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A comment on 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program. Parent comment

Re:4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred re... by nytesky on Sunday July 27, 2025 @06:51PM (#44705447)
I’m afraid I don’t understand how Starship could help proliferate JWST. It was launched with Ariana 5 which is a mature launch system.

The bottleneck is actual manufacturing of JWST - the folding mirror was especially fraught; I think the sunshield as well.

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Re:4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred re... by eagerpace on Sunday July 27, 2025 @09:28PM (#44706347)
So many ways. The current paradigm is that it gets one chance and it has to be perfect. Starship (which I'm only referencing as the bleeding-edge launch vehicle) compared to Ariane 5 could be a fraction of half the cost, with double the volume and 4x the mass. With those constraints removed the science missions had a lot more flexibility in their design.
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Re:4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred re... by nytesky on Sunday July 27, 2025 @09:52PM (#44706462)
JWST cost $10B. The launch was expensive at $1.5B; but getting that down to $750M won’t really change the availability.
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Re:4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred re... by eagerpace on Monday July 28, 2025 @02:02PM (#44713506)
I'm a firm believer that if the mass and volume constraints were relaxed the design of such an instrument could be greatly simplified.
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Re:4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred re... by nytesky on Monday July 28, 2025 @05:31PM (#44715933)
Hmm, I didn’t consider that, very good point. With 10x the volume, maybe the mirror and sunshine origami could have been avoided or much simpler. I wonder how to figure out how much the cost was because of that complicated mechanics…
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Re:4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred re... by bradyd on Monday July 28, 2025 @02:57PM (#44714097)
The Europa Clipper mission saved $3B+ just by switching from SLS to Falcon Heavy.
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