I'm haunted by the image of a fiery explosion at a launch site during the fueling stage of a Space X rocket that had an Israeli comms satellite on board. During the footage, you could see the comms satellite topple out and fall to the ground (around 0:11). Hundreds of millions of dollars and countless man-hours gone in a flash. I really felt for those teams. All the projects I've worked on have been small potatoes by comparison - payroll and the like - but seeing it all go in a puff of smoke would be a severe test.

The story of Webb makes it very questionable if Nancy Roman will be shot up in time (2025?). Webb was about to be launched in 2010, and costed about 1 billion. It became 10 billion and 2021. I'm not sure I would have been happy with that if I had let my house built...
The micro shutter array was revisited (problems with the 248 000 micro windows, through which photons pass before detected), the actuators (capable to adjust the 18 mirror pieces with a precision of 1/10000 of a human hair!) needed adjustment, in 2015 it was reviewed and then again the project was delayed. It seems the path of all modern engineering projects. A date and a cost are determined and both turn out to be totally wrongly assigned. And the list goes on. Tax payers should be compensated. The engineers might feel nausea when all goes astray (how appropriate!), but what about the people who actually paid for it?

From an article on the net:


$1 billion and launching in 2010.

Planning for a telescope to come after Hubble began in 1996, but the Webb did not get its current name until 2002. NASA picked Northrop Grumman to build it, estimating costs from $1 billion to $3.5 billion. Mission managers expected it to launch as early as 2010.

Construction of Webb’s most complex structures — its main science instruments and the massive 18-plate mirror — began in 2004. In 2005, a review prompted redesigns to scale back its technical complexity.



$4.5 billion and launching in 2013.

Though less complex, the telescope became more expensive, with the price tag swelling to $4.5 billion, and NASA officials estimated a new launch date in 2013.

Well into the telescope’s construction around 2009, engineers and NASA officials began to grapple with the difficulty of inventing, building and testing cutting-edge technologies.

One challenge was developing the observatory’s “cryo-cooler” to keep Webb’s ultrasensitive infrared sensors and computers from overheating in space. Developing the telescope’s micro shutter array, a small device crucial to surveying massive swaths of the sky, was also difficult. The device, the size of a postage stamp, contains some 248,000 tiny shutters, or windows — each only a few times larger than a human hair — that open and close to allow light in.



$8.8 billion and launching in 2018.

An independent review of the program ordered by Congress in 2010 “found that the program was in a lot of trouble, and it wasn’t going to meet its cost and schedule deadlines, and it was not being funded appropriately, and there were a lot of management and oversight issues that were called out,” Ms. Chaplain said.

“I think it was a bit of a surprise,” she said. “It hit Congress pretty hard.”

The review estimated a new cost of $6.5 billion and a launch date of September 2015. In response, some lawmakers proposed a bill that would have canceled the telescope entirely.

But NASA vowed to get the program back on track, and prepared new estimates: an $8.8 billion total charge, including development and managing the telescope after its launch, with an October 2018 launch date.


To keep NASA in check, Congress capped the cost of the program’s development at $8 billion and required Ms. Chaplain’s team at the G.A.O. to conduct annual audits. It “was probably the first time we were asked to look at a major NASA program every year,” she said.


$9.6 billion and launching in 2021.

The telescope’s construction was completed in 2016. That’s when NASA and Northrop Grumman discovered a new set of bugs.

In 2017, NASA announced it would need to launch the telescope in 2019, because “integration of the various spacecraft elements is taking longer than expected,” the agency’s science chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, said in a statement at the time, stressing the change was not the result of any accident. No boosts to the program’s budget were needed, the agency indicated.

Then, an independent review in 2018 found that a handful of human errors had caused more delays and cost increases. The telescope’s propulsion valves were damaged when engineers used the wrong solvent to clean them. Dozens of screws that fastened the telescope’s massive sunshield came loose during vibration tests. And faulty wiring during tests sent excess voltage into the observatory’s transducers.

“The error should have been detected by the inspector, who did not inspect, but relied on the technician’s word that he had done the wiring correctly,” the 2018 report said.

Fears that the testing mishaps would lead NASA to breach its $8 billion development funding cap grew. The report said human errors cost the program $600 million and caused 18 months of delays. Then, in the summer, NASA announced a new date, acting on the report’s recommendations: Webb would launch on Mar. 30, 2021, Jim Bridenstine, President Trump’s NASA administrator, announced on Twitter.

The agency also concluded that the new development cost would be $8.8 billion, breaching its cap by $800 million. The program’s total cost, including post-launch operations, rose to $9.6 billion.


Last-minute jitters on Webb’s long journey.

Schedule disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic further delayed the launch of Webb in 2021.

At the same time, another stumbling block sprouted: The telescope’s name was called into question. James Webb, the NASA administrator who played a central role in the Apollo program, also served as the under secretary of state in the Truman administration. During his tenure, thousands of gay men and lesbians were ousted from government jobs in a period known as the Lavender Scare. NASA ultimately refused to rename the telescope.

In June, four months before Webb was expected to launch, NASA and ESA officials further delayed the launch to review the successful operation of the Ariane 5 rocket.

Once these concerns were resolved, the agencies set a Dec. 18 launch date. The telescope was ferried from California to French Guiana in October during a 16-day trek that passed through the Panama Canal. It was done in secret, in part out of concerns over piracy.

After two decades of tumultuous delays and cost overruns, the telescope had finally reached its launch site. The telescope, however, could not escape some late performance anxiety.

Not JWST-related but an interesting finding in "local" cosmology nonetheless:

https://scitechdaily.com/earth-is-surrounded-by-1000-light-year-wide-bubble-source-of-all-nearby-young-stars/

Great example of how programs are pushed further and how the costs just balloon.

Interesting to see what James Webb tells about exoplanets and early galaxies. After all, I remember the time when exoplanets were just a hypothesis, although a very strong one.

But then there is the cost, as always. Something similar will surely happen with Manned Mars missions. If they really leave the drawing board.

Good if I see something happening there in my lifetime. Or my school-aged children's lifetime.

But then there is the cost, as always. — ssu

Seems like costs don't matter for Musk. The guy wants to move to Mars and die there, together with his girlfriend. Something has gone horribly wrong on Earth!

A recent article from The Atlantic, saying that:

NASA had never attempted such a complicated deployment before, and there were hundreds of ways that the process could go wrong. If an important part became stuck—really, truly stuck—NASA would have to face the painful reality of abandoning its brand-new, $10 billion mission. Over the past two weeks, Webb’s stewards have worked nearly nonstop, trading 12-hour shifts, checking and rechecking data as hundreds of little mechanisms clicked into action.

...

The release of Webb’s diamond-shaped sun shield, the cover that will protect the observatory’s mirrors and instruments from our star’s glare, was undoubtedly the most stressful part. The five-tiered shield is the size of a tennis court, and each layer is made of material as thin as a human hair. Engineers had warned, in the days before launch, that this sun shield, floppy and unpredictable, could snag and potentially doom the whole mission. But earlier this week, each layer snapped into its final position, just as engineers had imagined. “We’ve nailed it,” Alphonso Stewart, Webb’s deployment systems lead, told reporters after it happened. And then this morning (8th Jan), engineers completed the last big “has to work” moment, moving the telescope’s mirrors into their final honeycomb shape.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/01/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-deployment/621211/

We only get one shot at this, eh?

Is it true that when it comes to such advanced engineering as the JWST, given the extreme constraints at play, that backup systems aren't part of the deployment and operation of a system? In other words, it's all or nothing! If even one tiny motor fails, or if a single screw even so much as develops a hairline crack, all's lost!

Bad planning, can't be helped I suppose.

As said there were hundreds of ‘single point failures’ - things that would have caused mission failure if they hadn’t gone to plan. But so far it’s :party: :party: :party: And I’m sure it ain’t just dumb luck. Probably a big percent of the project spend was testing, and it’s been money well spent.

VIVA LA REVOLUTION UNIVERSAL!

Seems like costs don't matter for Musk. The guy wants to move to Mars and die there, together with his girlfriend. Something has gone horribly wrong on Earth! — Raymond

The private programs have shown us that space exploration isn't just a thing that NASA or other great powers can do. That's the really positive issue with them.

The problem with the private space programs where billionaires want to go to space / to Mars is that:

a) The can die (of old age or disease) and their heirs likely will want to argue about the inheritance rather than continue on with the (vanity?) project.

b) They can run out of money or interest (likely money).

c) The stock market can crash and these multi-billionaires are left as ordinary billionaires or even worse, as rich "billionaires" as Donald Trump. And that simply stops the programs.

If there is a stock market crash and a severe economic downturn, Jeff Bezo's private space and Elon Musk putting a Tesla roadster on an escape trajectory might seem as the excesses of an age where the wealth differences, unequality between the rich and the poor and the stock market hype hit the extremes.


Then of course, the future might be so that the saying "You ain't seen nothing yet!" will be appropriate.

dumb luck — Wayfarer

Don't mess with Fortuna! Don't even think of it!

By the way, in epistemology, very recent developments going by a lecture, but not so if you take into account Gettier (cases), there's :point:

I think it's only 4 days until JWST gets to L2

Yep. 96% of the way there. It's gone so smoothly there's been nothing to report!

Look at the orbit of Webb:




Webb orbits L2! So it's not stationary. It takes 6 months to complete one full orbit.

are you Raymond Smullyan?

Haha! His soul secretly leaped in my body... Funny guy, though a somewhat heavy load to carry. Many more have made attempts, with varying success.

What's your avatar about? A tear in a building?

:clap: :clap:

Now we wait for the final cool down stage for several months, and hope we are around to get some data back!

Yeah man! Only the anticipation of the first photo makes it worthwhile. Are "ordinary" pictures taken too? What if it looked at Earth? Could it see me? No... seems too much.

As far as I know, I don't believe they have a "ordinary camera" on it, by that meaning any type of camera which can give us images like we got images from Pluto.

It's going to have a device that allows it to see infrared, which will be used as a picture, I'm assuming computers do some extra work to make the images look good. Unclear on how this process works.

the final cool down — Manuel

Sounds intruiging! That's how the story should be told to the public! Apart from the pictures it expects something more for 10 billion. Luckily there is Wayfarer!

What's your avatar about? A tear in a building? — Raymond

Smullyan would be a fan of it

The JWST is ready for action! Right?

98% of the distance to orbit as of 9:00 am 24th Jan 22 (AEST).

A video on calibrating the 18 mirrors (in increments of 1/10,000 of a hair's width)

:cool:

Can you imagine the dialogue. 'Hey Bert. 1.3 nanometers to the left.'

'Sure thing Fred. Give me half a nanosecond'.

the Hubble produced thousands of iconic and spectacular images, if the JW is tuned to infra-red radiation, will it be producing images that are visually meaningful — Wayfarer

You bet.

Note that many astronomy pictures, including from Hubble, are in false colors, eg colors code for certain wavelengths rather than be the real colors one human eye would see. To the human eye, most cosmic objects are white. Through the lenses of my very basic telescope, the Orion nebula looks like this:



Not like this:

Phase 3 begins. :clap: — 180 Proof

JWST has parked @L2 :strong: :nerd: :up:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/24/world/james-webb-space-telescope-orbit-scn/index.html

Phase 4 this summers.

:clap:

Hopefully NATO and Russia avoid a nuclear war. It would be nice to see this before we vanish...