle of a natural reservation.

Wasn't that a bit of over-inflation from dodgily-backed NIMBYs, especially in a state where petrochemical industries have abused a lot more natural environments?

There's not just SpaceX creating large rockets. Neutron, New Glenn etc. I'd hope some of those would be running in 20 years time or even better. FH can have a larger fairing but it's not 9m, not by a long shot. Also we'll see 3 this year, there was supposed to be one a couple of months ago but the payload wasn't ready.

Also, sure you can have more complex methods to get to the stage where it's analogous to a single large mirror, but that's why it took 25 years to make JWST (amongst policical reasons too, but still).

If constellations are so bad to astronomy, why do ESA want one?

Finally, I think you'll find KSC in Florida is slap bang in the middle of a huge nature reserve, as it has been for the past 50+ years

Those all have a fraction of the chances of success that SpaceX has.

Really? RocketLab are going great guns. There's nothing outlandishly novel with their Neutron design (bar the 007 style fairing). If you've not seen the recent interviews with Peter Beck, I'd highly recommend you to do so.

Their payload masses are a joke, and they are more than a decade behind SpaceX at this point in terms of development and experience. Falcon 1 was retired more than a decade ago, and they are still flying the equivalent today.

I don't think they realistically stand a chance to outcompete SpaceX within the next ten years on any dimension, after all, SpaceX is a fast moving target itself. But that's just my opinion, so we'll have to wait to see how it plays out.

It would be great to have a real competitor to SpaceX, that can't come soon enough, I do give them better chances than Bezos and his toy factory.

For space telescopes (which this topic is about) doesn't need super heavy lift capability, just larger diameter. Neutron is planned to be 7m diameter.

Please, just watch the interview. It might change your opinion by listening to the plan, I know I felt much more optimistic about more serious players in the field.

I agree in principle, I think they are the #5 player right now in the commercial lift arena, SpaceX first, ArianeSpace second, ULA third, the Russians fourth and then Neutron. Which is quite an achievement. There are other players but those are not commercially available. So they are in excellent company but they still have a very long way to go, which given their funding is only to be expected. Once they start to fly heavier payloads and more complex engine configurations they will be a player to be reckoned with.

I'd be interested to see what the Arianne 6 turns out like given A5 is now sold out, but it still won't be reusable so high cost despite half an A5, but that doesn't matter as their main customer is ESA and they're pretty wedded to them politically.

I'm not aware of any reusable vehicles by ULA and all the current flights are fully booked, they're sold out of their current block. There were only a handful of launches last year, I think Electron actually flew more. For the new, they're waiting for engines from Blue Origin but they'll probably end up using RS as it doesn't look like BO will deliver.

The Russians (and Chinese) are basically copying anything SpaceX in terms of reusable heavy lift, which might be a good plan in the long-term but it's not that innovative.

Better a good copy than a bad original. Copying the leader is smart. Innovation is expensive and risky, something the Chinese are not very well equipped to do (yet) and the Russians can't afford.

I think long term if Ariane Space and ULA don't adapt that they'll die unless they keep being subsidized. But if SpaceX manages to reduce cost even further then that will make no sense, it is already very hard to justify.

> i just don't like that the said company test their stuff in a middle of a natural reservation

I guess you must really hate NASA then.

> Visitors to Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex are often surprised to discover that they are just as likely to be greeted by an alligator or dolphin. This is because Kennedy Space Center sits in the middle of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge adjacent to Canaveral National Seashore, one of the largest and most diverse wildlife preserves in Florida. In fact, the refuge supports one of the highest numbers of threatened and endangered species anywhere in the nation.

https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/blog/07/the-wild-side-of-...

You don't have to hate NASA to lament their riding roughshod over threatened species' habitats on a routine basis.

Do you have sources for them doing that on a routine basis?

I see a very large amount of launch infrastructure. You don't build that much without disregarding the needs of what lived there first.

Much of it was built before the EPA existed, so routine was routine. But, it is still being expanded, lately on behalf of SpaceX. Scheduling in lots of studies and meetings just amount to delaying, if they can't actually affect whether the paving happens. No amount of public hand-wringing gives a turtle back the nesting site its ancestors have returned to for a million years, or a hundred million.

You may as well condemn all of south Florida. How dare they.

OK. But who is "condemning" here? Floridians, looks like.

95% of the land isn't used by any launch infrastructure, only 5% of the land is used, so please, how is this routinely abusing the area?

They have paved all they wanted to, so far. When they want to pave more, they will. Then it will be "only 10%", "only 15%", "only 20%", and on up.

So, you still can't tell us how this is routine abuse? Come on.

If they've built on 5% of the land in 50 years, then we should have another 950 years of expansion, at that extrapolation.

You are aware there is a conservation programme running too?

5% of what? They paved over 100% of what they paved over. That number will not change, however much they pave over.

If the supposed conservation programme doesn't actually block paving, then it is what they call a formality. Business-as-usual is routine.

The US space program was practically moribund for those 50 years. The paving was done quickly at the start. With space activity ramping up, paving will too, as we see starting already. What are you demanding as a definition of "routine" beyond paving where they like, when they like?

The US Space programme was moribund? No Space Shuttle launches then?

You say they are routinely abusing the area and all I'm getting from that is that they've paved over areas, 5% of the area. How is this routinely abusing the area?

Could you post an journal article explaining how this has routinely abused the area and put the ecosystem at risk?

Could you post a journal article identifying what percentage of an already radically reduced habitat of numerous threatened and endangered species can be paved over without driving any of them closer to extinction?

It also may just be technologically obsolete in 20 years.

This is helped a lot by the fact that's it's quite hard [EDIT: = expensive] to place an upgraded telescope somewhere. Hubble is still used despite it's tech being a few decades old.

I'm trying to parse those sentences, are you saying there are space constraints with hubble? it's orbit isn't at a particularly special elevation or inclination, I'm pretty sure we could have several telescopes in the same exact orbit but half an hour behind with no discernible consequences. Even out at the lagrange points, you don't have to be /exactly/ there, many cubic kilometers of space have roughly the same properties that make it appealing for JWST.

It's really expensive to get telescopes up in space. We have a lot of astronomers that could use some time on a space telescope, but launching enough to supply all of them is not economically viable in any way. Sure, the stuff hubble is currently used for is not as groundbreaking as when it was launch, but we still have use for it.

My point it is, we have so few space telescopes that even having time on an "outdated" one is still pretty valuable.

EDIT: Maybe a better example, it's not much use for a first-world person to use a ten year old smartphone, since current smartphones are much more capable and they're comparatively cheap. Planes, on the other hand, are used for decades, since simply buying a new one is very expensive. This is despite it's tech being far superior.

Putting a device into space is relatively cheap for a project like this, and is only dropping with each year. Say $100M - $200M, on a $10B project, puts the launch at just 1-2% of the price tag. I believe the Hubble total project cost is pushing past $16B in adjusted dollars.

It's the massive capital expenditure on the telescope and its infrastructure that is the significant limiting factor on the pace of putting newer and better telescopes in place.

Apparently for the cost of all the Shuttle trips to Hubble, they could have just put up another Hubble without its problems.

Same thing in this case: instead of visiting Webb, they could build a new Webb without all the origami, and assemble it by hand in orbit for a tiny fraction of the cost, and end up with two of them. Then, maybe put different instruments on the second one.

That's not the right way to look at it.

A telescope that can see back to the beginning of the universe is never obsolete to astronomers. The Hubble is 'obsolete', but there are plenty of astronomers that would step over their own mothers to get time on it.

Sorry for the total digression that follows

> but there are plenty of astronomers that would step over their own mothers to get time on it.

May I suggest "there are plenty of astronomers who would cut their left hands to get time on it". Similarly florid, but does not propagate the meme "people will often be evil for the right price" -- that meme is self reinforcing, the more we believe in it, the more true it becomes, and the worst the world becomes as a result

> the worst the world becomes as a result

I believe the world becomes even worse when people are unable to speak candidly, frankly, and in their own way. Being able to extract and recognize the meaning behind someone's words, in spite of any perceived flaw in word choice or phrasing, is one of the hallmarks of a mature and intelligent individual.

This belief that controlling how people speak will somehow make the world a better place seems somewhat quixotic.

> This belief that controlling how people speak will somehow make the world a better place seems somewhat quixotic.

100% agree. The way we talk, I think, matters. The stories we tell ourselves help shape us. But so does it matter how we try to change it.

Forcing/controlling the way people speak is a remedy worse than the malady 97% of the time, and certainly in the present case.

(Also, it is reasonable that you would interpret my suggestion as an attempt to control, given some elements of the current political climate)

Another example of a poorly told story that worries me: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-...

Having more telescope capacity is always nice. An outdated telescope is better than no telescope.

it can only be obsolete if there's a replacement deployed. given the cost, it is unlikely to have one as long as the one that is working keeps working.

best case you have two working mid-IR telescopes in space instead of one. i don't hear any astronomers complaining about that scenario!

I generally agree with your assessment that there are other moving mechanical assemblies that are likely to fail at some point as well so the practicality of re-fueling may not be optimal.

But I also just wanted to point out as people discuss re-fueling that some of the concepts for this are not just open up the fuel tank and add more fuel but it might be operationally simpler to make a satellite that attaches like a jetpack [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Extension_Vehicle

That's probably true.

There's still cause for optimism, NASA hardware has a reputation for outlasting its designed lifetime by quite a bit.

reaction wheels are a new kind which does not suffer from failures like the Kepler - this is a very recent development.

electronics on the voyager still work, 45 years after launch.

it is possible that things will break. it is also possible that they won't. we'll see in 20 years, but having an option on the table in case they do work is simply prudent engineering.

the reaction wheels have failed on a number previous missions, it appears to be down to solar storms inducing current in the spacecraft and arcing across the bearings causing pitting, and so increased friction.

I don't think they can know for sure, however the bearings have been designed with this in mind using ceramics. Also I just realised with the JSWT going around the L2 point it won't be cutting through the Earth's magnetic field, mind you it will be exposed to the direct solar wind.

I wonder how well the child comments will age in 20 years

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