• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

James Webb space telescope (JWST) launch scheduled for 24th of December.

Will JWST successfully deploy in space?

  • Yes. Good chance it goes well.

    Votes: 123 74.1%

  • No. I think something will fail. (no way to fix)

    Votes: 11 6.6%

  • Shepard.

    Votes: 32 19.3%
  • Total voters
    166
  • Poll closed .
NecrosaroIII

NecrosaroIII

Ultimate DQ Fan
Ozzy Onya A2Z said:
They're certainly yeeting Webb out there.

l2.2.jpg
Click to expand...
Isn't L2 where the Principality of Zeon is? Great. One more thing for them to drop on us
 
SirKicksalot

SirKicksalot

Member
haxan7 said:
A question that’s come to my mind is:

If the worst case scenario happens and it blows up on the launchpad (god forbid), how much of the project would actually be lost?

Obviously they’d have to rebuild everything. But all the science and engineering man hours, new developments, etc that went into this means they wouldn’t be going back to square one. Would it be 5 years lost? 10? 1?
Click to expand...

10-11 years - 5 for the mirrors, 1.5 for building the rest, 4 to test the assembled telescope.
 
T8SC

T8SC

Member
Feels like its taken forever, definitely going to be nerve-wracking. Hopefully all will go well and it won't need to visit the opticians a few months later.

I'll watch the launch live.
 
Last edited:
greyshark

greyshark

Member
haxan7 said:
A question that’s come to my mind is:

If the worst case scenario happens and it blows up on the launchpad (god forbid), how much of the project would actually be lost?

Obviously they’d have to rebuild everything. But all the science and engineering man hours, new developments, etc that went into this means they wouldn’t be going back to square one. Would it be 5 years lost? 10? 1?
Click to expand...

I assume they’ve already built a second one in secret.
 
haxan7

haxan7

Banned
There’s certainly no dearth of JWST content on YouTube. I just watched this 30 minute deep dive into the engineering of it, which I came to realize barely scrapes the surface of its complexity.

One of the NASA people said they hope to eventually be able build and assemble future much larger telescopes all in space.

 
Ballthyrm

Ballthyrm

Member
I hope it works but i don't think it will.
344 single point of failure is too many.

If it fails I hope they learn not put all their eggs in one basket and the KISS principle.

I can't understand how they were allowed to get to that point TBH.
 
greyshark

greyshark

Member
Ballthyrm said:
I hope it works but i don't think it will.
344 single point of failure is too many.

If it fails I hope they learn not put all their eggs in one basket and the KISS principle.

I can't understand how they were allowed to get to that point TBH.
Click to expand...

While this has been tested as much something can possibly be tested, it’s insane that they put so much time and money at risk for something that can irreparably fail in so many ways.
 
T

TheCed

Member
Ballthyrm said:
I hope it works but i don't think it will.
344 single point of failure is too many.

If it fails I hope they learn not put all their eggs in one basket and the KISS principle.

I can't understand how they were allowed to get to that point TBH.
Click to expand...
This seems to be the plan now.
They don't want to go the 5 billion+ dollars telescope in the future and would prefer to do smaller 2.5 billions ones.
 
Coolwhhip

Coolwhhip

Neophyte
Can we see less of the big bang as time goes on? If the universe is expanding faster than light, what does that mean for us looking at the big bang? 😵‍💫
 
Coolwhhip

Coolwhhip

Neophyte
haxan7 said:
They’re just looking for fainter and fainter light sources right? How much does the universe’s expansion play into that?
Click to expand...

I dont know, I dont understand that part. The universe is expanding faster and faster, already faster than light. So I dont get how we can even see light from the big bang at all.
 
Coolwhhip

Coolwhhip

Neophyte
EviLore said:
The CMB, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, is our strongest evidence of the Big Bang. It's everywhere in the observable universe, which tells us that all the matter/energy in the universe was in the same spot 13.8 billion years ago.

Planck_satellite_cmb.jpg
Click to expand...

“But here’s the thing: that light is everywhere. That light — the light that we observe as making up the CMB — was emitted from all points in the Univers, everywhere, all at once, some 13.8 billion years ago. The light that was emitted from our location has been travelling away from us at the speed of light for the past 13.8 billion years, and owing to the expansion of the Universe, is now some 46 billion light-years away from us.

medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-why-doesnt-the-afterglow-of-the-big-bang-eventually-fade-away-162c8ebf1281

“But before those photons arrived, there were photons arriving from slightly closer locations. And after those photons are done arriving, they’ll be replaced by photons that are arriving from locations that are slightly further away. This will continue for all eternity, as while both the number density and energy of these photons will continue to drop, they’ll never go away completely. The Big Bang filled the entire Universe with this omnidirectional bath of radiation. As long as we exist in this Universe, the Big Bang’s leftover glow will always be with us.”

🤯
 
Last edited:
Coolwhhip

Coolwhhip

Neophyte
“Light leaving “now” from most of the objects currently in our observable universe will never reach us if the universe continues to expand at an accelerating rate as we currently think it does. The size of our observable universe will continue to expand but, paradoxically, objects will recede across the horizon and become causally disconnected. In the (extremely) long term we will be left with just the objects in our Local Group of galaxies. We will live in a universe with just one galaxy, just as we used to think we did less than a century ago!”

“Only 6% of presently observable galaxies remain reachable; 94% already lie beyond our reach.”

So most things far away we will only see a distant past version of, ever. Reading about space can drive you mad..
 
Last edited:
Starfield

Starfield

Member
Coolwhhip said:
“Light leaving “now” from most of the objects currently in our observable universe will never reach us if the universe continues to expand at an accelerating rate as we currently think it does. The size of our observable universe will continue to expand but, paradoxically, objects will recede across the horizon and become causally disconnected. In the (extremely) long term we will be left with just the objects in our Local Group of galaxies. We will live in a universe with just one galaxy, just as we used to think we did less than a century ago!”

“Only 6% of presently observable galaxies remain reachable; 94% already lie beyond our reach.”

So most things far away we will only see a distant past version of, ever. Reading about space can drive you mad..
Click to expand...
they are not beyond our reach if we were able to open wormholes
 
Badlucktroll

Badlucktroll

Member
So they are going to point this thing at the trappist-1 system? The trappist star is a red dwarf. My guess is all the planets will be airless, and radiation blasted.
 
D

Deleted member 1159

Unconfirmed Member
This thread seems as good as any: anyone recommend any space documentary type shows on any streaming services? I’ve got Disney, HBO and Prime…looking to enjoy my new TV some while the end of year work is slow
 
Portugeezer

Portugeezer

Member
The new targeted launch date is Dec. 25, as early as possible within the following launch window:

  • Between 7:20 a.m. and 7:52 a.m. Washington
  • Between 9:20 a.m. and 9:52 a.m. Kourou
  • Between 12:20 p.m. and 12:52 p.m. Universal (UTC)
  • Between 1:20 p.m. and 1:52 p.m. Paris
  • Between 9:20 p.m. and 9:52 p.m. Tokyo
Suuuure.

See you next year guys.
 
Agent_Nobody

Agent_Nobody

Member
Coolwhhip said:
Yeah I know, guess a manoeuvre like that is still too hard for 'us'.
Click to expand...

If something went wrong sending a human to fix it is likely completely off the table. Getting a robot to repair it might be viable, but developing it and sending it there might be more time, money and work than just making a new one. Keep in mind a lot of the things that can go wrong here are the things that are meant to keep it in proper orbit around the sun, if something like the light sail doesn’t deploy properly it could drift so far out of range it would be too far out to do anything about it before they could even plan a repair mission.
 
Last edited:
greyshark

greyshark

Member
Coolwhhip said:
If something goes wrong, why can't they send a spaceship there, repair it and go home?
Click to expand...

Bottom line it has not been designed to be serviceable. Even if we made a drastic leap in technology and could get out to the telescope itself can’t even be accessed by a potential repair unit.

jwst.nasa.gov

Webb FAQs - NASA Science

General Questions About Webb Webb’s Orbit Webb’s Mirrors Webb’s Instruments & Technology Webb Science Building and Using Webb Webb and the Public Basic Science More Information General Questions About Webb What is the James Webb Space Telescope? The James Webb Space Telescope, also called Webb...
jwst.nasa.gov jwst.nasa.gov

  1. Why is Webb not serviceable like Hubble?​

    Hubble is in low-Earth orbit, located approximately 375 miles (600 km) away from the Earth, and is therefore readily accessible for servicing. Webb will be operated at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, located approximately 1 million miles (1.5 million km) away from the Earth, and will therefore be beyond the reach of any crewed vehicle currently being planned for the next decade. In the early days of the Webb project, studies were conducted to evaluate the benefits, practicality and cost of servicing Webb either by human space flight, by robotic missions, or by some combination such as retrieval to low-Earth orbit. Those studies concluded that the potential benefits of servicing do not offset the increases in mission complexity, mass and cost that would be required to make Webb serviceable, or to conduct the servicing mission itself.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

James Webb Space Telescope: Jupiter
32
3K
E-Cat replied
After 20 Years, NASA completes the James Webb telescope. The most powerful ever!
3 4 5 6 7
345
48K
XMonkey replied
  • Locked
SpaceX Falcon 9 FT Launch of CRS-8. First Stage Ocean Landing Successful
2 3 4 5
248
31K
HellBlazer replied
  • Locked
Hubble Space telescope continues to impress
2 3 4
175
15K
GillianSeed79 replied
  • Locked
TIME Magazine's Top 50 inventions of 2009
2
89
8K
XiaNaphryz replied
Top Bottom