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[Portugeezer]

"It will take amazing images; they will be better than what Hubble did," Klaus Pontoppidan, Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore

Better (for science?). He doesn't necessarily mention optical resolution, though I'm too lazy to look it up right now.

 

[Insane Metal]

How many times better is it than Hubble roughly?

Not really comparable because it'll see images in different wavelengths than Hubble did. Mostly, infrared. But its primary mirror has a light collecting area 6.25x larger than Hubble's.

 

[Tams]

Can't wait! This really has been a long time coming. Best of luck to everyone involved!

What's with the synthetic voice with bad grammar?

 

[NecrosaroIII]

They're certainly yeeting Webb out there.

Isn't L2 where the Principality of Zeon is? Great. One more thing for them to drop on us

 

[Coolwhhip]

Hopefully we see some green men with it or it's probably unlikely for most of us here in our life time.

 

[Con-Z-epT]

What's with the synthetic voice with bad grammar?

 

[Polygonal_Sprite]

Not really comparable because it'll see images in different wavelengths than Hubble did. Mostly, infrared. But its primary mirror has a light collecting area 6.25x larger than Hubble's.

Exciting thanks.

 

[SirKicksalot]

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?

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

 

[T8SC]

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.

 

[Portugeezer]

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.

The launch is the easy part. But yeah I'll be watching.

 

[greyshark]

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?

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

 

[Insane Metal]

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

I mean, why build one when you can have two at twice the price?

 

[haxan7]

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]

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.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

They need to start assembling telescopes in space.

 

[TheCed]

This is the 15m design of Luvoir vs Webb. They also have a smaller 8m design concept.
Let's pray they develop and greenlight that 15m design

Luvoir won't happen as the Carl Sagan Space telescope took it's place.
It's gonna be smaller and cheaper to produce.

 

[greyshark]

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.

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.

 

[TheCed]

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.

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.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

Hearing Carl again makes me emotional . Brings back childhood memories of me sitting infront of the TV on a Sunday afternoon watching Cosmos documentary.

Go team Webb !!!

 

[Coolwhhip]

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]

Okay when I read about how looking into the universe actually works, my head explodes. Back to netflix.

 

[haxan7]

Okay when I read about how looking into the universe actually works, my head explodes. Back to netflix.

They’re just looking for fainter and fainter light sources right? How much does the universe’s expansion play into that?

 

[Coolwhhip]

They’re just looking for fainter and fainter light sources right? How much does the universe’s expansion play into that?

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.

 

[EviLore]

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.

 

[Coolwhhip]

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.

“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.”

 

[Thaedolus]

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.

Were you there?

 

[Coolwhhip]

“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..

 

[JayK47]

I hope the launch and deployment goes well. I want to see what this can do.

 

[Starfield]

“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..

they are not beyond our reach if we were able to open wormholes

 

[Badlucktroll]

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.

 

[Insane Metal]

Hearing Carl again makes me emotional . Brings back childhood memories of me sitting infront of the TV on a Sunday afternoon watching Cosmos documentary.

Go team Webb !!!

I just came to post this! Teared up a little. Love Carl Sagan.

 

[Thaedolus]

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

 

[NecrosaroIII]

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

In all honesty, all galaxies are out of reach. Even the next closest galaxy is 2.5 million light years away. That sort of distance is unfathomably large.

 

[Rentahamster]

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

I like the stuff on Youtube. PBS Space Time has good short videos.

 

[Coolwhhip]

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

Event Horizon on youtube is great.

 

[Tieno]

Smarter Every Day also did a nice piece on the James Web Telescope, interviewing the chief project scientist.

 

[Agent_Nobody]

Got delayed again

Launch of NASA's new space telescope delayed until Christmas Day

Liftoff of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, designed to peer farther than ever into the universe, has been delayed until Christmas Day at the earliest, due to poor weather at the launch site on South America's northeastern coast, the space agency said on Tuesday.

www.reuters.com

 

[Portugeezer]

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.

 

[greyshark]

At least it’s only a weather delay and not a other last minute malfunction.

 

[Coolwhhip]

If something goes wrong, why can't they send a spaceship there, repair it and go home?

 

[Agent_Nobody]

If something goes wrong, why can't they send a spaceship there, repair it and go home?

Because it’s going to be four times further away than the moon.

 

[Coolwhhip]

Because it’s going to be four times further away than the moon.

Yeah I know, guess a manoeuvre like that is still too hard for 'us'.

 

[NecrosaroIII]

Yeah I know, guess a manoeuvre like that is still too hard for 'us'.

Going to the moon is so tough we haven't gone in 40 years. This would be going 930000 miles to do repair work on a moving target.

 

[Pegasus Actual]

Going to the moon is so tough we haven't gone in 40 years. This would be going 930000 miles to do repair work on a moving target.

 

[Agent_Nobody]

Yeah I know, guess a manoeuvre like that is still too hard for 'us'.

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.

 

[Insane Metal]

 

[ForAcademicPurposes]

Hopefully we see some green men with it or it's probably unlikely for most of us here in our life time.

Grey. You said green men. A Reticulan's skin tone is actually grey. They're notorious for their extraction of terrestrial human livers. Due to iron depletion in the Reticulan galaxy.

 

[Agent_Nobody]

Grey. You said green men. A Reticulan's skin tone is actually grey. They're notorious for their extraction of terrestrial human livers. Due to iron depletion in the Reticulan galaxy.

Yeah, I met them once after drinking 20oz of vodka in one go. I waved at them but they just gave me the finger…those fuckers are judgemental assholes.

 

[greyshark]

If something goes wrong, why can't they send a spaceship there, repair it and go home?

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.

FAQ Full General Public Webb Telescope/NASA

James Webb Space Telescope

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.

 

[Hawking Radiation]