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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/launch-of- ... s-to-2021/

This does not look good. It is increasingly sounding like this is an absolute dumpster fire of a project, with astronomical sunk cost and high odds of complete failure (likely resulting in near-total loss of the time and money invested). I do not object to (and in fact favor) government funding for big "basic science" projects, but it seems to me that the risk/reward profile for this one has gotten out of whack.

just brew it! wrote:

This does not look good. It is increasingly sounding like this is an absolute dumpster fire of a project, with astronomical sunk cost and high odds of complete failure (likely resulting in near-total loss of the time and money invested).

TOTALLY PLAGIARIZING THAT FOR MY NEXT POST ABOUT INTEL'S 10NM PROCESS!

Slightly more on topic, a little noticed factoid is that several years back the CIA/NRO literally handed NASA the optical packages for not one but two better-than-Hubble optical space telescopes that had originally been intended to be spy satellites that never got launched.

https://www.space.com/16000-spy-satelli ... -nasa.html

Has NASA actually done anything with this free gift? Nope. Too busy dumping money on Webb and making sure that astronauts have to pay for rides to orbit in lots and lots of rubles.

...wait, people are actually surprised by this? NASA has been useless ever since they stopped being run like a military unit in the 70s. Heck, most of the Elon Musk idol worship comes from his somehow managing to do more than a few years than the supposed experts have in forty and with a much smaller budget. Suffice to say I don't fall in the "government should fund basic research" camp and stuff like this is the reason why.

JBI wrote:

This does not look good. It is increasingly sounding like this is an absolute dumpster fire of a project, with astronomical sunk cost and high odds of complete failure (likely resulting in near-total loss of the time and money invested).

Yeah, it's one of those things that would be great to have, but we got way, way too ambitious with.

Better to have something marginally better than Hubble (bigger mirror, still in LEO) than something like this which has already cost a fortune and has so many fricking many things that can go so utterly wrong assuming we ever manage to launch it at all.

Ugh, such a shame.

Baby steps!

NovusBogus wrote:

...wait, people are actually surprised by this?

I'm not surprised. I've ranted about the JWST before in the R&P forum; perhaps we can keep this thread from veering there. (Or maybe I should just preemptively move it...)

NovusBogus wrote:

NASA has been useless ever since they stopped being run like a military unit in the 70s. Heck, most of the Elon Musk idol worship comes from his somehow managing to do more than a few years than the supposed experts have in forty and with a much smaller budget. Suffice to say I don't fall in the "government should fund basic research" camp and stuff like this is the reason why.

Except that Musk isn't really doing a whole lot of "basic research". He's exceptionally good at applied R&D (and marketing) though. It's a "move fast and break things" model, but applied to physical systems instead of online ones. More power to him, but I'd be willing to bet he would never attempt something like the JWST.

IMO government should be funding research into foundation science and technology which have a payoff timeframe that is longer than what commercial venture capitalists and Wall Street investors are willing to tolerate. But there needs to be a plausible payoff, and risk needs to be adequately managed. I'll just leave it at that.

Glorious wrote:

JBI wrote:

This does not look good. It is increasingly sounding like this is an absolute dumpster fire of a project, with astronomical sunk cost and high odds of complete failure (likely resulting in near-total loss of the time and money invested).

Yeah, it's one of those things that would be great to have, but we got way, way too ambitious with.

Better to have something marginally better than Hubble (bigger mirror, still in LEO) than something like this which has already cost a fortune and has so many fricking many things that can go so utterly wrong assuming we ever manage to launch it at all.

Ugh, such a shame.

Baby steps!

I'm not sure how LEO would've impacted the sort of science they wanted to do. But if Hubble taught us anything, it's that a system of that magnitude of cost and complexity needs to be serviceable, because there will inevitably be issues which need to be dealt with after the fact, and it's just too damn expensive to say "oh well, we'll just write that off and launch another one".

Just want to point out that another big budget Northrop/Harris satellite launched recently has a failed cooler. There has been no news in a month since the failure was announced of NOAA's GOES-17 cooling system.
https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/sci ... ance-issue

Thankfully most of the JWST cameras are passively cooled, but there is one that is actively cooled. The GOES satellites have been constructed at the same time as JWST, and used the same kind of Pulse tube cooler design.

https://jwst.nasa.gov/cryocooler.html

edit: fixed typo...doh. thanks man

Pet peeve: It's Northrop, with an 'o'. Yes, the CBS piece got it wrong too.

My technical knowledge goes beyond me but I think a more cautious approach of slowly iterating with improving tech is better than just trying to fly before you run. One, you will learn from the costly mistakes of running. Second, Hubble was successful, but only because it was serviceable in space. The big red-flag for me is this thing is not. Too many variables to go wrong, and the risks too high for them. Engineering is about managed risks; NASA and its contractor seems to know no better. And no, canceling the project is not a waste of money if we manage to allocate better those resources to better managed projects. The point is not to have the "infinite sinews of government" print more money because it just creates a bigger mis-allocation of funds. If there is mismanagement then we need to fire some people at NASA. We need accountability, yet Congress seems derelict in its duties: withhold funding, use the constitutional power of the purse!

uni-mitation

The reason why they want to throw in L2 instead of LEO is because it is a PITA to keep something as powerful as Webb steady as possible. IIRC, it was going to do infrared observations which work far better when you are out in middle of no where instead of having to deal with a massive heat source (Earth).

Optical (visual wavelength) space telescopes are nearly obsolete anyway with the fairly recent developments in adaptive optics. They nearly negate most of the issues with Earth's atmosphere(Light pollution and cloudy weather being the only remaining problems)

Once a project gets in the Billions, the budget needs to be looked at much finer detail. Too big, too fast. Think of how many more Kepler or TESS satellites they could launch for the same price.
As for serviceability, we no longer have the ability to service things in space without the Shuttle Orbiter.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

Once a project gets in the Billions, the budget needs to be looked at much finer detail. Too big, too fast. Think of how many more Kepler or TESS satellites they could launch for the same price.
As for serviceability, we no longer have the ability to service things in space without the Shuttle Orbiter.

And JWST isn't going to be in orbit anyway...

just brew it! wrote:

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

Once a project gets in the Billions, the budget needs to be looked at much finer detail. Too big, too fast. Think of how many more Kepler or TESS satellites they could launch for the same price.
As for serviceability, we no longer have the ability to service things in space without the Shuttle Orbiter.

And JWST isn't going to be in orbit anyway...

It'll be in orbit, just not LEO. There are quite a few scientific satellites in the L2 Legrange point.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

It'll be in orbit, just not LEO. There are quite a few scientific satellites in the L2 Legrange point.

Yeah, my bad!

Northrop Grummqn mostly stays in business by racking up cost overruns at the taxoayers’ expense.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Northrop Grummqn mostly stays in business by racking up cost overruns at the taxoayers’ expense.

They've been on a roll lately. Especially after screwing up the Zuma payload adapter.

My best friend is working on this project*, I'll have to ask him what he knows.

*Not for Northrop.