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A comment on James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away. Parent comment

Re:James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in spa... by messe on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @11:50AM (#30074141)
The one that had the biggest influence on the design of the shuttle was probably the plan to launch into a polar orbit, rendezvous with a satellite, capture it, and land as it swung around for the next orbit. This require massive cross-range capability, in order to be able to glide back to a suitable landing site in the US, putting lower limits on the size of the wings.
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Re:James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in spa... by adolph on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @12:59PM (#30075330)
Scott Manley has a wonderful explainer on it "The Most Important Space Shuttle Mission Never Happened":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q2i0eu35aY

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Re:James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in spa... by echelon on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @12:01PM (#30074337)
The classified autonomous X-37 [1] has a cargo bay [2] and there are (were?) plans to scale it up to double the size to accommodate larger payloads and crewed missions [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37

[2] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36440/this-is-our-firs...

[3] http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/aerospace-engineering/spa...

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Re:James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in spa... by spookthesunset on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @12:49PM (#30075150)
That X-37 photo in the wiki article had me go down the "payload fairing" rabbit hole. Still don't quite know what the "bubble wrap" is on the inside. I assume it is part insulation to protect from extreme heat and part, well, bubble wrap.

According to wikipedia those things cost around $6 million to manufacture and spacex was the first to ever bother retrieving them.

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

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Re:James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in spa... by aksss on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @02:12PM (#30076524)
Gosh, the section on "Mission failures caused by payload fairings" is understandable but not something I've ever heard of before. The launch crew error of failing to remove two lanyards.. ugh. To be "that guy" must've sucked.
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Re:James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in spa... by walrus01 on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @02:33PM (#30076823)
they spent a huge amount of money building a launch facility for it at Vandenberg that was never used. Got cancelled after the Challenger exploded.
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