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A comment on James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test. Parent comment

Re:James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from fina... by neurostimulant on Friday May 31, 2019 @11:45AM (#20061948)
For a project this magnitude, I think they should build a spare telescope or two to account for launch failures. Or is it not how the space industry operates?
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Re:James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from fina... by Rebelgecko on Friday May 31, 2019 @03:43PM (#20064275)
The costs don't scale quite as well as you'd expect. Actually building, testing, and transporting the thing is really expensive. If you build 2, it's still a lot of expensive bespoke parts. Maybe if you build dozens the economies of scale start to pay off
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Re:James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from fina... by java-man on Friday May 31, 2019 @11:49AM (#20061997)
exactly my sentiment!

why not build two, given the fact that most of the budget is likely to be R&D costs.

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Re:James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from fina... by rbanffy on Friday May 31, 2019 @01:26PM (#20063002)
Manufacture, certification and launch are still quite expensive. You'd easily run a couple extra billions building a fleet.

Having said that, I'd be delighted to have a fleet of them.

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