The continuing technical troubles of the James Webb Space Telescope.
The continuing technical troubles of the James Webb Space Telescope.
Though it appears they are keeping within their latest budget and scheduling margins (which is almost nine times the original budget and almost a decade behind the original schedule), the number of issues described in this article is quite worrisome.
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The continuing technical troubles of the James Webb Space Telescope.
Though it appears they are keeping within their latest budget and scheduling margins (which is almost nine times the original budget and almost a decade behind the original schedule), the number of issues described in this article is quite worrisome.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
It’ll launch and work fine. As in, discover a whole bunch of stuff that no-one understands anyway (which is an accurate description of cosmology in general).
A few years after they’ll start talking about the next decade long development program, low ball the estimate and starve every other program.
No lessons will be learned.
Hi Trent,
I think you are too nonchalant about the success of Webb. This is probably the most risky science project NASA has ever attempted. Though the track record is generally good for NASA science missions, there is still a gigantic chance that Webb will fail, especially because it is so cutting edge. It must operate for years in the shadow of the Earth, where things are very cold and dark. Making hardware that can function in this environment is the real challenge of the project, one that no one has ever done before.
As for lessons learned, I think the situation here is comparable to Hubble in the 1980s. The astronomy community went for a big project then, and ended up being very pissed with how Hubble ate up the entire astrophysics budget at NASA for a decade. They thus hated Hubble, and vowed never to let such a thing happen again. The result was that in the 1990s astronomers built a lot of inexpensive very effective space telescopes that supplemented and complemented Hubble very effectively. And they built them for cost and very efficiently.
In other words, that generation of scientists learned the lesson. However, the generation of astronomers to follow, in the 2000s, forgot the lesson, or became arrogant, and pushed for Webb, and ended up getting a big project that has eaten the entire astrophysics budget at NASA for two decades.
Thus, the cycle now repeats. It is my impression that today’s generation of astronomers feels exactly the same as those astronomers in the 1980s: They hate Webb and want it out of the way. And they are determined never to let another big project do this again. Expect to see a lot of smaller, more efficiently-built space telescopes in the 2020s
NASA, an lifelong employment agency for engineers who couldn’t get hired in the private sector.
NASA, proving that any 5 year project can be stretched out to 10 years with enough engineers working on it.
Sarcasm off.
I too want NASA to play with all the latest cutting edge technology. But there has to be a limit. When its so cutting edge that implementing it might, or is, starting to delay the project its time to drop that tech and work around it.
If you can’t possibly work around it then take that as a lesson that your reaching too far and should scale back those ambitions.