You mean James Webb? That's a prime example of how we've failed. It's a decent $500m telescope with a moderate but not particularly ambitious scope, that overran its budget by a factor of 20 and launched fifteen years late. That so many people think unfolding a sunshield is a pinnacle of human achievement just underlines how much ambition we have lost. We could have had an in-space constructed telescope ten times the size, if the government still actually knew how to build things.

> a decent $500m telescope with a moderate but not particularly ambitious scope

So says someone on the Internet. We can make whatever claims we want if we don't have to back them up. That's the point of the JWST: gather evidence to back up claims.

>That's the point of the JWST: gather evidence to back up claims.

The original cost of James Webb was meant to be $500m and it was meant to launch in 2007.

The actual cost was $9.7b and it launched in 2021 and still isn't fully operational.

We don't know how to build things any more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Cos...

We built it - do you mean our budgeting isn't very good? Was it better before? Were NASA programs on budget historically?

>What are you writing this on?

A glorified BBS.

>If you flew out to L2, what would you see?

Nothing much since the 1960s plans of massive space stations never materialized.