Two weeks from Wednesday the long delayed 10 billion dollar James Webb telescope will finally be launched that could revolutionize our understanding of the universe; because native Hawaiian barbarians destroyed the 30 meter telescope which should've become operational several years ago but now never will, Web will be the first of a new generation of huge super sophisticated observatories. But I've got my fingers crossed, and the terror won't stop with a successful launch but will continue for the next 29 days. I'm especially worried about the delicate 5 layered 70 foot by 47 foot sunshield required to keep the telescope cold so it can detect the infrared light it was designed to find. Something that big obviously can't fit into the nosecone of a rocket so it must be tightly folded up origami style and be unfurled in space, but to do that 8 motors, 140 actuators, 150 latches, and 400 pulleys must behave exactly as they were designed to and do so in precise synchronization or the sunshield will tear and the entire project will fail. And, because it will not be in low earth orbit but at the Lagrange-2 point more than 900,000 miles from Earth, there is no possibility of an astronaut repair mission as happened with the Hubble telescope if something goes wrong. After 29 days the major dangers will be behind us but it will still take another 5 months for the telescope to cool down and be properly aligned before it can start doing any science.
John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> twj -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3FSDv0yaFCQA6T0m8PT_d9hDDPYZp3H9%3D-NYRktKNL9g%40mail.gmail.com.
