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comment by am_Unition
am_Unition  ·  843 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Webb Space Telescope Will Rewrite Cosmic History. If It Works.

It'll work. The biggest reason it's so behind schedule and over budget is because they're making damn sure everything's good to go.

Honestly, though, there's a fiscal argument against that sort of treatment. There isn't any quality assurance oversight required for sounding rocket missions (sub-orbital, and typically flying through the aurora), and even though the success rate is only maybe 85%, you're saving shittons of money by not trying to guarantee that last 15% or 14%. More than enough to just build the thing twice and fix whatever wrong and try again. Of course, it gets complicated because subcontractors have reputations to maintain, especially for the bigger, costlier missions.

I'm pretty excited for all the breakthroughs in cosmology this should enable, but I'm absolutely stoked about imaging other solar systems. I'm consciously expecting wayyyyyyy too much. Like if I go and look up the imaging resolution of the thing, I know I'm gonna be disappointed, so I just, uh, won't.





goobster  ·  842 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I also know it will be outside of "repair range" at L2, unlike Hubble. So once it is there, it has to work, 100%, the first time, because there's no shuttle mission to adjust/tune anything once it is in place.

Fingers crossed!