James Webb Telescope Passes Critical Tests 82
eldavojohn writes "The Hubble Telescope's successor reached a milestone today as it passed a critical design review. The James Webb Space Telescope was originally set to launch in 2013 but has run about $1B over budget and has been pushed back to a 2014 launch. Today's good news means that there shouldn't be further delays as the JWST has accomplished all science and engineering requirements for all mission-critical design functionality. Scientists, of course, think these delays and costs 'pale in comparison to the secrets of the universe the James Webb Space Telescope is expected to unlock.' These are exciting times for many realms of science, even if we're somewhat saddened by it being the loyal Hubble's twilight hours."
It's not smooth sailing from here (Score:5, Insightful)
The article states that the JWST passed the Mission Critical Design Review, which is a specific event, not just a "critical review". This review means that the entire spacecraft has been designed and analyzed. However, there are likely to be further delays as hardware is built and engineers realize it doesn't quite meet the expectations that the analysis set out for it.
Re:Typical government failure. (Score:1, Insightful)
Hello, troll. Some points.
1. Private contractors (including Northrop Grumman and Ball Aerospace) have participated in this telescope's creation. Thus, much of the telescope has indeed been built by private companies.
2. A billion dollars is relatively insignificant with respect to the total US budget.
3. NASA engineers are extremely competent.
4. You're a stupid troll who wouldn't know practical approaches to running a country from silly fantasies involving the free market.
Re:Typical government failure. (Score:3, Insightful)
Holy crap, $1 *BILLION* dollars over budget? For the love of christ, now all you statist morons know why those of us with more than 2 brain cells to rub together flock to the flag of libertarianism. Private companies could have built and launched this telescope by now and probably would have been a billion UNDER budget. Instead, we give this work to incompetent government workers who wouldn't know a telescope from a hole in the ground. How pathetic. Another worthless government failure.
Private companies are building it
Re:Hubble II (Score:4, Insightful)
If that's the worst you could find, I'm not impressed.
If we want to put people into space, questions like the health effects of being there is rather important.
And they test on mice, because you can kill it and examine all the bones in detail. I'm sure they do checks of the astronaut's bones as well, but you can do much more invasive examinations of a mouse.
It seems to me this is a test of the IIS' specific LAN, not LANs in general. Things in space have to be specially designed, I'm pretty sure it's not a normal off the shelf switch what they have up there. And any lessons learned there will be probably useful for future things. I don't know if space telescopes use networking internally, but it seems like a possibility.
Well, again, if you want to launch people into space, not killing them while getting there is important. This one seems to also test whether the UI will be readable in launch conditions. Which also seems kind of important, since they may need to interact with it during launch.
Just like with the mice, it's research of the long term consequences of being in space. Yeast reproduces quickly, too, which is good for genetics research.
Ok, and how do you go inhabit a planet, if you don't know whether the astronauts will be able to deal with launch conditions, not die of cancer due to the radiation during the travel, and retain enough bone mass to avoid breaking their legs during the landing?
I vaguely remember hearing that atronauts' health deteriorates significantly after staying on the IIS for a long time. If we're going to land on another planet we'd have to be sure that the astronauts will be in good enough condition to do whatever needs to be done once they land.