19 votes

The largest space telescope in history is about to blow our minds

4 comments

  1. [2]
    0d_billie
    Link
    Hell of a gamble, here's hoping they've got it all on point!

    Upping the stakes is the fact that while Hubble was launched to around 340 miles above the Earth, Webb will be almost a million miles away — four times the distance from the Earth to the moon.

    That means once the Webb is launched, it will be unserviceable by human hands if it breaks. That’s scary, considering the history of the Hubble. Shortly after the Hubble launched in 1990, engineers realized there was a problem with its mirror; the telescope’s initial images came back fuzzy, and astronauts had to launch a space shuttle to fix it. That won’t be possible with the Webb. It just has to work.

    Hell of a gamble, here's hoping they've got it all on point!

    7 votes
    1. Kuromantis
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Nah, if it breaks we should ask the CCP to fix it and then watch as the Second Space Race unfolds before our eyes /s But yeah, fingers crossed on that.

      Nah, if it breaks we should ask the CCP to fix it and then watch as the Second Space Race unfolds before our eyes /s

      But yeah, fingers crossed on that.

      2 votes
  2. mtset
    Link
    I must say that I'm very excited by Webb. I'm often critical of space technologies that are linked to military aerospace ventures - Hubble, Shuttle, etc being great examples of this - and Webb is...

    I must say that I'm very excited by Webb. I'm often critical of space technologies that are linked to military aerospace ventures - Hubble, Shuttle, etc being great examples of this - and Webb is one of the few major projects I've seen that does not use military-derived technologies, at least other than insomuch as rockets themselves are ICBM-derived, which most modern launch vehicles really are not.

    This is a purely scientific endeavor and one that will greatly advance our understanding of the universe we live in! Here's hoping all goes well :)

    4 votes