James Webb telescope's coldest instrument reaches operating temperature

Re:James Webb telescope's coldest instrument reaches operati... by formerly_proven on Monday April 18, 2022 @01:56PM (#31074174)

Projects that push aside the envelope of what was previously possible and reach entirely new levels of performance tend to have not that predictable schedules and costs. I'm pretty sure the planners involved know that, but on the political level fixed ranges and estimates are required to get funding - so you get cost overruns and delays.

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Re:James Webb telescope's coldest instrument reaches operati... by HPsquared on Monday April 18, 2022 @02:08PM (#31074322)

Also, they probably wouldn't have gotten funding at the start if they said it'd take 25 years and 10 billion. Starting with a low-ball and gradually ramping up has a greater probability of (funding) success.

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Re:James Webb telescope's coldest instrument reaches operati... by lisper on Monday April 18, 2022 @02:29PM (#31074594)

And the fact that everyone knows this leads to some interesting game theory.

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Re:James Webb telescope's coldest instrument reaches operati... by perardi on Monday April 18, 2022 @04:51PM (#31076366)

Every HN thread brings up the cost overruns, and I just…OK, smart guy, you come up with a reasonable estimate of shooting a telescope into a very distant orbit and then cooling it to 12 degrees above absolute zero.

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Re:James Webb telescope's coldest instrument reaches operati... by smcnally on Tuesday April 19, 2022 @03:24AM (#31080456)

To <7 degrees!

> … down to its final operating temperature of less than 7 kelvins

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Re:James Webb telescope's coldest instrument reaches operati... by Sharlin on Tuesday April 19, 2022 @05:53AM (#31081254)

I guess the GP means US customary degrees rather than standard ones (also technically kelvins are not "degrees", the unit is simply K rather than °K, but as they share the magnitude with °C the difference gets muddled when talking about relative temperatures…)

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