Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
I used to work just down the road from the Space Telescope Science Institute during college. I'd get lunch in their cafeteria every once in a while. Pretty neat institute.
I wonder if they have an animation prepared for the mirrors all simultaneously cracking and shattering into a thousand pieces
Does that give bad luck to the people who designed it, the people who are controlling it, the people who programmed it, or is it just years of bad luck for the entire planet that had the hubris to launch mirrors into space?
If it's the last one, can we use the past decade or so as "time served" and call it even?
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
They're in the process of latching the secondary mirror in position now.
I wonder if they have an animation prepared for the mirrors all simultaneously cracking and shattering into a thousand pieces
Does that give bad luck to the people who designed it, the people who are controlling it, the people who programmed it, or is it just years of bad luck for the entire planet that had the hubris to launch mirrors into space?
If it's the last one, can we use the past decade or so as "time served" and call it even?
Bad luck for humanity, and it applies retroactively, which explains pretty much everything
CONFIRMED: “The world’s most sophisticated tripod” has not only deployed but also latched!
Each of the struts for this tripod, which helps #NASAWebb’s secondary mirror direct light into the instruments, is about 25 feet long (7.6 m)! http://blogs.nasa.gov/webb #UnfoldTheUniverse
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Is there a reason why they didn't construct this thing in orbit and send it off in its final form, instead of using 400 critical stages of butt-clenching potential total fuckup points?
I wonder if they have an animation prepared for the mirrors all simultaneously cracking and shattering into a thousand pieces
Does that give bad luck to the people who designed it, the people who are controlling it, the people who programmed it, or is it just years of bad luck for the entire planet that had the hubris to launch mirrors into space?
If it's the last one, can we use the past decade or so as "time served" and call it even?
Bad luck for humanity, and it applies retroactively, which explains pretty much everything
Is there a reason why they didn't construct this thing in orbit and send it off in its final form, instead of using 400 critical stages of butt-clenching potential total fuckup points?
to construct it in orbit they'd probably have to send up a manned spaceflight crew to do it, which would be way more expensive maybe? I dunno
their robotics tech seems pretty reliable though, I think the doom and gloom about places the process could still fail is just to manage expectations in case something does go wrong.
I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I think assembling it in space wouldn't even be possible at this time.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
We do not have anywhere close to the capabilities to construct anything like this in space. I'm not sure we can really construct anything in space right now.
Is there a reason why they didn't construct this thing in orbit and send it off in its final form, instead of using 400 critical stages of butt-clenching potential total fuckup points?
I'm not a space engineer (or any kind of engineer), or particularly knowledgeable in such things, but I feel like accelerating it in it's final deployed form would induce a lot of stress to frame extremities.
You'd either require a very slow acceleration, or a lot more support frame to keep the thing rigidly intact while accelerating it. Or, you could accelerated it as a small compact unit and then unfold it as the entire thing is, essentially, in free fall towards the sun.
I'd imagine that having it unfolded in orbit would also give it exponentially more surface area to ding into some random bit of orbital garbage, which I think would be an even more ignominious death for the thing than any of the potential failure points that we're imagining in it's reverse techno-origami.
But, as I said, I've no knowledge to confirm any of this, just guessing based on a lifetime of too much sci-fi.
Is there a reason why they didn't construct this thing in orbit and send it off in its final form, instead of using 400 critical stages of butt-clenching potential total fuckup points?
Because you'd turn those 400 points of failure into tens of thousands, spanning multiple years of manned launches and costing untold billions of dollars more?
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
edited January 2022
I mean they built the ISS in orbit didn't they? Which is why I asked. And I meant as like a modular thing, I wasn't thinking they'd rocket 10 million nuts and bolts and a guy with a spanner into space
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
Is there a reason why they didn't construct this thing in orbit and send it off in its final form, instead of using 400 critical stages of butt-clenching potential total fuckup points?
I mean they built the ISS in orbit didn't they? Which is why I asked. And I meant as like a modular thing, I wasn't thinking they'd rocket 10 million nuts and bolts and a guy with a spanner into space
Realistically, we don't have refueling depots in orbit or cheap reusable ways to get into orbit to support building up there so building it up in orbit and then getting it out to L2 with our current capacities is a lot harder/longer than launching it all in one go.
I am not a rocket scientist, but my best guess as to why they didn't build it in orbit and then send it off to L2 is that being able to use the momentum from the launch to send it on its way was way more valuable/economical/etc. Otherwise they'd need to get it up to a stable orbit with people who can put it together (assuming it's okay for it to be put together within Earth's space debris field), send it on its way with some sort of new rocket setup to have it break orbit and get moving, and then have those people come back down: way more complex than having it unfold itself while it's on the one month trip out to its final destination.
Opty on
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I mean they built the ISS in orbit didn't they? Which is why I asked. And I meant as like a modular thing, I wasn't thinking they'd rocket 10 million nuts and bolts and a guy with a spanner into space
For the ISS, we built the modules as whole, functioning, self-contained chunks, launched them, and docked them together to make a larger station. But every module was a self-contained thing with all the circuitry, mechanical parts, etc, fully assembled and integrated on earth. No part of Webb is really able to be made modular like that, it's all one integrated craft.
I am not a rocket scientist, but my best guess as to why they didn't build it in orbit and then send it off to L2 is that being able to use the momentum from the launch to send it on its way was way more valuable/economical/etc. Otherwise they'd need to get it up to a stable orbit with people who can put it together (assuming it's okay for it to be put together within Earth's space debris field), send it on its way with some sort of new rocket setup to have it break orbit and get moving, and then have those people come back down: way more complex than having it unfold itself while it's on the one month trip out to its final destination.
Also not a rocket scientist, but yeah - it probably requires more delta-V to first get a stable orbit then shift to a trajectory to L2.
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I think a reasonable analogy might be that building the ISS was like putting a modern desktop PC together: every component is its own complicated thing but they're built to be plugged into each other with minimal hassle to make a cohesive whole.
The JWST is basically a GPU, in this analogy. It's something that has to be put together as one unit, it can't really be assembled elsewhere.
I think a reasonable analogy might be that building the ISS was like putting a modern desktop PC together: every component is its own complicated thing but they're built to be plugged into each other with minimal hassle to make a cohesive whole.
The JWST is basically a GPU, in this analogy. It's something that has to be put together as one unit, it can't really be assembled elsewhere.
I mean, it was assembled on Earth just fine. The issue is just "why not do that in space". And ultimately it's just infrastructure - it's so much cheaper to assemble and test things on Earth. Orbital assembly only really works for things that don't have to come from Earth or are too big for a single lift (ISS) I think. If we had infrastructure on the moon and resource supply to the moon, etc. that didn't need to go up and down Earth's gravity well... then it wouldn't have been built on Earth.
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Smof's question was specifically about why we didn't make the JWST out of several smaller, modular components that could be launched without needing to be folded and packed and then assemble it in orbit before shipping it to L2 a la the ISS to avoid the challenges of folding/unfolding required to fit the entire observatory in a payload fairing.
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
Imagine if something went wrong with a piece up there and then a government reacted stupidly and decided to pull out.
I think ultimately the answer to why the ISS was built in pieces in orbit and the webb telescope wasn't is "because we could make the telescope small enough to fit in a single payload"
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Oh I think people would have loved to make it modular and assemble it on the way to L2 without needing to do a bunch of folding that introduced over 400 single points of failure into deployment. There just wasn't any way to really do that.
Our “trap door” is now open: the ADIR (Aft Deployable Instrument Radiator) has swung out from the back of the telescope to radiate heat from our science instruments into space. https://go.nasa.gov/3f1TaH2 #UnfoldTheUniverse
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No cameras, but they have a 3D model that responds to a live feed of telemetry from JWST. Currently they're doing pre-deployment checks.
Does that give bad luck to the people who designed it, the people who are controlling it, the people who programmed it, or is it just years of bad luck for the entire planet that had the hubris to launch mirrors into space?
If it's the last one, can we use the past decade or so as "time served" and call it even?
Bad luck for humanity, and it applies retroactively, which explains pretty much everything
James Webb’s Basilisk
More social media impressions doing it this way
their robotics tech seems pretty reliable though, I think the doom and gloom about places the process could still fail is just to manage expectations in case something does go wrong.
I'm not a space engineer (or any kind of engineer), or particularly knowledgeable in such things, but I feel like accelerating it in it's final deployed form would induce a lot of stress to frame extremities.
You'd either require a very slow acceleration, or a lot more support frame to keep the thing rigidly intact while accelerating it. Or, you could accelerated it as a small compact unit and then unfold it as the entire thing is, essentially, in free fall towards the sun.
I'd imagine that having it unfolded in orbit would also give it exponentially more surface area to ding into some random bit of orbital garbage, which I think would be an even more ignominious death for the thing than any of the potential failure points that we're imagining in it's reverse techno-origami.
But, as I said, I've no knowledge to confirm any of this, just guessing based on a lifetime of too much sci-fi.
Because you'd turn those 400 points of failure into tens of thousands, spanning multiple years of manned launches and costing untold billions of dollars more?
It took 25 years to build.
Realistically, we don't have refueling depots in orbit or cheap reusable ways to get into orbit to support building up there so building it up in orbit and then getting it out to L2 with our current capacities is a lot harder/longer than launching it all in one go.
ISS was at least not leaving Earth orbit.
For the ISS, we built the modules as whole, functioning, self-contained chunks, launched them, and docked them together to make a larger station. But every module was a self-contained thing with all the circuitry, mechanical parts, etc, fully assembled and integrated on earth. No part of Webb is really able to be made modular like that, it's all one integrated craft.
Also not a rocket scientist, but yeah - it probably requires more delta-V to first get a stable orbit then shift to a trajectory to L2.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
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The JWST is basically a GPU, in this analogy. It's something that has to be put together as one unit, it can't really be assembled elsewhere.
I mean, it was assembled on Earth just fine. The issue is just "why not do that in space". And ultimately it's just infrastructure - it's so much cheaper to assemble and test things on Earth. Orbital assembly only really works for things that don't have to come from Earth or are too big for a single lift (ISS) I think. If we had infrastructure on the moon and resource supply to the moon, etc. that didn't need to go up and down Earth's gravity well... then it wouldn't have been built on Earth.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
I mean
Given its instrumentation it can at the very least how hot your kinks are
*Ba-dap*
The tweet says "soon," but it's currently underway according to the webb.nasa.gov website.
so has the official twitter account blocked Nasa's sun, earth, and moon accounts.
https://twitter.com/catsmovie/following
Wait... If it's blocking Earth, how can they send commands to it?
The part that looks at things is blocked from earth.
I cannot see the joke, because I do not have twitter