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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  834 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Webb Space Telescope Will Rewrite Cosmic History. If It Works.





am_Unition  ·  833 days ago  ·  link  ·  

My boss once told me that if I wasn't breaking things from time to time, I wasn't really working in the lab. I've definitely pressurized a small vacuum chamber instantly. I've also blown LN2 boil-off wayyyyy too quickly through a flight-qualified instrument. Got lucky - no damage. Knew a scientist who dropped a flight instrument he was handling, one of the sensors that eventually flew to Pluto on New Horizons, and he was forever known as Dr. Destructo. But none of this was as bad as the time one of the techs left a pen inside the biggest vacuum chamber on campus. They had to clean. Everything.

But what Lockheed did there is like breaking The Thing. It still blows my mind that the interfacing flange bolts of an entire payload were somehow gone (not loose: gone) before someone decided to rotate it, presumably to measure the moments of inertia(?).

If JWST fell like that, it'd be donezo. The hexagonal mirrors would surely be warped to the point of scrapping. When I hear about mishaps that will cost a few more days, I breathe a sigh of relief. The good news about launching something to Lagrange point 2 is that Earthen Lagrange points ain't going anywhere. You don't need gravity assists like a planetary mission, so your launch window is "whenever JWST is ready".

omfg I can't wait for this thing to start operating.