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Gramage t1_iwrv3va wrote

Reply to comment by King_Pecca in The powerful James Webb Space Telescope has found an unexpectedly rich ‘undiscovered country’ of early galaxies that has been largely hidden until now. by aimymalik

The whole damn project blows my mind with the level of engineering involved. Not just how advanced the technology of the device itself is, but how perfectly it went off. The launch was so perfect it saved on manoeuvring (I hate spelling that word) fuel and extended its lifespan by many years. The extremely delicate origami unfolding process, with 344 single points of failure any one of which would have completely scrapped the mission, went off without a hitch. It coasted 1.5 million kilometres and ended up exactly in Earth's second Lagrange point, like throwing a basketball really hard from Toronto and hitting nothing but net in Vancouver. The only thing that went wrong was basically an act of god, one mirror segment got dinged with a 0.1mm micrometeoroid, which has barely had an effect on overall performance.

Humans can do some amazing stuff when we put our heads together. We seem to waste a lot of our talent fighting over black organic goop and old holy books though...

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[deleted] t1_iwset7o wrote

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Gramage t1_iwshvm9 wrote

That's why I didn't capitalize the G lol. I meant it simply as something very random that's essentially impossible to predict or prevent.

Besides, Krishna told me it was him this time, but Amun made him do it! ;)

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the6thReplicant t1_iwtlqt4 wrote

I still remember when they were first designing the telescope and a group of engineers went to Japan to study origami to see if any techniques could be used when folding the telescope to the size they needed.

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HeberSeeGull t1_iwtxm2y wrote

Your comment has such an attractive blend of information, critical thinking, and positive outlook. Your communication skills make you a fine online teacher. Whoever you work for is lucky to have you on staff. I second your admiration for the NASA engineers who continue to amaze.

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