I bet we could fit you in there.

__________________
I love sanding.

Maybe not. I'm carrying "The COVID 20".........




.....wait for it.....




.....wait for it.....




.....wait for it.....




.....wait for it.....




.....wait for it.....




.....wait for it.....




.....wait for it.....




.....kilos.

__________________
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.

4 out of 3 people struggle with math.

Chemically, alcohol IS a solution.

NAR# 94042
SAM# 0078

World's cleanest red toolbox there in the photo LOL OL J R

__________________
The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

JWST is an infrared space telescope, not a visible light wavelength telescope... so the "color" of the mirrors doesn't matter I suppose.

It won't produce all the "pretty pictures" that Hubble does of nebulas and galaxies and stuff, at least not in its native wavelength of its cameras. Of course the "pretty pics" that Hubble turns out are so heavily filtered and enhanced to bring out the details and colors and stuff that they're not "really" what the telescope saw or you would see... They can similarly enhance or shift the pictures from the IR spectrum into the visible spectrum using computers... so we'll get plenty of images (if it works) but the real scientific data will come in its native spectrum of the detectors.

NASA's last highly delayed mission using "new" foldable/deployable technology didn't work out so well-- hopefully JWST will do better. I'm speaking of course of the Galileo probe to Jupiter, which suffered unending delays caused by the shuttle program. First Galileo was going to launch on a long planetary slingshot trajectory using the IUS upper stage from the shuttle, since the solid propellant stage didn't have enough power to inject Galileo into a trajectory directly to Jupiter. Then it got redesigned to use the "Shuttle-Centaur" liquid hydrogen/oxygen upper stage which COULD inject it directly to Jupiter. Due to the size constraints of the shuttle payload bay, the large high-gain antenna was made into a foldable "umbrella" design. Then of course the shuttle program fell behind and, as a NASA probe, was at the bottom of the list compared to military missions and "paying customers" on the already delayed shuttle manifest pre-Challenger, so Galileo kept getting booted to the back of the line. Then of course Challenger happened and suddenly SAFETY was back on the radar again as the hype of the "airliner to space" malarkey NASA had been touting about the shuttle finally was laid bare as tripe, and the idea of launching a liquid hydrogen powered stage in a shuttle payload bay mere tens of feet behind the astronauts seats INSIDE a manned spacecraft suddenly looked like NOT the best idea in the world in terms of safety, particularly when the shuttle would be TOO HEAVY TO LAND in a RTLS abort with a fully fueled Centaur stage aboard, necessitating the addition of propellant dump ducts, hardware, and valves to the shuttle and abort procedures to empty the stage of propellant in an already "emergency" situation where a million things had to go perfectly for it to work anyway (RTLS abort). SO Shuttle-Centaur was scrapped and became history before it ever flew (though it would be modified and flew on Titan IV). Galileo, however, was trapped on the shuttle and would have to launch on it, which meant switching back to the IUS solid upper stage, which meant a prolonged multi-fly-by multi-slingshot maneuver trajectory in order to get to Jupiter. After Galileo WAS finally launched and did its number of flybys to get the speed necessary to reach Jupiter, when the unfolding of the high gain antenna was finally ordered, it FAILED and STUCK mostly closed. This immediately threatened the mission, and would have ended it if not for a brilliant work-around by the mission scientists and engineers. They managed to send Galileo's data back to Earth using the low-gain antenna on the spacecraft, which was barely detectable by the Deep Space Network giant dish arrays at Goldstone (and elsewhere) BUT the tradeoff was, the data transmission rate was GREATLY reduced from what the jammed high-gain antenna had been designed to transmit. Galileo used tape to record all the data from each pass around the planet; all the photos, measurements, and other data it recorded for transmission back to Earth was recorded during the low part near Jupiter of each highly elliptical orbit of the planet, then as the probe swung out to the high end of it's orbit far from Jupiter, it would point its antenna back towards Earth and transmit the recorded data. Due to the low data rate of the low-gain antenna system, Galileo could only transmit about 1/3 of its data back to Earth from each pass before the orbit took it out of position for transmission and it had to reorient itself for the next low pass over Jupiter. SO, 2/3 of the photographs, data, and information it recorded was basically "taped over" on the next pass, by the photographs and information gathered on that pass.

We'll never know how many discoveries or scientific wonders might have been recorded over, all due to Galileo being approved and "required" to fly on the shuttle (as all missions were at that time) and the mission falling prey to the shuttle program's limitations and drawbacks imposing endless delays and bad design tradeoffs on the mission planners, scientists, and engineers. Galileo managed to produce some magnificent data on Jupiter, it basically "rewrote the books" on the gas giant and its moons, but ya gotta wonder what it discovered that got taped over that we'll never know. It also suffered huge cost overruns and years of delays due to the shuttle problems.

NASA did learn its lesson, though... Cassini/Huygens was designed with a MONOLITHIC one-piece high-gain antenna like all other previous outer planet missions before it (save Galileo) and therefore had to launch on Titan IV, as it was the only rocket with a large enough payload shroud, and it could be injected into a far less convoluted and more direct trajectory to Saturn.

BTW, shuttle cost overruns and development problems very nearly killed the "Grand Tour" mission to the outer planets by Voyager 1 and 2 in the late 70's and 80's as well... Thankfully in the end the bureaucrats realized that a "once in 200 years" opportunity was too rare to pass up merely because of a messed up and costly manned spacecraft development program...

Later! OL J R

Later! OL J R

__________________
The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

Ya know there's some idgit somewhere trying to figure out how to mount those in the back of their car and hook them up to their stereo... LOL OL J R

__________________
The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

Ah so! Thanks for the clarification on JWST's optics.

__________________
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.

4 out of 3 people struggle with math.

Chemically, alcohol IS a solution.

NAR# 94042
SAM# 0078

Not sure how celebrated Christmas is down in the area of the launch site, but I think, after as many delays this project has gone through, I’d just push the launch attempt off until after Christmas. Would seem like just too many potential personnel distractions to attempt a launch on Christmas Eve. Then again, that holiday may mean little to them.

Earl

__________________
Earl L. Cagle, Jr.
NAR# 29523
TRA# 962
SAM# 73
Owner/Producer
Point 39 Productions

Rocket-Brained Since 1970

Anyone have an explanation for why they're using a European rocket for this mission?

The European Space Agency's contribution to the project. Launch services as opposed to funding the spacecraft.

Chas

__________________
Charles Russell, MSgt,USAF (ret.)
NAR 9790, Lvl 1
SAM "Balls Three"

To take it one step further, US space policy forbids launching a US Government-owned satellite on a foreign SLV UNLESS that launch service is provided at zero cost. So, as Chas stated, this is ESA's contribution to JWST - a "free" (to the US) launch.