Webb Telescope Mirror Rollover Timelapse

[Tig]

So looking forward to the 2018 successful launch of the James Webb infrared telescope.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/webb/about/index.html

In this rare timelapse video, see inside the world's largest clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland as the James Webb Space Telescope team lifts and turns the telescope for the first time. With glimmering gold surfaces, the large primary and rounded secondary mirror on this telescope are specially designed to reflect infrared light from some of the first stars ever born. The team will now begin to prepare to install the telescope's science instruments to the back of the mirrors. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

 

[Stratguy]

It's funny to watch everybody gather in front of it. I wonder if they're thinking, "So that what I look like in a gold mirror. It's actually rather flattering. I've got to get one for the bathroom."

 

[Theodore]

Just delayed until 2020.

 

[bsman]

Will this finally prove that the earth is flat?

 

[nuke_diver]

Will this finally prove that the earth is flat?

Since it won't be in orbit around the earth, yes

 

[bsman]

Since it won't be in orbit around the earth, yes

I just looked it up, and it’s going to reside in a Lagrangian point between the Earth and Sun.
Just let me know if you wanna go
To that home out on the range
They got a lot of nice girls

I also see that the cost was originally budgeted at $1.6bn but will be > $8.8bn. Truly awesome for a non-Pentagon project...

 

[Tiltsta]

The original approval concept was back in 1996. I think it was supposed to be a bigger Hubble telescope at the start, but as technology and science evolved and the mission needs for Webb changed to a Lagrange L2 infrared scope with some very advanced instrumentation. I'm not sure if that justifies the price increase, but the cost overruns are pretty similar to what was seen with other orbital telescopes. The program specs changed so much they had a complete reboot back in the 2000's, including new cost estimates, so the original program estimate is for a fundamentally different instrument.

8.8 billion is a fuck ton of money, but it is about half the cost of the USS Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier program. Or a 1/4 of the price proposed Mexico wall.

 

[bsman]

Yeah, but it doesn’t put a lot of money into the pockets of lobbyists’ clients, unlike military spending, plus, there are no lucrative follow-on parts and maintenance contracts!