It’s really sad to think about how well NASA works when you consider how little funding they get and how hard they have to fight for it. It’s honestly quite ridiculous.

I know a lot of military industrial complex boils down to being nationwide jobs programs, e.g. everything to do with the F-35. But NASA? I don’t think they’re anywhere near as close to being a “jobs program”

Off the top of my head, I really can’t think of many things NASA as a whole has fucked up.

Challenger & Columbia. Challenger wasn’t a NASA problem, it was a Politicians & Bureaucracy problem. As I earlier mentioned… the people responsible for my initial statement of “how well NASA works” knew that disaster was highly likely with Challenger launch. But bureaucracy didn’t care. Haven’t read into Columbia so won’t comment.

So why the hell do they get so little funding… it’s depressing to think about. My cynicism doesn’t think James Webb success is going to bring in much more funding. SpaceX, understandably, is likely going to take more & more space related contracts.

I still think NASA deserves much, much better treatment.

I agree with your overall sentiment, but I have to disagree with this:

>Challenger & Columbia. Challenger wasn’t a NASA problem, it was a Politicians & Bureaucracy problem.

NASA managers overrode the recommendations of the engineers. That was absolutely a NASA problem. Sure they were under some political pressure, but they made the wrong call in the face of strong data. Columbia too was a management priorities problem.

That being said, NASA is doing great science. NASA is compromised of humans so they are therefore imperfect, but I would also love to see them get more support. Their $23 billion dollar budget is only 3% of the size of the DOD budget.

As far as SpaceX, they are a NASA subcontractor, executing goals specified by NASA. I don't understand your concern. (SpaceX also has a thriving private satellite business of course.) The entire Apollo program was executed by NASA paid subcontractors. That is how NASA operates. Their primary role is to spec, subcontract, and manage. SpaceX is doing things for less money than other subcontractors, so they are helping NASA's budget.

Parent comment: > It’s really sad to think about how well NASA works when you consider how little funding they get and how hard they have to fight for it. It’s honestly quite ridiculous.

Sibling comment (dmd): > I saw a study a few years ago where people were asked how much funding various agencies get, and the majority of people thought NASA was more than 10% of the federal budget; some even went as high as 25%. (It's less than half of 1%.)

Your comment: > [NASA’s] $23 billion dollar budget is only 3% of the size of the DOD budget.

NASA’s budget is about half a percent of total DoD budget, but that doesn’t tell an accurate story. Most people assume NASA is synonymous with the total or almost total US space budget, but its less than half. You can do the math in 2022 if you would like [0], but in 2013 NASA’s budget was $16.8B [1], and the total space budget was $39.3B [2]. According to that article, in 2013 every other nation was supposedly under a $10B space budget [2], but can’t really speak to the validity of that. I think it’s reasonable to say we spend a decent amount on space compared to others. All that said, not opposed to an increased space budget, more space is good in my book.

[0] https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudg...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA

[2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/which-countries-spend...

Thanks for the comment. Your reference [1] shows that NASA's budget is typically 0.5% of the total Federal budget in recent years, not the DOD budget. In 2020, NASA was about 23 billion and the DOD was about 766 billion, or about 3%. As to your other point, yes, some of the DOD budget is spent on space. That number will continue to increase.

Interesting tidbit: In constant 2020 dollars, peak NASA spending during Apollo was only twice today's budget.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA https://www.statista.com/statistics/264494/nasas-budget/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272473/us-military-spend...

*The third link says 2012, but it covers through 2020.

...NASA is compromised [comprised/composed entirely] of humans...

Oops. Thanks. Yes, I meant comprised, although I suppose humans also lead to compromise...

This may or may not help your cynicism, but here's 2 fun facts:

* NASA doesn't even get the majority of the US government's space spending

* NASA's budget is still larger than every other country's civilian space program combined

I saw a study a few years ago where people were asked how much funding various agencies get, and the majority of people thought NASA was more than 10% of the federal budget; some even went as high as 25%. (It's less than half of 1%.)

It seems to me that there are two NASAs: The unmanned exploration programs, which do amazing things, and the manned exploration programs, which look very much like jobs programs.

I'm not an expert, but I haven't yet seen a good science rationale for returning to the moon. I'm not aware of what we've learned from the International Space Station. And the Space Shuttle was an expensive and needless boondoggle that killed fourteen people for no good reason. If someone can correct me on the science we gain from these programs I'd welcome it. Because it seems to me that we get precious little science from the treasure and blood dedicated to these programs.

The Apollo missions were a different thing, they taught a lot about the Moon and brought back crucial material like the Genesis Rock.

On the other hand the unmanned program does amazing things like Hubble, Voyager, Magellan, the Mars probes, and on and on. And soon, Webb. These have told us amazing things about our world, and we should be doing more of them.

> I'm not aware of what we've learned from the International Space Station

If you watch videos of the people on the space station you begin to be reminded of "remote hands" in a data center. The space station is like a colo-facility that houses science experiments instead of racks of computers. The people on board seem to exist as "remote hands" that maintain those science experiments for whatever science team is on the ground running them.

This is all conjecture, of course... but I've watched enough of "Hi I'm somebody on the space station, let's walk around" videos to draw this opinion. The ISS is a science lab that orbits the earth. The people on board are there to be remote hands.

Have there been any interesting breakthroughs or findings from the science done aboard the ISS?

Oodles. NASA puts out reports every once in a while detailing the benefits of the ISS.

Some of them are not too surprising. For example looking at hurricanes from space helps you predict where they will go.

I think the medical research is pretty interesting though. Of course a lot of the medical research is focused on the sorts of things that happen to people living in space for long periods of time. But there's also interesting experiments where microgravity has enabled medical advances that'll help people here on Earth.

On the "curing cancer" front, there's been a lot of exciting developments over the last few decades in immunotherapy, which tends to have milder side-effects than chemo. The monoclonal antibody Keytruda is used to treat a BUNCH of different cancers, but has some downsides: it's a pain to store (needs to be refrigerated, limited shelf life), and it has to be administered intravenously (takes more effort, leads to side-effects, not fun for patients). Thanks to lessons learned creating suspensions of the medicine in microgravity, Merck is currently testing a version of Keytruda that can be delivered as a quick shot.

As another example, TAS‐205 (a treatment for muscular dystrophy) is starting phase 3 trials after promising results in a smaller study. However if it eventually becomes an approved medicine, it'll probably be 20-30 years after the original protein experiments were done on the ISS

I know you're asking specifically about results from on board the ISS but here's something more broad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies

There's also the NICER mission (Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer; https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/nicer/nicer_about.html) which is a payload on the ISS that's mapped pulsar surfaces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zukBXehGHas

> I'm not aware of what we've learned from the International Space Station.

We learned about the effects of microgravity on the human body for one. Useful for future trips to the Moon and/or Mars.

Plus we’ve had the benefit of a microgravity laboratory staffed by world class scientists for two decades.

Putting people back on the Moon is valuable just as a technology demonstration and test for more ambitious missions like Mars.

As you say, Apollo taught us a lot about the Moon. But it didn’t teach us everything. So if Apollo taught us something then clearly there is value in sending humans.

> And the Space Shuttle was an expensive and needless boondoggle that killed fourteen people for no good reason.

Without the Shuttle there is no ISS. So any benefit gained from the ISS is owed at least in part to the Shuttle.

What are you talking about Webb was build by contracting defense contractors, like for example Northrop Grumman (primary contractor if not mistaken) and Lockheed Martin who also build F-35, there is YouTube video where Lockheed does presentation about Webb telescope project complexity.

It’s true that Northrop Grumman was the prime contractor. You don’t want to keep all the skills to build this, and all the manufacturing steps, in-house.

But the project leadership and key pieces of the design were at GSFC and JPL.

Full list: https://webb.nasa.gov/content/meetTheTeam/team.html

Every large project is built by multiple partners. But in this case, the overall design and systems engineering was done by NASA/Goddard. Claiming otherwise is like saying that Foxconn makes iPads, not Apple.

NASA certainly has their share of "jobs programs." The SLS is a prime example. Not NASA's fault: when congress gives you money and tells you to work on something, you work on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System

> I still think NASA deserves much, much better treatment.

This is certainly true.

> It’s really sad to think about how well NASA works when you consider how little funding they get and how hard they have to fight for it.

I do agree with you, but have you maybe considered that you're looking at it the wrong way?

Isn't there a saying that armies that eat bad food win more battles?

Could it be that because NASA is not funded at the level they deserve, they have to be more efficient?

By the same logic we could conclude that the US Military is an efficient operation. After all I can find someone who will argue their funding needs to be increased.

definitely not as much of a jobs program, considering probably anyone smart enough and hard working enough to get a job at NASA could get a much easier and more high paying job elsewhere.

Mirror alignment was done in the days leading up to insertion, wasn't it?

Afaik, all that's left is testing and cooling- the cold side is still around 63K and needs to get down to 50K (-223C).

Mirror deployment was done before insertion, moving the 18 mirrors up from their locked position by 12.5 mm. Now, 3 months of mirror alignment will follow. They will align with a reference star having to first move one mirror a little bit to identify how the mirror affects the alignment, then calculate the alignment and move the mirror. Each mirror's position can be controlled at 10 nm resolution.

It's not only position, also deformation by pulling or pushing on the center of the mirror changing it's curvature.

I can't fathom how they have a servo, a linear actuator, or anything else, that can apply pressure to the mirror and keep it there, for years, in the most extreme environments.

Every component of this thing is mind bending.

Here's a good paper on the mirror actuators [1]. Skimming, they look like hexapod rotary stepper architecture that would not need power to hold a position, only to change position.

[1] https://www.esmats.eu/amspapers/pastpapers/pdfs/2006/warden....

Steppers make good sense for that application, what a beautiful design. 7 nm step size with a repeat accuracy of 1 nm is insane precision.

It is a beautiful design, isn't it?

I'll speculate that the engineers who designed this and other ground-breaking aspects of JWST feel the same euphoria that Beethoven might have felt on completing his 9th symphony.

I think beauty wears many masks, but she's in every human effort to bring something new into the world.

"Cryogenic Nano-Actuator for JWST" https://www.esmats.eu/amspapers/pastpapers/pdfs/2006/warden....

Electromagnet with a constant current running through it would do the job nicely I would think? Keep in mind that with the sun always shining where Webb is that power is not really their first constraint.

Correct. And since the beryllium mirrors are 8 times harder than steel, it's probably a tough job.

Not really. They are quite thin and the deformation is minute, on the order of less than a micron at the largest point.

Edit: that should have been 10 micron.