Andy Lord That’s actually a really interesting idea… I for one would GLADLY invest a portion of my monthly budget into crowdfunding the costs of research & development, construction, launch (and operations?) of an advanced space telescope which would push our current understanding of astrophysics & cosmology. They have successfully crowdfunded far more outlandish ideas than this, from space movies to armored vehicles that drive into tornadoes- why not this?
Jonathan Merage I have no idea how I'd move forward with the idea. But I gotta imagine there are millions of people who'd pitch a few bucks into the kitty for science. I actually really want to proceed with this idea, I just have no idea what i'd do. I'm very open to suggestions.
Zachary Fluke : it's going to be like an Apollo landing: "Roger, Tranquility. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot."
Months? NO! Years! The scientists building it will lose their jobs once its built. Not built yet! 1000% over the initial cost and running to Congress to get more. Thieving taxpayer robbing scientists is all they are!
I'm telling ya right now... If that thing blows up on the pad or disintegrates in flight I'm going to lose my shit ENTIRELY. Already feels like I've been waiting forever for it to get the hell up there.
Man, Fraser, this depresses me. I've waited my whole life for technology to finally catch up and hand me the tiniest amount of data confirming extraplanetary discoveries. And now, I am old; and after waiting a lifetime for this explosion of technology to finally come into its own, I sigh at these "distant" future dates for some of these projects knowing I was born just a hair too soon to finally live long enough and see some of these wonderful discoveries. I am hopeful and envious for those of you who are young enough to enjoy the rewards from these future projects. Be glad you live in an era where these discoveries finally come to fruition and be happy you are fortunate enough to witness them.
to a degree. the launch limitations in weight and size has made james web very complicated, if it could be twice as heavy you could use aluminum plates instead of this origami stuff, or if it could be twice as wide at launch the mirrors could be fewer and larger. less complicated often translate to cheaper.
+BLAIR M Schirmer you do realize that tax cuts for the rich allow them to invest more money into the economy instead of forcing them to throw their money away into the black hole that is the government, right? rich not being taxed is infinitely better for every other class than simply taxing them and redistributing the money as welfare...
About Webb's cost and delay... Look at the F-35, you'll feel a lot better. New subscriber here, love it :) Everyone needs a tap in the back when it's deserved :)
Or, for preference, Hubble's cost overruns & delay, which were certainly on par w/JWST's, and resulted in a launched unit that needed on-orbit repair to be functional. At this point, if JWST can avoid that last, it will STILL be ahead of HST in the grand scheme of things. ^_^; (*knocks on tough fibrous material*)
Hubble is famous because it uses visible light and while all these new scopes are really cool and push out limits of knowledge and capture the minds of our future, visible light scopes capture the hearts of our future something I think the scientific community forgets about all too often and leaves them wondering why people aren't as interested. Basically what I'm saying is that we need a new visible light space telescope after Hubble goes down.
Hubble pretty much explored the limits of visible light telescopes. After all, it looked deep enough to see the very first galaxies. We could build extremely large telescopes in space to image extra-solar planets but the best bang for the buck comes from such as the James Webb and other planet-hunting 'scopes. Also, there is a way to "see" exoplanet atmospheres and look for life. We subtract the star's light from that of the star + planet and we get the planet's light, which can be analyzed by a spectroscope to look for such things as oxygen, chlorophyll, etc.
Lots of people are excited about these telescopes. Guess what, there is NOTHING natural about a Hubble image. It is as artificial as a false colour image of Xrays, UV or IR.
Greg's right, Fraser did a great video here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-_9NMXy1FKPA.html about it. Eagle Nebula: Hubble: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/messier-16-the-eagle-nebula ESA: sci.esa.int/herschel/49868-wide-angle-view-of-messier-16-in-visible-light/ asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=20361
Hey, I just found you on the tube, and wanted to say thanks for your work. I need more of this. It is so sad to me too see it taking so long to launch the JWT. I am 75 now so they better get with it.
The US spends about 580b on the military this includes all branches. The US spend 642 billion on medicare alone which only impacts about 18% of the population. We also spent 470 Billion on welfare. The military budget is in no way whatsoever the majority of our spending. But ofcourse you don't know this because you don't care/ you are willfully ignorant and a moron.
since it can't be refuled, it's life will be but a fraction of HST. This is going to end up being the biggest waste of money ever. I had such excitement when this was announced years and years ago, but when I read they won't even give it the chance of a refuel someday by merely putting grab handles on it, I lost my enthusiasm. Sure, it's going to take some amazing pics and make some contribution to our knowledge, but nothing compared to HST contribution...nothing even close.
@@peterwestberg9894 There have been some plans (though I don't think they're very far along yet) to develop either a spacecraft that would deliver more propellant to JWST or a spacecraft that would attach to JWST and serve as a replacement propulsion/maneuvering system from then on. JWST does have a docking connector for this, IIRC. This still doesn't solve the maintenance issue, of course.
Wonderful video! One of the best U ever made: Long but not long-winded. Optimistic but not unrealistic. Full of neat animations... masterpiece! Thank you and keep up the great work Fraser.
@@mrx1278 - It's spelled PATIENCE. Patients are people who go to the doctor or are in hospitals. You must be in the US and are a victim of their educational system. Gee, no wonder the Americans can't launch the JWST.
I'm as big of a cosmic space nerd as anyone, and I wish the best for all grand plans for extraordinary space telescopes. That said, I think there are some very important priorities that do not seem to be on many people's lists: 1. Perfect balance between safe and cost-effective delivery to orbit systems. Fraser Cain, perhaps you could clarify in a video or three, but it seems to me that the U.S. is presently in a state of limbo when it comes to advancing these technologies and processes. 2. Sustainable human occupation in space (or at least "more sustainable" than ISS represents). For this, it seems we need better closed-circuit systems which require less cargo deliveries, at least some modicum of artificial gravity facilities to ameliorate some of the negative symptoms of long-term space flight, and better radiation protection. Growing crops in space would go along with this. 3. Real plans for how we are going to start exploiting the valuable resources of the 'not too far away' parts of our solar system (including the moon). Asteroid mining, or whatever . . . a chunk of rock/ice maneuvered into a safe orbit near Earth where it could be harvested would pay for a lot of fancy deep space telescopes . . . 4. A long-term vision for how we are going to act on whatever exoplanet marvels are revealed by this next generation of telescopes. So what if we find empirically "Earth like" planets in "nearby" systems? Even the closest possibility of them all (which doesn't seem that great a possibility to be honest), Proxima b is about 40,000 years of travel away based on the highest speeds we have so far attained. There are "feasible" technologies which might be able to propel space craft at speeds up to 0.1 c (Nuclear pulse propulsion), which could reduce the travel time to Proxima to the ~40 year ballpark, but those technologies haven't received serious attention from NASA or other major players for decades. Probably there are other prospects too, and it would be cool to hear you cover those Fraser Cain. In sum: I'd like to see "us" focusing less on gazing out there and instead focus more on "getting out there," and "making profitable use" of what is out there. None of us will ever see a true spacefaring humanity--a shanty town in low Earth orbit, and launching plenty of robotic probes doesn't count in my book. Something more like what we see in Antarctica would count: constant yearly residence, if not some degree of self-sustenance and resilience in the face of crises and accidental isolation from Earth is what would count in my book. But at the present rate, it will be many generations before anyone sees a true spacefaring humanity.
Hopefully, BFR will allow getting much bigger payloads into orbit, making these much easier on the engineering (and therefore cheaper). With its upper stage diameter of 9 m, JWST would fit in there without having to fold its mirror! Even the smaller 8m versions of LUVOIR would fit.
James Webb costs somewhere around 10 billion, so with an estimated $75 per kilogram into LEO with the BFR you could send 133333 TONS up into space for that money...
It is MUCH easier to build a giant telescope in zero--g than on the lunar surface, where abrasive electrostatic dust gets everywhere, structural support is still needed, you can only look at half the sky at night, less than half at day, have no power generation for 14 day periods, and also have to deal with stray light from the ground during daytime. With the exception (maybe) of radiotelescopes on the far side, lunar telescopes are generally a _bad_ idea.
Hubble has brought visions to us all , yet they stalled in giving us more, I never in my life would have imagined what Hubble has shown, more powerful than any artist who has ever lived
It will a big shame if NASA doesn't choose LUVOIR for its next decadal-survey mission. When I learned about this amazing telescope a long time ago, I was completely speechless. It will even outcompete the biggest ground-based telescopes. No one knows for sure what can we reveal from this monstrous telescope. Given NASA's this year astronomy budget, which is 1.4 billion $, LUVOIR could cost more than 10 billion years. And it seems like NASA will select missions that cost less. So in 2022, astronomers should choose wisely among these four ambitious missions. And thank you Fraser and Universe Today team for these amazing episodes, and please make another episode only for LUVOIR, cause there's a lot to talk about this telescope.
I know the feeling, when you think about the capabilities of this telescope, you just get really impatient. I'd also take HabEx and Origins Space Telescope too, though. Any of them. :-)
b.s. without having refueling capabilities, it's lifetime will be nothing compared to HST. Sure, we'll get something from it, but you better enjoy it because a few years after that, and *poof*, 10 billion down the drain. What a waste
LUVOIR looks exciting, indeed. *If* the origami technique is proven to work in JWST (a big 'if'). Personally, I would like more telescopes working in parallel than one monster telescope where everybody is fighting for observation time. Heck, even 2-3 more Hubble-class telescopes would mean a capability for more concurrent observations of multiple targets by multiple teams
I prefer the star shade for direct imaging of exoplanets. It only needs to be accurate down to about a mm and hence is much cheaper with current technology. While a chronograph for direct planet imaging of earth like planets needs accuracy of the entire stack down to fractions of an Armstrong (less than 10^-10 meters!), well beyond what we can do today. This is far more accurate than the standard lambda/10 typically required for diffraction limited operation.
There are some really great Earth-based coronographs in the work right now, but I agree, the Starshade will be a great compliment. Especially how it can work with existing telescopes.
It has been proposed. And indeed it was believed by the authors that with some developments could be done. It just it would need developments, while the starshade is a more near term tech. But note this is not like a microchip. We have been grinding mirrors down to 10nm for many years. It is bulk object accuracy. Like the alignment of the 2 critical pieces of the cororngraph with the rest of the telescope, which includes mirror alignment etc. We already do this to better than lambda/10 with our big telescopes right now.
*This is an amazingly done video nicely summarizing what NASA is up to, lots of time must have been spent researching and dumbing everything down for people to understand.*
Sent you an email to the gmail provided about the collab opportunities. No pressure, I will still watch and like and enjoy your content regardless :) keep up the great work and I was wondering how far ahead JWST type projects get decided on
I hope that part of the testing for James Webb is a full end to end test of its optics, 'cause they aren't going to be able to fix this one if they discover someone bunged something in backwards.
We don't have the greatest track record with really complex machines like this. I am hopeful that all of this extra testing this time sorts all of this out before we end up with a myopic telescope or something.
Risking 8.8 billion dollars on a mission sounds excessive to me. This isn't the right way to do space science to my eyes. We need a more pragmatic approach (see SpaceX). What if someone builds a space telescope for say 2 million, with a 50% chance of operating correctly, and launching on a reusable Falcon Heavy? Is this a worse approach than the one used in JWST? And JWST doesn't even give the option of repair/refuel/upgrade which were immensely useful for Hubble
Nick Fotis -- Most of the astronomy that could be done with a 2 million dollar telescope has been done. New cutting edge ground based telescopes cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars. You probably couldn't even get one of the hex segments for the JWST telescope mirror made for 2 million.
I was exaggerating, but having a single 8+ billion telescope without any room for failure doesn't sound logical to me. OK, where do you put the limit for a minimal space-based telescope, Hubble-level? No need to engineer for reduced weight, you can send it up in 2-3 pieces for assembly near ISS before sending it to its merry way. Twenty million? Two hundred? That way, you can have multiple telescopes instead of one white elephant which cannot be upgraded or serviced
Im quite surprised that there are not even plans on the drawing board for the telescope to be built on the dark side of the moon potentially in a large ideal crater, if its to be a radio telescope like arecibo. Its been such a long time since the moon landings now. It seems logical to start building a base on the moon and start construction projects there. Much larger telescopes could be built over time on the moon and this would allow for actually easier construction and repair than a telescope floating in space or orbit.
What makes you think that the moon ground is more confortable than space ? Sending these equipments in space is quite a big deal ; but if you want additionally to cope with a landing, moon gravity, control, power regeneration, communicating with Earth etc... just an even more scary nightmare !
Just to add to the other comment the other side of the moon gets just as much light as this side does. We just don't see it. That bright light and temperature changes can seriously damage telescopes if not shielded.
I haven't watched the whole video yet but here's a good idea for some space telescopes... you know how we use multiple scopes here on earth to get a better view of distant objects, ie a scope in California and another in New York both focus on the same object at the same time to get more data, etc... launch a swarm of small scopes that can all orbit at lagrange 1 or something like that where each scope has a specific thing they do like 2 would be infrared and 2 would be visible light and 2 would be radio, etc
I think they already did, that why they have this collection of nuts and bolts and washers, my lawn mower runs smoother than one of those things, I said things because I use to ride motorbikes, way way back, My Triumph Triton ran better and went a dam sight faster than even todays version of the H.D. I think that Trump was going to supply these to his space scouts to dominate space ilegally, thatvwas untill E.T. saw the first one and feel about laughing.
If JWST launches 2020 when is the earliest that data will be interpreted and published? As my age is rapidly approaching 64 I think it is the only one that I may see any results from.
Unfortunately the pace of exploration will only accelerate. If you live to see the whole JWST mission, you'll just be worried about missing the next three even better ones. I'm afraid you picked the wrong century for seeing everything there is to see. 1500 years ago, now THERE was a time! No chance of missing much new science. You just got unlucky lol. The glass is much more than half full, though, even if you kick it before reading the end of this comment. You've seen more of the universe than any of the billions who lived before you, more than any of your billion ancestors, more than any pharoah or cesar or king. More than Newton or Einstein. Newton never heard of galaxies. Einstein never heard of dark matter. Or RU-vid. You could positively school those guys in astronomy and cosmology. And RU-vid. Hang in there another 5-15 years, and I bet you'll see proof of ET life. (Probably slime, but still, you'll be way ahead of Darwin and Sagan.)
Twirlip Of The Mists Yeah nothing is guaranteed on this little planet 🌏 for this thing called “life”. Any moment could be all of our last. So we must not take our past and current science for granted, and certainly shouldn’t feel entitled to future advancements in technology.
Results from JWST will in fact be fairly quick after launch. Either really good news, or really bad. Then expect data to come out at roughly the same pace as Hubble. Which is very frequent, but a lot of it doesn't make it to mainstream media so you don't always hear about it. Also Hubble data can only be embargoed for the max of 1 year IIRC and then its public. The teams that did the observing are more or less on the hook to publish in that time frame. At least initial results. I am pretty sure JWST will be similar, with perhaps an exception on the primary missions.
With the rise of citizen scientists, though, I'm sure people are going to be digging through the JWST archives and doing artistic interpretations of the data pretty quickly after launch. I'm sure we'll see some amazing shots right after first light. Sort of what happens with Juno images.
By the time the James Webb is finished, we could have WALKED to the stars! Keep the engineering papers coming in the videos, and maybe add a better description of the onboard sensors and operation. Or maybe an amateur and engineers version. There's plenty of us, just as Dave at the EEVBlog.
Please hurry up getting James Webb telescope into space before I die. I want to see beyond the edge of the universe because I believe space goes on forever. Always have, since I was 10 years old and I am 74 years old now
get so excited about these new instruments then waiting waiting i think they should tell us about them as they are been launched then its yippee! ,they better hurry up because reading the data under water will be hard.
Hi Fraser, what do you think of the prospect of NASA chartering flights to Mars on the BFR? If SpaceX can develop the vehicle and NASA can develop the habs/rovers etc it would be a huge boon to their Mars science goals without costing too much more than the current rover missions, if SpaceX's pricing is to be believed. It just doesn't seem like SpaceX wants to develop the whole Mars base architecture themselves and NASA would be the perfect partner for this
Maybe DST sunk cost? I hope so too, I think it would be great if NASA eventually got out of the launch business and focused on science and exploration R&D.
astronomical instruments I can't wait for - LISA - space gravitational wave detector, how about astronomical telescopes of every wavelength on the far side of the moon, and the equivalent stationed at lagrange points(all five lagrange ponts), all interfereometrically linked.
As long as the contractor signs a contract promising to build the next one on a fixed cost and schedule and pay fines if delivered late then I'm fine with it :-)
When BFR will start its operations, we will be able to easily send into space a Hubble-style, monolithic mirror telescope with mirror size of JWST or even bigger (like Subaru or VLT).
Well we have no way to get a larger reflector into space. Even the BFR would not be able to get the larger telescopes into space. Webb's reflector is much larger than Hubble's, and since the ultimate resolution is a function of the distance to the target, the size of the reflector, and the wavelength of the frequency of light, bigger is better. We are just at the cusp of being able to observe exoplanets around nearby stars now. If one of our goals is to be able to directly measure their atmospheres, we need that extra reflector diameter. There is no rocket built or planned that is even close to big enough to launch the Luvoir assembled, and there is no space station in space where it could be built, so the Origami is the only approach thus far with a good chance of getting it put together, complex though that might be.
Yeah you could do an almost 9 m Hubble type with BFR but why not a 20 m folding one? Or build a really big one on the moon. Like 100 m mirror. That would be great.
We need space interferometers!! We can start with ones placed at GSO and form GSO interferometry. Then we can get to work with telescopes at lagrange points to form super large interferometries! Hope these would help us see what exoplanets really look like visually.
This video got me really psyched! The Luvoir looks amazing! I'm a little bit curious about that comparison between Hubble and Luvoir, though. How can we have any images from it if it hasn't launched yet?
I'm thinking this is pretty irrelevant. Space telescopes cost a lot because they have to be very very light, they have to fold up and then self assemble, and they have to be reliable enough to operate for years or decades with no attention. BFR takes away all those problems. 5 BFR launches will cost less than a tenth of one SLS launch. The telescopes can be brought up in sections, with no issues around loose washers. Staff can assemble them in space, possibly even in a shirtsleeve environment. That massively reduces the cost of the instrument. People aren't fully grasping what the reduction in cost to space means. Not just that the launch cost is less. *All* the costs are less.
I think people grasp it, the TESS mission made perfect use of a $60 million Falcon 9 launch. When they see SpaceX launches, they know that gives them twice the mission. And BFR as you say, will multiply that by 5. But, the BFR isn't flying yet, and it doesn't make sense to count on Musk and team until those rockets actually go up and they're proven to do their job.
Fraser Cain yes and no. TESS dates from 2006. It only weighs 360 kg. Surely a lot of design work and expense went into making it that light. Yet it launched on a vehicle that could have put 10 times that weight into that orbit. Light costs money. That's one reason a formula 1 car costs a hundred times more to build than a bus even though a bus can carry 40 times more people. TESS got a cheap ride to orbit, and so saved a lot of money compared to say, a shuttle launch, but that launch capability didn't influence the design, or the cost of the satellite itself.
Lots of design decisions look like conventional satellite design. A small number of very expensive cameras designed for ultra low power consumption. Just barely enough propellant on board for the mission, so everything has to go exactly right. A weird orbit so that the low power transmitter can send data once per orbit. Really? With 4 tonnes to play with? Instead of a small number of super expensive cameras, why not have a couple of hundred off the shelf Canon full frame cameras, or off the shelf astro cameras, either with off the shelf Canon lenses? Have four cameras shoot each patch of sky. Well of course, they're not designed to be used in space. So put them in a pressure vessel with windows! Have normal air around them. Yes, that would weigh half a tonne, but it would save 200 million dollars. Use off the shelf server class computers in a redundant array. Don't have 4 gyros. Have 12! Don't have one set of tiny, expensive 400W solar panels. Have four redundant 4 kW sets of ordinary panels. Don't have some weird arse orbit that might remain stable for a decade, put three big powerful transmitters on it. After all, you've got 16 kW to play with. Don't tile the sky with observations, observe the whole sky all at once.
gasdive - ask these questions to a scientist and an aerospace engineer. They might tell you that off the shelf cameras don't have the low-noise, low-power capabilities of the 16MP CCDs developed by MIT. They might also tell you that the optic systems have to be specially designed in order to be able to both reach the required precision and be able to operate in the environment of space. Aerospace engineers might tell you about cosmic rays and their impact on off the shelf hardware when operated in orbit. They could maybe explain that interference from high powered systems could disturb the instruments and how difficult it is to get rid of excess heat in space. COTS hardware is great and should be used where applicable. Purpose-built scientific instruments and mission critical hardware that needs to last for years in the conditions of space - not so much. These things are "a little" more complex than the layperson may think. A space telescope isn't just a commercial CCD plus standard optics - if it were that simple, universities would built and launch space telescopes.
totalermist I think that's the problem, they've been asking aerospace engineers and getting aerospace engineer answers. They give perfectly sensible answers when a launch costs 600 million dollars. Spending 200 million on a sat and making it as light as possible is the perfect answer. Building a 2 million dollar sat is false economy. We know that off the shelf Nikon gear lasts for years in space. They use it on the ISS. We know that widefield astro is done here on earth using arrays of COTS cameras and lenses. We know that while per pixel a big 16 MP sensor has less noise (This is actually four 4 MP sensors), we also know that shooting the same image with multiple high MP cameras will have less noise than one low MP camera. (Note I said four cameras to image each spot). The array would have a much larger collecting area, much larger sensor area and more like ten thousand megapixels than 16. It would be much less sensitive to cosmic ray, or indeed any other noise. You couldn't process or transmit the vast amount of data that array would output with the low power computers and radios on a conventional satellite, but you could on a four tonne behemoth. The cheap setup would get better results, there's zero doubt about that. With the massive redundancy, it probably would last years, or decades, but even if it didn't, if it's six months to design, and six months to build, with a total cost of 62 million including launch, just build another! Even if you had to do that 3 times, you'd still have spent less time and money than building and launching one conventional satellite, that cost 260 million and 12 years to build and launch.
HabEx is definitely the most interesting one that won't break the bank. Hope it materializes sooner than the distant 2035. By the way, JWST launch was pushed back to March 2021 shortly after your video was published.
They've already taken some test images.www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasa-s-new-planet-hunter-snaps-initial-test-image-swings-by-moon-toward-final-orbit
Fraser Cain Thank you sir... between work and my two RU-vid channels and life, it's hard to keep up with all this! That's why your channel is so awesome!
The US spends about 580b on the military this includes all branches. The US spend 642 billion on medicare alone which only impacts about 18% of the population. We also spent 470 Billion on welfare. The military budget is in no way whatsoever the majority of our spending. But ofcourse you don't know this because you don't care/ you are willfully ignorant and a moron.
Anyone wondering if we have that much trouble fitting the James Webb into a launch vehicle such as the Ariane, what will launch the Origins mission the BFR maybe?
Webb was specifically designed to fit on the Ariane 5, so unless someone made an error going from inches to centimeters or a math error or something, it should fit. (I believe everything was in metric from the start on Webb though) Bigger rockets on the horizon should give us greater capabilities and more options on how to assemble these types of projects. Fitting all of the hardware into a folding arrangement certainly added to the cost and complexity of the Webb.
I feel that a space assembly of 2-3 launches would be better/cheaper than the complexity of JWST. Maybe assemble the whole system near ISS, then add an extra rocket stage to send the system to its final destination orbit?
There are already 20 people on this position, but a few who knew quantum mechanic to adjust interferometer)))) We need more scientists! More more MORE more like Smiths at Matrix
Speak to you guys from the future! Nope not may 2020, yes it was delayed again, it will launch in "December 24, 2021" just a heads up and it will be a success at lunch taking months to get everything set up while in space.
It is sad, theology & politics which were meant to bring us together does the opposite,add this to our fears & well it is not only a waste of reason,$,but of preciuos time which we really dont have. With all that wasted $ we could have had some robots building homes on ceres, 16 psyche or the great gas giant or jovians moons. The first or tenth fussion run (engines) missions to the nearest exoplanet would be 1/2 way there?
Certain supposed members of humanity do not play well with others. The "Religion of Peace" crowd leaps to mind and virtually all of Africa and South America are never ending shit shows. We need those weapons thanks to them. Also defense is a driver for moving things into space. You're not going to get everything you want without the occasional compromise and there is also benefit to "Piggy Backing" onto what someone else is already doing.
Politics is conflict. The Producer/Host versus Parasite conflict is not going away any time soon. You could crack ultra cheap fusion and graphene production tomorrow and the Host Vs. Parasite conflict will still persist. If you are naive enough to think a world where 20% supports the other 80% is possible you have a lot to learn about human nature and behavior. The U.S. is a tinderbox waiting on a spark at A 50/50 split.
So sad that just 2 weeks afer your upload, there was another delay on June 27, 2018, now pushed back until March 30, 2021 (a little under a year from the estimated launch time of this Video's recording). I really hope there are seriously not going to be any more delays after this.
Hubble may be old, but James Webb only has a life expectancy of 5 years, so if it does ever get deployed, the Hubble will still likely be around long after it is done.
Fraser! I have a question. Sounds simple but it isn’t. “What time is is?” Now we are using computers and phones the time is synchronised with a time computer that tells my phone what time it is. But when my phone asks for the time and the time computer received my request it will sent it to my phone. But there is a delay. So my phone receives an old time. Also the time servers are connected with .. I don’t know. A main computer in Greenwich. But there is a delay in that too. The the main time server gets the information from an atomic clock. But that also gives delays. So what time is it for real when I check my phone? I see what time it was in the past.
In most cases, all of that lag you mention built into the computation & subsequent display. In fact, time is one of those things we can do _really_ well, so much so that at this point even a statute "meter" is calculated as "the distance light travels in 0.000000003335641 seconds" (roughly, lol). Honestly, the delay between the photons leaving your phone & the time the resulting signals from your retina are interpreted by your brain introduces more of a lag than a typical internet network connection does, perhaps on the order of 200 - 500 milliseconds, depending. =D
Here's a video we did on this subject.: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JWncwRTMKkI.html&list=PLbJ42wpShvml6Eg22WjWAR-6QUufHFh2v&index=246
If only one mission can be funded, Sunshade will be my choice. As a helping hand for existing and future imaging instruments, it seems like good business. A self absorbed neophyte has gained influence over the NASA budget. I hope the balance of research funding will be restored and the inappropriate negative political influence will subside (that's as PC as I can get).
What troubles me is that Sunshade is limited to one star (if I understand the concept), and one telescope to be aligned with it. You would have to launch one Sunshade per star, if you want a more detailed observation.
Many Sunshade devices may eventually be launched but they are only intended to block light from one star, our Sun. The most important need for imaging satellites is heat dispersion. Imaging sensors need operating temperatures near absolute zero. Sunshade would move to block sunlight from striking such an Imager, relieving the satellite of the need to screen itself. The imaging satellite could observe multiple targets while being kept cold by Sunshade. However, Sunshade can only cast one shadow. More satellites might be protected at the same time by lining up in the shade
For me as a non-physicist, it would be most interesting to have high quality images from different wavelengths combined, so you can see what the same objects look like in different wavelengths. Maybe it would be smart to observe a small amount of stuff very well, instead of trying to observe the complete universe as good as we can. We will have better telescopes later on anyways. So maybe just have a good look on what surrounds the solar system first, so we learn what we are searching further away with better equipment later on?
If I had to choose one, I'd go with LUVOIR with a Starshade, but if I couldn't get that, I'd definitely go with HabEx. It'll help tell us if there's life on other worlds, like the biggest question humans can possibly ask.
Fraser. I have a question. You often mention how visible light extends its wavelength over time and distance so that we need radio receivers to detect it. Is it true also that ultraviolet light (including X-rays and gamma rays) could be redshifted into the visible range of the spectrum by the time it reaches Earth? Could infrared light emitted from sources moving toward us get blue-shifted into the visible range of the spectrum? Thank you. --Rich Cassem
It’s been getting delayed for years and years, buddy. It’s nothing new. The good news is that hopefully we’re closer to launch now than we are to the mission’s creation.
Yeah apart having no TV which airs only trash anyways here in Switzerland, I've not been watching major space projects. In the US you are more likely to hear informations. I've come to know about JWST last winter and heard that October 2018 will be a sure launch date. What a big disappointment.
Thanks again for another great view of what could be in astronomy. I am a bit disappointed though in that it only focused on the electromagnetic spectrum. What about non-light based observatories like LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antena) for measuring Gravitational Waves. Gravitational waves have been likened to the next great breakthrough in Astronomy. What we know today of Gravitational Waves is equivalent to what we used to knew centuries ago in regards to the electromagnetic spectrum. Visible light could be the equivalent of what we know about gravitational waves today. ie we once thought light was just light, the stuff we could see, then we learned to break down the spectrum with a prism into its constituent parts that we could see. Then we learned about infra-red, ultra violet, gamma rays, microwaves and xrays. What if what we know today about Gravitational Waves is the equivalent of visible light? How much more can we learn if we were to evolve our knowledge of the gravitational wave spectrum into the same reaches the visible light spectrum goes today. What's the equivalent of a gravitational wave to a gamma ray, an x-ray, a microwave, etc? LISA was successfully tested as a pioneer program for ESA and it would be great if we could get an observatory like LIGO and VIRGO but instead of kilometers of distance for each leg talk about mega, giga, or tera meters for each leg.
I'm just talking about the missions in the US Decadal Survey. The Europeans have been charging forward with space-based gravitational wave astronomy. Here's a video I did about that: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Hk6IYh_DyPI.html&list=PLbJ42wpShvml6Eg22WjWAR-6QUufHFh2v&index=49
You said, "Here is a direct image of a brown dwarf orbiting a star." Is that a brown dwarf star orbiting another star, or was that a mistake? Please clarify (anyone).
Whatever happened to the interferometer they were talking about years ago? It was supposed to be able to let us directly see and photograph exoplanets.
She should build more than one of the same telescope at the same time. Like 4 the cost per unit would come down tremendously. Each of the 4 could be tasked with different missions and even placed in different locations.
