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The amazing James Webb Space Telescope… — 48 Comments

1. For real time updates, you can visit,
   https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html

2. Hopefully, they will focus on the near systems first. Count me among those who would be more interested in the relative near Centaur system, at 4.3 light years , than a completely different galaxy.

3. Jon, I’m sure the time has already been alloted with a split between cosmologists and the planetary/astrobiology types. If it works could totally change both fields dramatically.

4. Jon: Observing nearby exoplanets is part of its mission, but it was really built to observe the first stars and galaxies after the big bang, and that’s where, I suspect, it will spend most of its time.

   I’m sure physicsguy can explain it better, but our models of the big bang work only at a conceptual level. When you get down into the mathematics underlying the models, they don’t agree with many current observations. Which means we don’t really understand how the universe came to be.

   JWST was built to peer back in time to the earliest stars and galaxies to try to obtain the data needed to resolve the inconsistencies in our models and hopefully provide insights into fundamental questions concerning the early universe. Other space telescopes will be better suited to characterizing exoplanets.

   For example, WFIRST (scheduled for launch in 2027) will have a coronograph that will block light from an exoplanet’s parent star, allowing us to actually see the planet as a point of light, not just as a dimming of the parent star as the exoplanet passes between the star and us.

   So while JWST will (hopefully — if it survives its deployment sequence) be used to view exoplanets, that’s not really its bailiwick. We have other tools for that.

5. It’s heartening to know we can still do awesome things!

6. I am an older dude born in the mid-1950’s.

   I’d have to say the most important thing humanity did since I was born was to land Humans on the moon.

   Humans have been looking up at the sky and wondering what’s happening there since, well I’d guess, since Humans existed.

   The Webb Space Telescope is a HUGE deal. I sure hope it works and can produce significant science.

7. Z would say only the CCP could have put the Webb telescope up there, and if there is a problem Z will say Americans can’t do squat.

8. Nope Om. Z would not say that. Z would however point out that the Red Guards tried at the last moment to get the name James Webb cancelled for the ideological crimes of James Webb.

   Here’s an (American) People’s Daily article for your reading pleasure:

   https://www.npr.org/2021/09/30/1041707730/shadowed-by-controversy-nasa-wont-rename-new-space-telescope

   Do I need to draw you a diagram to tease out the irony of ironies?

   “At best, Webb’s record is complicated,” says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a cosmologist at the University of New Hampshire who co-authored an article calling for the telescope to be renamed. “And at worst, we’re basically just sending this incredible instrument into the sky with the name of a homophobe on it, in my opinion.”

   Since Tiny Tim is ringing my doorbell, I’m going to refrain from giving this the full Theme and Variations treatment.

   I may be White, but a Whale I am not.

9. It’s going to be interesting to see what comes of this new space telescope. It’s all way over my intellectual / IQ pay grade but I can’t help feeling that the cosmologists have been pulling strings from their posteriors and spinning ever-expanding webs of tenure-begetting bullshit for a great while now. More measurement data can’t be bad.

10. This is truly an amazing technological project!
    Now, if we could somehow figure out the difference between males and females, and what proper relations between them would be like….

11. Hey, Wesson. The CCP leads in STEM education for China. We have evolved past such old fashioned nonsense. Instead, our Great Leaders will see us through to achieve equitable social justice! And through to LBGTQRSTXYZ pride for everyone oppressed by racist, white Eurocentric fetishes like logic.

12. TJ:

    Of course the CCP leads STEM education in Xi land, and our own little Red Guards are formenting struggle sessions in our education establishment. Parents have noticed and must be suppressed. FBI is on task. Let’s Go Brandon.

13. Of course the CCP leads STEM education in Xi land

    The USSR did very well with education, but their highly educated people didn’t make as much impact as the highly educated people of the US and Britain. I think it was because they lacked choice and the opportunity to do things, so they had little motivation.

14. In Sov time, hard science and chess could keep you out of trouble. So if you have some IQ to spare, there were places not to exercise it.

15. It cost a bundle but I love this stuff. If it works. I had read that the useable lifetime of the project was somewhat limited. Here is a short bit from Wikipedia.

    The telescope’s nominal mission time is five years, with a goal of ten years. The planned five-year science mission begins after a six-month commissioning phase. JWST needs to use propellant to maintain its halo orbit around L2, which provides an upper limit to its designed lifetime, and it was designed to carry enough for ten years. An L2 orbit is unstable, so it requires orbital station-keeping to prevent the telescope from drifting away from its orbital configuration.

    So apparently rocket fuel is the limiting factor. Older such infrared observatories were loaded with cryogens like liquid nitrogen or helium to maintain the super cold temps. And when the cryogen ran out the project was over. However, …

    The James Webb Space Telescope is designed to cool itself without a dewar, using a combination of sunshields and radiators, with the mid-infrared instrument using an additional cryocooler.

    Cryocoolers (super cold refrigerators) have been around for some time, but ones that can run reliably, in zero G, for years without maintenance have only been available for a couple decades or so.

16. I don’t see anything amazing yet. The only accomplishment is on the part of the Ariane 5 and the second stage booster. Billions have been spent, and the chance of failure is high because it is overly complex. The complexity is what makes it seem amazing, but unless the complexity fully works then it is useless. So far, it has failed, and not the way failure is meant to help teach, but in the way that failure was supposed to prove that did it right the first time. When NASA gets closer to a launch, they tend to put their collective heads in the sand to avoid finding other failures that might delay launch again.

17. Leland, I don’t see any evidence of failure yet.

    Your criticism of “overly complex” may be valid. “overly complex” can be the Achilles Heel of engineering. From my students I’ve seen in the last 20 years a mindset of over confidence in computer technology. Whether this applies to Webb remains to be seen. The recent success of the Mars lander says some people know how to use the technology, the 737Max says some don’t.

18. I had a brief but exciting 6 years on the space program. I supported 5 flights, 1 unmanned and 4 manned. Two flights were enormous mission failures. I got to do many interesting things none of which I was qualified nor trained to do. All the more unlikely because 6 months before I got the job, I was a destitute college dropout and messed up my life to point of reaching the “to be or not to be” stage. The things I did there though put me on a 30+ year career in aerospace doing jobs that required advanced degrees and I had none.

19. I hate to turn everything into a political debate, but two, minor nits:

    1. No matter how great or evil a man James Webb was, I do not like the tradition of naming expensive things after government employees. The guy had a government job and that position gave him access to billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of human beings. It would be hard not to use those resources to do something unique, significant or noteworthy. The “James Webb” telescope is really no different than driving on the “Senator Foghorn Memorial Highway.”

    2. The money spent on this telescope is not shoveled into a large pit and burned. Every time someone makes a statement like Leland’s this should be stated in reply until all Americans know and understand this with every fiber of their American spines. Comments like Leland’s are made constantly and almost never refuted, so most people walk around thinking this way.

    America will not continue as America if a majority of Americans do not understand this concept. Spending is a question of choosing. Who will make the choices? Money is not like coal. It is not a one-time use thing that is consumed when utilized. It is unmuted by activity and perpetual*.

    Whether it’s NASA hiring and paying a bunch of Engineers and technicians to build and launch a telescope or Elon Musk; those Engineers and technicians are paid wages that they then use to buy food, housing, streaming services, automobiles, jet skis, fedoras and/or bourbon. And the supplies (metal, computer chips, fuel, 9mm screws, gold, red, white and blue paint…) that go into the rocket and telescope are purchased from suppliers who then take their dollars and buy food, housing and fedoras for themselves and their families. And the real estate agents, grocers and milliners take the profits from selling those homes, groceries and hats and buy things they want. Or they store it in investments like stock in Tesla, in hopes that Elon Musk will grow the company and the value of their shares. And when he does, they’ll sell the stock and buy a jet ski.

    It’s all about control. Who gets to choose? When the U.S. and dozens of other countries collaborate to build something like the James Webb (PBUH) telescope the money isn’t lost. It’s allocated. Where money is allocated more of those things will develop. Where money is unallocated fewer of those things will develop.

    Do you want more government, more politicians? Increase taxes and give politicians a greater amount of available money to control and allocate. Do you want less government, fewer politicians? Decrease taxes and allow the public to allocate more of their own money.

    *The same is basically true for water, yet 99% of environmentalists fail to recognize this basic law of nature. Water conservation can be a local problem, but it is not a global problem.

20. Good for you, Chases Eagles! I took the opposite path (multiple college degrees in “safe” fields) and it sounds like I had a rockier path than you. If I had a time machine and could be 18 again I think I would have followed my instincts and abilities rather than doing what was safe. But, assuming my health holds out, it’s still not too late for me to change course.

21. Zaphod. Could be you’re right about cosmologists and such. I recall a presentation on string theory at the end of which one presenter said they (no doubt meaning some) don’t know if they have something or if it’s a bunch of convenient numbers.
    No idea what JW is going to find, but if it’s ‘way out there; far, far from current theories, flatly contradicting some of the most settled, showing they’re a bunch of convenient numbers, I’m going to regret not going further in math and thus missing some of the hilarity.

22. I second Rufus’ first point. Who’s James Webb? A bureaucrat? Not a deservedly famous astronomer or astrophysicist?

    I’m quite biased of course.

23. James Webb from memory:

    Severely wounded Vietnam era vet, received medals for combat actions (not a John F Kerry), Secretary of the Navy, Democrat (blue dog) Senator, ran for POTUS ’90s. Don’t recall anything about NASA.

24. Anonymous,

    So name a highway or missile cruiser after him.
    Actually, now that you bring up his mini-bio, I do remember him. Still, … Cassini-Huygens or the Hubble telescope? That’s the ticket IMO.

25. Don’t recall anything about NASA.

    Different James Webb. The James Webb who ran NASA was 40 years older than the James Webb who was Secretary of the Navy.

26. physics guy: I don’t see any evidence of failure yet.

    The telescope was supposed to launch in 2018, but just prior to launch during final checkout, the sunshield tore. As I noted, this isn’t a failure during early prototype testing to learn what to do and what not to do. This was final integrated testing prior to loading on the launch vehicle and cost $800 million with a 3-year delay.

    I’ll add that JWST visited the JSC vacuum chamber A in 2014 to be tested for functioning in the environment of space. The sunshield wasn’t completed until 2016, thus deployment of said sunshield in the environment of space hasn’t been tested. The good news is we will know later today if it deploys safely.

27. I second Rufus’ first point. Who’s James Webb? A bureaucrat?

    AFAICT, never civil service. Supposedly had two stints in the Marines.

    He was a politically connected lawyer who held a hat full of discretionary positions in Washington over 30-odd years, betwixt and between corporate and law firm positions. NASA during the Kennedy-Johnson years had (compared to today) an enormous slice of the federal budget; I would wager Kennedy hired him to sell the budget plans to Congress and sundry constituencies. No indication he knew aerospace engineering from tiddlywinks.

28. Thanks Art Deco.

29. Duck Duck Go for the win, one of these Webb’s is not like the other.

    I don’t care who they name it after or what the call the thing; only that it works.

    But will it prove Systemic Racism exists in deep dark space, or what is the gender of a black hole, …..

30. Note, a background like Webb’s is unusual among NASA administrators. Most were trained in physics or in engineering and worked in industry or higher education or the military. A couple were career military w/o engineering school; one of these had also been an astronaut. Another was a general bureaucrat, most saliently in the Defense Department. Another was primarily a businessman. The current director is a quondam member of Congress.

31. JWST is expensive because it has to work 930,000 miles away with no way to repair it if things go wrong. Vastly over-engineered as a result; hopefully, things will go well. I worked for the contractor, and I can assure you, nothing was done for “money”. It was all done for assured success, as much as that is possible with the technology involved.

32. Rufus,

    Now here is the interesting thing, Rufus. You don’t think much of James Webb, who was the head of NASA when it went from barely getting a human into space to rolling out the Saturn V. But you think I should be refuted for saying the telescope with his name isn’t amazing yet until it has done something. That’s an interesting sense of logic you have.

    I don’t think it is amazing simply because NASA built it for twice the price. I also don’t think it is amazing for being more complex than necessary. I’ll think it amazing when we get the photos promised for the $10 billion spent. Otherwise, that money just went to a bunch of guys and gals that had a government job.

    Unfortunately, sometimes the satellite has a failure. The $800 million spent on the Mars Observer and the $350 million spent on the Mars Climate Orbiter wasn’t burned in a pit, but the latter did burn up in the martian atmosphere rather then, um, orbiting. They were considered amazing when they launched. Their failures were in systems far less complex than JWST.

    Finally, I find it funny you conflate JWST with the work of SpaceX. Geez, don’t insult SpaceX like that. I can only imagine what they would have done with $10 billion to put a telescope into space. I suspect we wouldn’t have just one of them if Elon had run the project.

33. Stan Smith,

    “… the contractor?”

    Surely you know there are thousands of contractors and contracting entities involved in something like this?

34. Leland,

    I did not state an opinion on James Webb. I specifically stated I have no basis of an opinion of his worth as a human.

    What I stated is that I don’t like when government agencies run by government officials take tax money and direct those dollars toward huge, expensive things they then name after one another. It can create bad incentives.

    I also don’t mind the thing, itself. I’m glad the telescope was built and I hope it works well. Name it after somebody who did something scientifically significant that led us to this point. It uses radiation. How about the Marie Curie telescope? Or William Herschel, the man who discovered infrared radiation. Or a thousand other worthy people who did groundbreaking science.

35. Leland,

    “Finally, I find it funny you conflate JWST with the work of SpaceX. Geez, don’t insult SpaceX like that. I can only imagine what they would have done with $10 billion to put a telescope into space. I suspect we wouldn’t have just one of them if Elon had run the project.”

    We are making the same point. That’s precisely why I compared NASA with SpaceX. The money exists in the world. Who gets to choose where it goes? I’d prefer Elon Musk to a committee of Congresspeople.

36. Rufus—

    Of course I know that. Worked for the prime, doing video documentation of various construction processes. You can see some of that work on the NASA site, where they feature mirror grinding and polishing, beryllium forging, etc.

    The point still remains: JWST is complex because it HAS to work, in an environment that’s pretty harsh and unforgiving, after surviving the stresses of launch, etc.

    People like Leland just seem to negate the engineering difficulty involved. Yes, SpaceX has done amazing stuff. But they’re doing it OUTSIDE of NASA for the most part; anyone whose done work for the government knows that bureaucracy pretty much ALWAYS involves more money than necessary.

37. We are making the same point.

    I thought so too, but you made some argument that I needed to be refuted for what I wrote. I’ll let it go unless you want to make a refutation.

    Surely you know there are thousands of contractors and contracting entities involved in something like this?

    I was at a JSC tech fair in 2010. They had three mockups of the Orion capsule (all boilerplate and the only flown version was one dropped out a C-130 to test the parachutes) and the recently flown Dragon that had completed a sub-orbital flight. Next to the Orion capsule was a sign by Lockheed Martin that said “The Orion capsule is built by me”. Under the words was an outline of the US with a star in what looked like most US Congressional districts with each one representing a sub-contractor or Lockheed Martin location supporting the supply chain for Orion.

    I worked at Lockheed Martin in an office adjacent to the room where LM wrote the winning bid for CEV in 2004. 17 years and $21 billion later, the CEV/Orion capsule (which wasn’t the original LM design nor winning entry) has yet to carry anyone to space. In that same exact timeframe (if including original Dragon development), for 1/7th the development cost (just what NASA gave SpaceX), Dragon 2 has flown 4 times and carried 16 people into space including 4 ordinary civilians. Dragon 2 will likely fly 2 more times before CEV/Orion first planned crew flight.

38. Leland,

    I probably shouldn’t have called you out by name, but your comment was a good reference point for my comment. I was fairly certain you understand the concept of the velocity of money in economics. I make the same mistake sometimes when talking about economics, especially government allocation. My point was we need to be more careful about stating the issue correctly. If one disagrees with how tax dollars are reallocated it’s not that the government is “wasting” the money, it is that they are using it inefficiently, or less effectively, and, often, putting it in the hands of individuals who will make more ineffecient decisions.
    \

    Unlike fuel, money is not consumed when spent. It is reallocated to a human or humans who will then choose how it is allocated next. Do you want those allocaters to be politicians who are expert at convincing voters to vote for them? Or do you want the allocaters to be private individuals who are expert at convincing their fellow citizens to purchase a good or service?

39. People like Leland just seem to negate the engineering difficulty involved.

    Seriously, you guys need to learn to read. But since you want to go there…

    Both Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Observer had to operate much further away from Earth than JWST and also had no chance of repair. Both were less complex than JWST, all were considered amazing at launch, but the Mars satellites ended up not producing any of the “amazing” things they were supposed to do. It has nothing to do with “vastly over-engineered” (which I would take as an insult), where it is flown, or if it can be repaired. It has a lot more to do with not celebrating success a year in advance.

    Despite the arguments made against me, I stand by my original point that the only success to date is on the part of Ariane 5 and the second stage booster. When you get me an in-focus photo taken from L2 of some celestial body, then I’ll be happy to call it amazing.

    Vastly over-engineered? I get that JWST beryllium mirrors are literally gold plated, but there’s a good reason for it.

40. If one disagrees with how tax dollars are reallocated it’s not that the government is “wasting” the money, it is that they are using it inefficiently, or less effectively, and, often, putting it in the hands of individuals who will make more inefficient decisions.

    Very well stated and is actually at the heart of my concern now about Stan Smith’s comments. We won’t know if the decisions made in regards to JWST were right until we get an in-focus photo of a celestial body taken from L2. I agree about avoiding other political arguments on secondary and tertiary opportunity costs such as spending $10 billion on climate or social research. I simply want to judge JWST success against its mission objectives, which it hasn’t even started.

41. “Next to the Orion capsule was a sign by Lockheed Martin that said “The Orion capsule is built by me”. Under the words was an outline of the US with a star in what looked like most US Congressional districts with each one representing a sub-contractor or Lockheed Martin location supporting the supply chain for Orion.”

    Wasn’t that the real root cause of the Challenger explosion? ISTR some Congress type wanted the refilling of the solid rocket motors for his district, meaning the SRMs had to break into lengths suitable for rail flatcars, meaning joints, meaning o-rings…

    The rest is history.

42. Sonny,

    I was wondered about the SRMs on Shuttle. My own opinion, formed from my own thoughts on strategic stuff and nothing else, is the SRMs gave the DoD the means to test ICBM propellant on a regular basis. There is no doubt that solid rocket fuel is the best option for vehicles needing long term storage with launch on demand capability. It’s very stable and less reactionary to the holding chamber. I’m sure underlying that was a few more Congressional supporters, particularly outside Texas, California, Florida, and Alabama.

    As for root cause of Challenger, not sure I’d agree. Maybe, if you insist the root is the original decision to use SRMs, but liquid boosters could have had a design flaw too. What I find interesting is the exact failure mode was identified in the 1970s by the prime integrator, McDonnell Douglas, as an event that would lead to catastrophic lost without time to abort. That type of failure would not be deemed acceptable now. Yet the failure happened 8 times in 1985 without the catastrophic results, so they kept on flying even when their own flight rules said the freezing temperatures of that morning were beyond certified limits for the o-rings. There was quite a bit of reckless negligence leading up to the go for launch of STS-51L.

43. I stand corrected. JWST sunshield deployment begins today, but it won’t be complete until flight day 7. Full deployment of all systems completed flight day 13. A good summary of events here, which is a site we often read in Mission Control.

44. Leland,

    The schedule was also in the link neo posted in this piece.

    Makes sense. There’s statistically zero resistance once you get a bit away from the Earth. No harm in opening stuff up and giving JWST a chance to stretch its limbs. And the closer to Earth the quicker the back and forth communication times. Even though we can’t launch anything to catch it and do a manual repair, I assume there is quite a bit they can do from a communications and software standpoint if they detect issues.

45. This is a handy page for showing JWST’s distance from Earth and L2 and systems’ tests: https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html

46. There are also some neat, Webb themed art projects on that site. Here’s an example involving pumpkin carving: https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/features/spacePumpkin.html

    Who says STEM folks aren’t creative?!

47. I knew that name “ Webb” seemed a bit familiar. Last year I read the book “Moon Hunters”, and Webb is mentioned a few times in it. (I was not born till 1970, so there are things covered in that book from before I was born and while I was still young.)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1146891.Moon_Hunters

48. Looked at a simulation which showed all of the myriad of individual steps that the complex machinery that makes up this extremely intricate telescope will have to successfully accomplish–one by one, and each depending on and building on the steps that came before, spread out over the course of the next several days–for this instrument to completely unfold to its fullest extent, and to be fully functional.

    It will be quite remarkable if they can pull this off.

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