Webb telescope launch date slips again

We "don't have a lot of reserve" left.

Read the whole story

 

[Ragashingo]

Piracy? For something this expensive can't we get an escort??

 

[Aykernar]

The Ariane 5 is one of the most proven and reliable launch systems ever devised, but given the history of the James Webb Space Telescope I'm firmly in the camp of "check everything, check it again, then hire someone else to check it a third time... and maaaaybe just check it again after that".

Because the JWST is pretty much cursed, and everything that CAN go wrong WILL go wrong, so best make sure that NOTHING can go wrong. No tempting fate.

 

[bryanlarsen]

But not delayed until 2026? https://xkcd.com/2014/

 

[Lexus Lunar Lorry]

https://xkcd.com/2014/

 

[Drizzt321]

If they are that concerned about piracy, why not send a couple of destroyers and frigates along to escort it? I mean, that's seriously a cheaper alternative to possible piracy/damage/destruction, and even more so could be a useful exercise/training for the vessels as well as real, serious protection.

 

[idspispopd]

If they are that concerned about piracy, why not send a couple of destroyers and frigates along to escort it? I mean, that's seriously a cheaper alternative to possible piracy/damage/destruction, and even more so could be a useful exercise/training for the vessels as well as real, serious protection.

I agree. Isn't protecting important American assets at sea one of the main reasons to have a navy?

 

[Wickwick]

My local CVS is practically begging people to come in for shots. How about NASA buy enough stock to vaccinate everyone at the launch facility and their families?

 

[Drizzt321]

My local CVS is practically begging people to come in for shots. How about NASA buy enough stock to vaccinate everyone at the launch facility and their families?

That's a good point. Divert a few 10s of thousands of doses for the launch site and local area. You've got enough time, assuming you get started _now_. Or even just the J&J, one and done.

 

[Wickwick]

If they are that concerned about piracy, why not send a couple of destroyers and frigates along to escort it? I mean, that's seriously a cheaper alternative to possible piracy/damage/destruction, and even more so could be a useful exercise/training for the vessels as well as real, serious protection.

I agree. Isn't protecting important American assets at sea one of the main reasons to have a navy?

Navy, Coast Guard, National Guard, Air Force, etc. We have several branches of the DoD that could be asked to help. I don't know how many assets the Navy keeps in the Gulf of Mexico, but the other groups could certainly help too.

 

[1Zach1]

I really hope they can get to the finish line. Really looking forward to what JWST is able to show us about the early universe.

 

[ranthog]

My local CVS is practically begging people to come in for shots. How about NASA buy enough stock to vaccinate everyone at the launch facility and their families?

That's a good point. Divert a few 10s of thousands of doses for the launch site and local area. You've got enough time, assuming you get started _now_. Or even just the J&J, one and done.

I can just imagine how that will go down politically. If you're going to try to get the launch facility's staff and families vaccinated, you'd better be providing enough vaccine for a large campaign of vaccinations.

 

[jkav13]

Delayed again? At this point we have to assume that at least one of the "people" in the cleansuits are actually aliens who are deliberately sabotaging the program so that their home planet will not be discovered around a nearby star. I'd be really suspicious of anyone leaving the facility while still wearing a cleansuit....

 

[brionl]

The James Webb Space Telescope won't launch as scheduled on Halloween this year—which is definitely a trick rather than a treat for the space community. However, the delay may only be a few weeks.

So, instead of taking a drink, we just open the bottle and sniff it?

 

[Cow Towner]

If the oopsie with Hubble had not happened, maybe JWST would not have been picked over so thoroughly. On the other hand, the Hubble blurred vision problem might have been a blessing since there is no way to go out to the JWST and fix any problems.

 

[monkeycid]

Delayed again? At this point we have to assume that at least one of the "people" in the cleansuits are actually aliens who are deliberately sabotaging the program so that their home planet will not be discovered around a nearby star. I'd be really suspicious of anyone leaving the facility while still wearing a cleansuit....

I'm just waiting for the book "Among Us: An oral history of the James Webb Space Telescope" to come out once the thing is up there.

 

[Siconik]

https://xkcd.com/2014/

Funny thing about 2026 launch is that it would potentially be nice and even 30 YEARS since the start of the project. Even now, there might someone born in 1971, joined NASA after finishing their PhD in 1996, got assigned to NGST at the inception, has spent their entire career on it and will be 50 years old at launch, provided it actually goes up this year.

 

[ranthog]

If the oopsie with Hubble had not happened, maybe JWST would not have been picked over so thoroughly. On the other hand, the Hubble blurred vision problem might have been a blessing since there is no way to go out to the JWST and fix any problems.

Hubble is also a far less technically challenging project. There are things to be unhappy with the contractor on about JWST, but part of it is just that you can't really get rid of the complexity without compromising the mission of the telescope.

There is just a lot more that could go wrong with the telescope.

 

[jhodge]

Piracy? For something this expensive can't we get an escort??

If it costs $6.5 million per day for a carrier group (https://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/wp-c ... roups2.pdf), and the telescope is already a $10 billion dollar effort, just send an entire carrier group to protect it. Relatively speaking, the cost is trivial.

 

[terrydactyl]

The Ariane 5 is one of the most proven and reliable launch systems ever devised, but given the history of the James Webb Space Telescope I'm firmly in the camp of "check everything, check it again, then hire someone else to check it a third time... and maaaaybe just check it again after that".

Because the JWST is pretty much cursed, and everything that CAN go wrong WILL go wrong, so best make sure that NOTHING can go wrong. No tempting fate.

There's an argument in industry at least that TOO much inspection becomes counter productive.

 

[Mordicus]

If they are that concerned about piracy, why not send a couple of destroyers and frigates along to escort it? I mean, that's seriously a cheaper alternative to possible piracy/damage/destruction, and even more so could be a useful exercise/training for the vessels as well as real, serious protection.

And then upon arrival, there is the French Foreign Legion exercising in the tropical forests!

 

[Pueo]

Given that the JWST is being shipped from California to French Guiana through the Panama Canal I wonder how much the piracy concerns are driven by the conditions in the waters off Venezuela.

 

[lurknomore]

At least the next one can skip the "unfold the mirror" step if it fits through the starship door.
Reuse the mirror tiles, put more of them, remove part of the fragile moving parts...

We learnt enough with this prototype, can we order 4 or 6 of the cost-reduced version ?

 

[mperrin]

If they are that concerned about piracy, why not send a couple of destroyers and frigates along to escort it? I mean, that's seriously a cheaper alternative to possible piracy/damage/destruction, and even more so could be a useful exercise/training for the vessels as well as real, serious protection.

I agree. Isn't protecting important American assets at sea one of the main reasons to have a navy?

Navy, Coast Guard, National Guard, Air Force, etc. We have several branches of the DoD that could be asked to help. I don't know how many assets the Navy keeps in the Gulf of Mexico, but the other groups could certainly help too.

Not making a big public announcement about the specific shipping date is not inconsistent with having an escort. My understanding is that NASA has formally requested transportation security advice from the DoD, yes. I don’t expect much to be publicly stated about this either way. If you need to know, you do, and there’s really not a need for everyone broadly to know all the shipping details.

I will point out, shipping high value payloads to Kourou is something ESA does all the time. And not just the payloads but the rockets themselves too. Going by sea is somewhat unusual for a NASA mission these days, but not by any means unusually globally.

 

[lurknomore]

Piracy? For something this expensive can't we get an escort??

If it costs $6.5 million per day for a carrier group (https://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/wp-c ... roups2.pdf), and the telescope is already a $10 billion dollar effort, just send an entire carrier group to protect it. Relatively speaking, the cost is trivial.

I'm pretty sure you can deter Caribbean pirates with a single 150-ft USN ship.
Anything going after that isn't a pirate problem

 

[Wickwick]

If the oopsie with Hubble had not happened, maybe JWST would not have been picked over so thoroughly. On the other hand, the Hubble blurred vision problem might have been a blessing since there is no way to go out to the JWST and fix any problems.

The delays with JWST aren't because people are being super nit-picky. Ok, the most recent delays might be, but the decade before this had a lot more to do with the sunshade design than anything else. And that was mostly because the sunshade just wasn't given enough mass budget.

 

[Danellicus]

My local CVS is practically begging people to come in for shots. How about NASA buy enough stock to vaccinate everyone at the launch facility and their families?

That's a good point. Divert a few 10s of thousands of doses for the launch site and local area. You've got enough time, assuming you get started _now_. Or even just the J&J, one and done.

I can just imagine how that will go down politically. If you're going to try to get the launch facility's staff and families vaccinated, you'd better be providing enough vaccine for a large campaign of vaccinations.

The country of Guiana has a population of less than 300,000 so it should not be a problem for the US to provide some surplus vaccine (2x).

 

[mperrin]

At least the next one can skip the "unfold the mirror" step if it fits through the starship door.
Reuse the mirror tiles, put more of them, remove part of the fragile moving parts...

We learnt enough with this prototype, can we order 4 or 6 of the cost-reduced version ?

The unfolding the mirror part actually isn’t the hard part; the sun shield is far more challenging.

The general rule of thumb with projects at this scale is you can get two for 1.7x the cost of the first one. (See Mars rover recent mission costs, for instance). Economies of scale don’t really kick in dramatically until much higher build numbers. Much of the cost is in integration and test, not initial design, and that work simply gets twice as big almost-linearly if you’re building and testing two of something.

 

[Wickwick]

Piracy? For something this expensive can't we get an escort??

If it costs $6.5 million per day for a carrier group (https://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/wp-c ... roups2.pdf), and the telescope is already a $10 billion dollar effort, just send an entire carrier group to protect it. Relatively speaking, the cost is trivial.

We don't need to send an entire carrier group. In fact, I doubt there's one anywhere near the Gulf unless it's in port at Norfolk. Just a helicopter escort ship would be enough. If anyone actually started hostile action there are more air bases around the Gulf than I can count. Once we get further out the French could respond instead.

 

[bryanlarsen]

At least the next one can skip the "unfold the mirror" step if it fits through the starship door.
Reuse the mirror tiles, put more of them, remove part of the fragile moving parts...

We learnt enough with this prototype, can we order 4 or 6 of the cost-reduced version ?

If the "next one" is LUVOIR, it has a 15m mirror so will need folding even on Starship.

Although with a proposed launch year of 2039, 18m Starship should be available by then...

 

[Wickwick]

Given that the JWST is being shipped from California to French Guiana through the Panama Canal I wonder how much the piracy concerns are driven by the conditions in the waters off Venezuela.

Has it been announced it's shipping from CA to French Guiana? It seems to make more sense to ship it from Louisiana.

 

[Wickwick]

My local CVS is practically begging people to come in for shots. How about NASA buy enough stock to vaccinate everyone at the launch facility and their families?

That's a good point. Divert a few 10s of thousands of doses for the launch site and local area. You've got enough time, assuming you get started _now_. Or even just the J&J, one and done.

I can just imagine how that will go down politically. If you're going to try to get the launch facility's staff and families vaccinated, you'd better be providing enough vaccine for a large campaign of vaccinations.

The country of Guiana has a population of less than 300,000 so it should not be a problem for the US to provide some surplus vaccine (2x).

French Guiana is part of France as much as Alaska is part of the United States.

 

[Mandella]

Since mperrin ninjaed me as I was typing that nowhere was it stated that they would *not* have an escort, I'll just leave us all with a song:

Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

 

[bubbasnmp]

"These factors include shipment of the telescope, the readiness of the Ariane 5 rocket, and the readiness of the spaceport in South America as well."

Since shipping/pirates seem to be a key part of the article:
https://news.northropgrumman.com/news/r ... -telescope
"For the last time on Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope’s sunshield was deployed and tensioned by testing teams at Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California where final deployment tests were completed."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc ... es/618268/
"Later this year, the telescope will travel by ship to a launch site in South America, passing through the Panama Canal to reach French Guiana."

Don't tell the pirates.

 

[Wickwick]

At least the next one can skip the "unfold the mirror" step if it fits through the starship door.
Reuse the mirror tiles, put more of them, remove part of the fragile moving parts...

We learnt enough with this prototype, can we order 4 or 6 of the cost-reduced version ?

The unfolding the mirror part actually isn’t the hard part; the sun shield is far more challenging.

The general rule of thumb with projects at this scale is you can get two for 1.7x the cost of the first one. (See Mars rover recent mission costs, for instance). Economies of scale don’t really kick in dramatically until much higher build numbers. Much of the cost is in integration and test, not initial design, and that work simply gets twice as big almost-linearly if you’re building and testing two of something.

In this case, the cost-reduced version is the one that launches on a Falcon Heavy with a sunshield that's 3x the mass. That would be a boat-load cheaper to make and test.

 

[ivekadi]

Stealing the JWST.... well, that 2026 launch won't happen on itself.... it needs work you know.

 

[Zak]

https://xkcd.com/2014/

Funny thing about 2026 launch is that it would potentially be nice and even 30 YEARS since the start of the project. Even now, there might someone born in 1971, joined NASA after finishing their PhD in 1996, got assigned to NGST at the inception, has spent their entire career on it and will be 50 years old at launch, provided it actually goes up this year.

Wow, this puts it into perspective..

 

[unequivocal]

I think to protect against piracy, as I understand the issue worldwide, you just have to put a group of 6 soldiers with weapons on a cargo ship. No modern pirate will try to overrun a ship that has trained, armed soldiers on board, from what I've read..

I'm very confused as to why NASA wouldn't request such a detachment for such a valuable mission.