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James Webb Telescope

Ziggurat said:
I'm not. The time to evaluate his merits was when the telescope was being named. Maybe they should have picked a different name. But they didn't.

Changing the name now gives in to and encourages a pathological obsession with past sins. It's not healthy. And there is no limiting principle to this drive to erase the past. No name is safe.
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There are plenty of people "obsessed" with the past sins. With good reason. Don't forget the Holocaust. Don't forget the genocide of colonialism.
 
Samson said:
I wonder if building 2 of these things might have been a good idea.
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Well if there was some fundamental flaw (like the way the Hubble's mirror was made) then building 2 now means 2 machines with the same problems.

Better to wait to see what (if any) problems exist and what needs to be done to correct it before building a second.

(Even if the second was built but not launched, retrofits will probably be more of a hassle than building from the ground up)

Sent from my LM-X320 using Tapatalk
 
Segnosaur said:
Well if there was some fundamental flaw (like the way the Hubble's mirror was made) then building 2 now means 2 machines with the same problems.

Better to wait to see what (if any) problems exist and what needs to be done to correct it before building a second.

(Even if the second was built but not launched, retrofits will probably be more of a hassle than building from the ground up)

Sent from my LM-X320 using Tapatalk
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Problem with that approach: it takes a long time to build a new one.

Good thing with that approach: we've learned things in the meantime, and the new one could be better than the original.

In which case, if JWST fails, don't just build a new one, build the next generation telescope. The one that hopefully we're going to build anyway. It's not like we were going to build JWST and then have no plans for future space telescopes.

But I've got my fingers crossed that everything goes well. :)
 
Segnosaur said:
Well if there was some fundamental flaw (like the way the Hubble's mirror
was made) then building 2 now means 2 machines with the same problems.
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Not necessarily. If two independent teams each build one then they both
probably won't make the same mistake. Both might succeed, one may fail,
the other one may fail, or both may fail. So a one out of four chance that
both will fail.
 
Solitaire said:
Not necessarily. If two independent teams each build one then they both probably won't make the same mistake. Both might succeed, one may fail, the other one may fail, or both may fail. So a one out of four chance that both will fail.
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But if it's two independent teams building them, there's none of the cost savings Samson was anticipating.

Also, the chance that both will fail is the product of the chances of each of the two individuals failing. That's 1/4 only if that's what their product is, such as if each individually has a 1/2 chance to fail. I don't think either project would be funded at all if their chances of failure were expected to be that high.
 
Myriad said:
But if it's two independent teams building them, there's none of the cost savings Samson was anticipating.

Also, the chance that both will fail is the product of the chances of each of the two individuals failing. That's 1/4 only if that's what their product is, such as if each individually has a 1/2 chance to fail. I don't think either project would be funded at all if their chances of failure were expected to be that high.
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Except as Puppycow pointed out this is swim or sink.
I am now thinking that 10 billion is a modest expenditure, and future projects should be calculated with multiple redundancy contingencies funded by the wide boys from America, Russia, China, India and Mexico.
 
a_unique_person said:
There are plenty of people "obsessed" with the past sins. With good reason. Don't forget the Holocaust. Don't forget the genocide of colonialism.
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I don't think you understood my point. When the telescope name was being chosen, Webb's alleged sins were already in the past. And I said that that was the time to evaluate him. So I explicitly supported evaluating the past, and not forgetting it.

But the relevant "sin" in question now, after the name was already chosen, isn't actually whatever Webb did. That was relevant when the name was chosen. The sin we're actually evaluating now was choosing the wrong name. And not only are Webb's sins far removed from the Holocaust or colonialism, but naming the telescope after him is also removed from what Webb did. So making comparisons to genocide is so hyperbolic as to be irrelevant.
 
Samson said:
Except as Puppycow pointed out this is swim or sink.
I am now thinking that 10 billion is a modest expenditure, and future projects should be calculated with multiple redundancy contingencies funded by the wide boys from America, Russia, China, India and Mexico.
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10 billion isn't a modest expenditure.

For comparison, it's similar to what would have been spent on the Super Conducting Super Collider. That was cancelled after something like 20% of its budget had already been spent, because Congress just decided that it was too expensive.

If you want to start spending a lot more money on astronomy it makes less sense to just make two of everything than it does to make more. Get the next generation space telescopes approved and built.
 
Puppycow said:
This thing is such an intricate apparatus and every single part has to work correctly. There won't be any possibility of sending a space shuttle out to repair it this time. That's what worries me.
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I'm pretty sure Elon would work something out.
 
Roboramma said:
10 billion isn't a modest expenditure.

For comparison, it's similar to what would have been spent on the Super Conducting Super Collider. That was cancelled after something like 20% of its budget had already been spent, because Congress just decided that it was too expensive.

If you want to start spending a lot more money on astronomy it makes less sense to just make two of everything than it does to make more. Get the next generation space telescopes approved and built.
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Yes but the new generation of tech 100 billionaires have associated interests
Not when this was designed eg.
 
Ziggurat said:
Not enough less.
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To be fair though, this was often that case in the past, wasn't it?

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were basically identical copies of the same design, right?
Same with Viking 1 and Viking 2, and some of the Mars rovers.

But in this case I think I understand why they only built one.

Sure, if they are exact copies of each other, you don't need to redesign the second one, but actually building it seems to be what costed most of the money.
 
Puppycow said:
To be fair though, this was often that case in the past, wasn't it?

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were basically identical copies of the same design, right?
Same with Viking 1 and Viking 2, and some of the Mars rovers.

But in this case I think I understand why they only built one.

Sure, if they are exact copies of each other, you don't need to redesign the second one, but actually building it seems to be what costed most of the money.
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Yeah, the JW is considerably larger, more complicated, and much more expensive than the Voyager, Pioneer and Viking missions.
 
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