The Hubble telescope was launched in 1990. It was, presumably, at the bleeding edge of modern engineering. 30 years later it shouldn't be unthinkable that commercial engineering could achieve something comparable at a fraction of the cost, not to mention all the improved methods for compensating for defects and utilizing smaller, more easily manufactured components. Similar advancements are what have made cheap launches possible.
Yes, the engineering required for these things is still amazing. But that doesn't imply it's still as expensive. Plus, there's more private wealth. Maybe crowd sourcing isn't practical, but I'd think universities could easily achieve this if the motivation was there. Nobody thought launch costs could be reduced as much as SpaceX has achieved. All it took was a highly motivated person. Musk didn't invent any new technology; like many industrialists he simply recognized the technology was already there or at least on the cusp, and assembled the assets to make it happen.
[1] http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Tables/thexp.html
[2] https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/forScientists/faqScientists.ht...
There are some advances in, for example, using glass-ceramics instead of glasses, which give better strength, better rigidity, and enormously better fatigue tolerance. I don't think anybody makes multi-meter mirrors out of fused quartz, even though it would be a near-ideal material from a TCE perspective.
The century-old techniques are a little better now that you can use a laser instead of a candle, and there are improved techniques you can use, but amateur telescope fabrication techniques are totally capable of hitting λ/8 precision.
Really large mirrors are segmented anyway.
Most of our skies both audibly and visibly feature large aircraft and contrail clouds - invisible satellites and the aesthetics of a few astronomers are of zero concern to most people. The frank reality is astronomers don't actually have any right to telescopically 'clear skies' - not even the masses have audibly and optically clear skies.
Until we get better at understanding scale, it'll always be so easy to exploit human fear.
This is one thing that "governments" are really, really good at. NASA routinely launches things into space designed to last a few weeks that end up lasting for a decade or more because they are so amazingly overengineered. They don't do it for profit. They do it for science.
Private business is almost always about short term gain (because it kind of has to be). I don't think I want a bunch of crowdfunded garbage just adding more crap to the skies hoping to turn a quick buck. We have enough crowdfunded garbage here on earth. The only crowdfunded thing I'd support at this point is filling a rocket with a bunch of e-scooters and shooting it into the sun.
I know it's super trendy now more than ever to hate on the "government" but space exploration is one that that all governments—the US in particular—seem to do really, really well.
i worked on some of those. they're not overengineered, they're underpromised.
and no, i can't provide a source for that because the whole point is to look good to the public. there's not a line in the proposals about how long things are _actually_ supposed to last if you want to ever get another contract.
if the delivery estimates were good, we'd see a nice uniform distribution about expected lifetime. instead we see everything lasting so much longer than "expected". if we're attributing it to the engineers, then that's bad engineering. but the discrepancy isn't the fault of the engineers.
Meanwhile, our space exploration program basically exists as an excuse to rob the American taxpayer to fund massive, obsolete rockets and get politicians re-elected. That's not to say that the instruments themselves aren't examples of the finest technology ever created by the human species, but their way of doing business needs an overhaul. They need some competition, and SpaceX and other new space companies are bringing it.
Not sure what politicians get elected over NASA projects in the last 40 years. Maybe for cutting their budget.
Good for you. I went to a small private school where such things were a pipedream, and I expect in poorer countries than the USA the outlook is even bleaker for universities sending hardware to space.
> Not sure what politicians get elected over NASA projects in the last 40 years. Maybe for cutting their budget.
Are you seriously claiming that space pork doesn't exist?
I mean, e.g. Richard Shelby hasn't come out and said "I use my political clout to shackle science and exploration missions to the SLS because it is an economic boon to my constituency at the general expense of the American taxpayer", but if you have eyes to read between the lines it's not a difficult leap to make.
I later went to ASU where I worked for the School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE) which is a world-class department for students interested in aerospace.
Awesome aerospace R&D is certainly not solely the realm of Ivy League private schools.
This is a great example of how downward-trending costs of putting things in space have already opened doors. There are certainly more dimensions to that trend than SpaceX selling cheap launches.
When I went to university, CubeSats were barely a thing, unfortunately.
Also, the idea of filling up space with little chunks of non-government science and engineering seems to go against the stated position of the guy I've been replying to.
Sounds like we should probably invest more in improving the public school system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_Telephoto_Array
https://www.dragonflytelescope.org/
It's all published and anyone can make their own too. Using off the shelf products.
Having a colossal budget to blow isn't always the answer to everything in fact it's sometimes more of a hindrance which is clear to anyone ever involved with government procurement and how it works.
Sometimes, it's best just to walk away.
Typically, governments are run to make things look good by the next election. That's a planning horizon of 2 years on average, assuming 4 year terms.
Meanwhile, forestry companies routinely plant trees that won't be harvested for 50 years.
Private business has trouble seeing beyond this quarter's financials... especially when said business is publicly traded.
Meanwhile, forestry companies routinely plant trees that won't be harvested for 50 years
Depends very heavily on the type of tree. Red Oak is on a 50-year timeline, but Douglas fir is usually on a 5-10 year timeline (depending on whether it's grown for Christmas trees or for lumber), most big box store lumber is on the 10-20 year timeline, and bamboo is frequently harvested the same year it's planted (but is also technically not a tree...). This is a matter of necessity, not far-term vision. If they could get away with not thinking long-term they would, but the modern lumber industry has learned from the excesses of the colonial and pre-Industrial lumber industry.
I know that's the snarky cliche, but where is the empirical evidence?
I see major public corporations staying competitive for decade after decade.
It's hard to understand how organizations that bet everything on the 2020 Q1 results while ignoring 2020 Q2 accomplish that.
> This is a matter of necessity, not far-term vision.
I'd say the far-term vision is a necessity to flourish far-term. therefore surviving companies have it.
Not sure what "competitive" means in this context, but there is no shortage of examples of large companies which have been run into the ground for the sake of short term payouts for executives and insider stakeholders: Lehman Brothers, AIG, PG&E, Boeing, likely IBM, any number of the drained husks left in the wake of private equity like Toys R Us and Payless, etc.
Corporations can be run well or badly, and governments can be run well or badly. It's just a question of the competence and moral character (or lack thereof) of decision-makers.
> Lehman Brothers, AIG, PG&E, Boeing, likely IBM, any number of the drained husks left in the wake of private equity like Toys R Us and Payless, etc.
I doubt all of those were victims of shortsightedness. Sometimes, it's time for institutions to die and leave room for new things.
But of course you're right that this happens. I wasn't claiming that all private companies are run perfectly with epic time horizons and no executive ego involved etc. I was just arguing against the idea that they never think beyond the next quarterly result report.
> Corporations can be run well or badly, and governments can be run well or badly.
Sure!
> It's just a question of the competence and moral character (or lack thereof) of decision-makers.
I'd focus a lot more on what incentives the decision-makers are under. And I claim the politician who will be fired in 2 years unless he makes himself look awesome on Election Day has more short term focused incentives that a company CEO.
Here's where the disagreement starts. We have insufficiently different facts on the table, but those unspoken are on the different sides. So you decide that governments are under more short-term pressure to demonstrate results, while I think modern corporations have shorter periods when shareholders can allow CEOs not to bring them tangible results. And for corporations existing for decades I have examples of governments existing at least as long.
I guess we have to keep disagreeing.
NASA does some things well, and is absolutely terrible at others.
We'd be a lot better served, as a nation and a society, if we accepted these realities in the same way that our best businesses do. Instead, we're stuck with a Day 2 mentality, where the risks associated with grand endeavors are unacceptable because a bunch of whiners will complain.
The same assholes who whinge about the JWST being $4b over budget will happily cheer for hundreds of billions to be spent on wars or whatever. They're not arguing honestly, and we need to learn to ignore them.
Uncertainty is certain! We also need to accept the fact that sometimes we go down paths, make discoveries, and need to reverse course, or hold people accountable so the wrong people don't pay for the mistakes of others. None of that is happening with JWST, while Northrop gets to pull in billions. That's in addition to ~$30B/year Northrop is pulling in building weapons.
> The same assholes who whinge about the JWST being $4b over budget will happily cheer for hundreds of billions to be spent on wars or whatever.
That's just not true, and the criticism of the F35 program is a fine example.
Beyond that, Webb going over budget is stifling progress on dozens of other pursuits that could probably use the funds more constructively.
All of which are made harder by people who share your preference for exceedingly inefficient but low-error processes.
> or hold people accountable so the wrong people don't pay for the mistakes of others.
This part of your sentence isn't compatible with the first part of your sentence. This is at the core of the problem. The prevalence of this attitude leads to a culture of ass-covering rather than ambition and risk-taking. That ass-covering creates gross inefficiencies, leading to every step costing 10x too much, and taking 5x too long.
The JWST yes is new and great and better and technically difficult. But a serious discussion must be had about how NASA spends its money. Many of the things they do are not that innovative and the big companies basically have no accountability and essentially know that delays to JWST will keep them in business. That money could simply have been spent a better way.
Now with the JWST at least you are pushing the possible and I agree you have to be willing to keep pushing those things beyond the initial budget.
However other things, like SLS, Orion and a number of other programs are just charity for big companies. They do not push the possible in terms of technology, but rather are mostly old technologies that they can incrementally work on.
So overall I do agree you have to go over budget and accept that as a reality. However you need to be careful and not just give a free pass not unlimited spending, when that money could be used to improve a dynamic space infrastructure and industry rather then having 50% of your budget in the 3 huge programs that have little accountability.
Governments are notoriously bad at procurement, especially in this sector.
Governments are very much about short term gain too, just with money that's not their own.
A man with a ridiculous amount of money and a cult following hired a bunch of very smart people, many who used to work for the government, to work for him to build rockets for other people so he could make more money.
NASAs goal was never to build rockets for cheap. It was to do great science.
Guess it was too hard, political considerations and such, certainly some aerospace CEO's got rich regardless in the meantime, so good for them yes?
US aerospace funding by the government is clearly broken, this is known the world over. SpaceX came along and cut costs by half within a decade, that's surely common knowledge by this point?
https://theconversation.com/how-spacex-lowered-costs-and-red...
I generally agree with you here - but we'll need to separate "privatizable" aerospace projects from others.
Rocket design is quite old, being a prerequisite to all else. No wonder a lot of experience was gained and - by now - private enterprises can optimize this, so governments should step aside.
At the same time there are projects which could produce commercial benefits after much longer time spans. Automatic interplanetary stations are in that range. So are space telescopes.
That explains how, simultaneously, SpaceX can outwit NASA in rocket design - yet doesn't yet venture into space telescopes business, nothing serious there.
Space debris can make specific orbits unusable, but you can pass through those orbits no worries.
You can think of it like the asteroid belt.
If you are flying out past the asteroid belt you don't really need to worry about it, as the objects are spread out so much your chance of intercepting one is very small.
If you want to have an orbit within the asteroid belt you will definitely need active course correction and obstacle avoidance.
Of course, there is a point in which if there were truly stupid amounts of debris in a specific orbit then you might have difficulty avoiding it, but that seems incredibly unlikely - if only that we would stop throwing debris into that orbit way before we got to that point.
> One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges difficult for many generations.
[Edit]
And farther down under 'Implications':
> the resulting debris cascade could make prospects for long-term viability of satellites in particular low Earth orbits extremely low. However, even a catastrophic Kessler scenario at LEO would pose minimal risk for launches continuing past LEO, or satellites travelling at medium Earth orbit (MEO) or geosynchronous orbit (GEO). The catastrophic scenarios predict an increase in the number of collisions per year, as opposed to a physically impassable barrier to space exploration that occurs in higher orbits.
Indian and Chinese companies don't bother to EOL their satellites by burning them up; they just leave them where they are.
If you haven't seen Wall-E, watch it.
I'll throw a couple examples out for you:
DESI[1] has 5000 individually movable fiber optic cables. It's also sitting on a 4m mirror. It is a massive engineering project, but also would make anything with similar goals that a handful of people could hack together for a few million dollars obsolete. It can get 5000 spectra every 15 mins and a small, slit based telescope can maybe do a handful per night. Large scale projects like "mapping the night sky" are going to be dominated by massive projects. See also GAIA [6]
Space based makes things way harder. Let's take JWST[2] as an example. Someone else has mentioned the tolerances on the mirror. You also need to keep everything cold (7 kelvin!). You need to be able to control this, keep it pointed in the right direction with stunning accuracy, etc, etc. And all this needs to work in space, after being shaken around through a rocket launch. You also need a really compelling reason to go to space for a telescope. Those reasons include, observing things that you can't see from the ground (X-rays for example). You need really good seeing (no atmosphere). You need really low noise observations. I'd be surprised if those were what a small operation needed. Especially when it makes all the other things (control, servicing, etc) so much harder.
In fact, there are gaps where pretty simple ground based hardware can do good scientific work. Though, it is usually for pretty specific goals. [3] is a bunch of DSLRs that is one of the best instruments for finding really diffuse galaxies which are really interesting systems at the moment.
On the ML techniques, those are definitely being used in astronomy. One recent example [4] but go to ADS and look for things with ML in the title and you'll get a lot.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1LVMox0KNc [2] https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/observatory/ote/mirrors/index.... [3] https://www.dragonflytelescope.org/ [4] https://www.kaggle.com/c/PLAsTiCC-2018 [5] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/search/filter_database_fq_data... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(spacecraft)
But I would really like to see the day when governments aren't the only ones who build telescopes like the Hubble or James webb.
That instead amateur enthusiasts crowdfund and build custom telescopes, launched on sub $250k rocket launches which then can allocate hours of control at a time at cost or at least give the telemetry for free. Imagine 25, 50, or 100 telescopes in space all looking out and mapping the night sky at ever increasing rates.
Couple this with advanced ML techniques for anyone to go over the data. I'm sure a golden age for star gazing would just be beginning.
According to [0], we have only discovered a small glass in comparison to a sea on earth.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwtC_4t2g5M
p.s If you haven't see The Age of A.I. on youtube, it's an amazing documentary consisting of 8 episodes.