[HN Gopher] Two weeks in, the Webb Space Telescope is reshaping ...
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Two weeks in, the Webb Space Telescope is reshaping astronomy
Author : theafh
Score : 546 points
Date : 2022-07-25 14:24 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
| sxcurry wrote:
| "(Only as those stars exploded did they forge heavier elements
| such as oxygen and spew them into the cosmos.)" I don't think
| this is correct - can't elements up to Iron be created through
| fusion in the stellar core?
| hinkley wrote:
| Today I learned about the Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen fusion cycle:
|
| https://www.britannica.com/science/CNO-cycle
|
| Apparently you don't create oxygen in stars by smashing two
| beryllium together.
|
| Edit: interestingly, this article provides a different path,
| claiming C + He = O
|
| https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/1727-how-elements-...
| vincnetas wrote:
| but you need a star to explode in order to "spew them into the
| cosmos".
| freemint wrote:
| A sufficiently fast and heavy collision with a star might
| also do the trick but that is a thing we haven't observed.
| wiredfool wrote:
| It's a large universe, so it's probably happened.
|
| Though it would be cool to see a 9 star rack and one super
| fast white star heading toward them.
|
| But apparently god does not play pool with the universe.
| simonh wrote:
| Yes, but a lot of that occurs in the (relatively) brief phase
| near the end of the lives of very massive stars as their cores
| collapse. Once they run out of fuel for that process they
| explode in a Type II Supernova.
| [deleted]
| nickstinemates wrote:
| How do we know, uh, which direction to send it in?
| meltyness wrote:
| In physics better fidelity always gives better answers, and
| that's exactly what this is. It's launching into an environment
| post-film, post-ubiquitous networking, and post-statML. In
| addition to a much greater deal of fidelity from the on-board
| hardware, humanity has attained a much greater deal of fidelity
| of explanation.
|
| >>> "We worked nonstop," said Pascale. "It was like an escape
| room."
|
| Astronomers (not necessarily cosmologists, or physicists) it
| seems are finding many reasons to be very busy with the streams
| of data coming from this device.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| The fact that one of the mirror segments was already severely
| damaged by a micrometeorite makes me hope that they hurry up...
| the lifetime may not be as great as hoped.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I heard that it's within their expected budget of damage and
| has literally zero impact on any parameter of the telescope due
| to the deformable optics
| baggy_trough wrote:
| I think that understates the case. Have you seen the
| calibration image after the impact?
| deelowe wrote:
| My understanding is the strike happened while en route and
| the risk of strikes of similar severity is lower in final
| orbit.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| That is not correct because the damage is not present in
| the first calibration images that were released.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I haven't. Mind linking?
|
| I suspected the damage was a little more important than
| people were saying, but it sounds like you might know of
| some evidence.
| bckr wrote:
| Probably talking about this[] from[]. I think it's
| overstated, though. The telescope seems to have a lot of
| redundancy and flexibility.
|
| [] https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/jNgqXUj6dDVWbSvkw5ng
| Mk-970...
|
| [] https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-
| micrometeor...
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I agree that it's fairly overstated as the telescope was
| supposed to be able to work even if the 'wings' with 3
| mirrors segments each had failed to unfold. Performance
| will certainly drop with collisions, but I seriously
| doubt it would get bad enough for telescope performance
| to be worse than having 6 less mirror segments.
|
| The bigger concern would probably be how much sunshade
| damage the telescope can handle, although fortunately
| there's a good bit of redundancy on that too.
| ThisIsMyAltFace wrote:
| > When Webb's mission began, the affected C3 segment had
| a wavefront error of 56 nanometers rms (root mean
| square), which was in line with the 17 other mirror
| portions.
|
| > Post-impact, however, the error increased to 258 nm
| rms, but realignments to the mirror segments as a whole
| reduced the overall impact to just 59 nm rms. For the
| time being, the team wrote Webb's alignment is well
| within performance limits, as the realigned mirror
| segments are "about 5-10 nm rms above the previous best
| wavefront error rms values."
| koheripbal wrote:
| It sustained this strike - but more strikes like the one
| that happened are going to significantly reduce the
| lifetime of the telescope.
|
| There is no debating that that big strike was outside the
| model.
| topspin wrote:
| > There is no debating that that big strike was outside
| the model.
|
| Yes it is. That means the model is wrong. Hopefully JWST
| doesn't devolve into a micrometeorite detector. That
| instrument could have been built and operated at far
| lower cost and one wonders if that shouldn't have been
| done beforehand.
| AprilArcus wrote:
| It could be that the model is wrong, or it could be that
| the model is correct and the big strike was an outlier.
| Only time will prove.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Yes, that's what I'm referring to. You don't consider
| that severe damage to a mirror segment? It looks like
| somebody shot it with a gun. It's unable to get properly
| back into alignment over the full segment.
| zaarn wrote:
| If you check the reporting on the incident, they are able
| to calibrate almost all of this away and use the
| telescope as normal. It's bad but not that bad. That the
| telescope would be hit was expected so it can account for
| this amount of damage.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| This [0] is what a telescope looks like when shot with a
| 9mm gun, seven times. The telescope lost 1% efficiency.
|
| 0: https://astroanecdotes.com/2015/03/26/the-mcdonald-
| gun-shoot...
| welterde wrote:
| It's not really an issue since it's only a minute
| reduction in light gathering power and the active optics
| was able to correct the mirror deformation after re-
| calibration.
|
| Speaking of telescope being shot with a gun.. There is a
| telescope in Texas (Harlan J. Smith Telescope at McDonald
| observatory) that was shot a few times by someone in the
| 1970s in the hopes of shattering the main mirror. The
| overall effect however was only a 1% reduction in the
| light gathering power and the telescope is still in
| regular use today. You can find a picture of the primary
| mirror here [1].
|
| [1] https://astroanecdotes.com/2015/03/26/the-mcdonald-
| gun-shoot...
| bckr wrote:
| _I_ think it looks devastating. The people who run the
| thing think it 's fine. I'll defer to the people who run
| the thing. See ThisIsMyAltFace's comment.
| joering2 wrote:
| Hopefully next iteration will have multiple mirrors built
| in as a backup. At least one round behind each visible
| mirror, and then release broken one, let it fly away, and
| push the new one out, call it "shark teeth lensing
| replacement system / STLRS".
| jacquesm wrote:
| Chances are that a broken segment flying away will do
| massive damage to the telescope.
| airstrike wrote:
| Not if we zap it with an antimatter ray as it flies away
| jacquesm wrote:
| When I got up this morning I felt like I had overslept
| but not by that much.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| It just needs a tiny bit of acceleration in the right
| direction as it is released. It would then just drift
| away. That is just clever mechanical design and similar
| things have been done in other craft.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Have a look at the structure of the JWST, I don't see
| many 'safe paths' that would work regardless of
| orientation. Those segments are pretty much bound to hit
| each other if you eject them at an angle (they are quite
| thick) and that would make them aimed straight for the
| focal point.
|
| At a guess: all such theories have been debated and
| rejected by the people that built then thing in the first
| place.
| XorNot wrote:
| Next iterations will be very different since SLS and
| hopefully Starship will exist and be able to be used to
| launch: JWST was built the way it was partly because it
| had to fit in the launch vehicle they knew was available.
|
| There's a future where we never do anything like it again
| because reusable rockets mean multiple launch orbital
| assembly is just plain cheaper.
| replygirl wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=james+webb+damage+calibra
| tio...
| toastedwedge wrote:
| Calibration image here[0]. According to the article, it
| still operates well within its parameters. Still feels
| like getting a ding on your new car though doesn't it?
|
| [0] https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-
| micrometeor...
| nuclearsugar wrote:
| "Characterization of JWST science performance from
| commissioning" - 2022 July 12
|
| https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2207/2207.05632.pdf
|
| Check out the chapter: 4.7 Micrometeoroids
| _joel wrote:
| I wouldn't worry too much, they were expecting them (albeit
| this was a biggie). The L2 point it's at means there shouldn't
| be too much that collects around there, gravity wise, but it
| will happen again.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Both the number and size of micrometeorites is larger than
| what was modeled.
|
| Hopefully it was just a fluke, but if not, this telescope
| will not survive it's intended lifespan.
|
| As such, NASA has already started a project to optimize the
| orientation of the craft to minimize strikes.
| AprilArcus wrote:
| "wavefront sensing recorded six localized surface
| deformations on the primary mirror that are attributed to
| impact by micrometeoroids. _These occurred at a rate
| (roughly one per month) consistent with pre-launch
| expectations_ [...] Of the six micrometeoroid strikes
| detected thus far through wavefront sensing, _five had
| negligible effects_ ".
|
| So the overall number of impacts is consistent with the
| modeled rate, but the size of the C3 event was outside the
| modeled rate.
| beanjuice wrote:
| The title is a bit inaccurate to the article content. Has some
| new finding truly un-done past findings in astronomy? How has it
| been reshaped? I'm as excited as anyone about what JW can
| provide, but it is just a new era in addition, not exception- as
| even the article puts it.
| [deleted]
| dotnet00 wrote:
| It's not super groundbreaking yet (given how early it is), but
| the oldest galaxies seen in the JWST deep field apparently seem
| to be more structured than expected for such a young universe,
| which would probably require revision of our models of the
| young universe.
| bowsamic wrote:
| [deleted]
| replygirl wrote:
| reshaping is beat-agnostic clickbait for "doing some
| interesting stuff". plug "reshaping" into a google news
| search
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| To me it's like when they say xy stock plummets (by 5%)
| prewett wrote:
| Heh, I'd be fine with that. Usually it's "XY plummets
| because of ... (XY: -1%)". From my non-statistically
| informed observations, 1% is basically the noise floor,
| so saying "because" is misleading at best. At least 5% is
| pretty rare.
| danijar wrote:
| To me, that's just bad scientific reporting then. As a
| scientist, I also found this headline a bit misleading.
| [deleted]
| 93po wrote:
| All science reporting is bad. All of it.
| koheripbal wrote:
| There have also not yet been any significant new findings.
|
| The article is pure fluff.
| frebord wrote:
| Imagine the increase in existential crises the past 2 weeks.
| [deleted]
| sebmellen wrote:
| Two weeks of service, made possible by 26 years of development.
| Not unlike the 10-years-to-overnight-success pattern.
| ericmcer wrote:
| According to this article it was Joe Bidens doing lol.
| Turneyboy wrote:
| No it wasn't. According to the article Biden unveiled the
| first image. That's it and that's true.
|
| No credit is being falsely attributed to him here.
| z9znz wrote:
| This is another good example of how consistency, determination,
| and effort can really make big things happen. (It's also an
| example of why we should force ourselves to put some of our
| energy into long term efforts, the results of which we may
| never personally experience.)
| echelon wrote:
| > Two weeks of service, made possible by 26 years of
| development.
|
| With already unanticipated levels of micrometeorite collision
| and mirror damage [1], I'm worried we may not see a full
| service life out of JWST.
|
| All of the "look what the JWST has accomplished in two weeks"
| press seems like drumming up accolades in advance of an early
| retirement.
|
| I hope I'm wrong.
|
| [1] https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-
| micrometeor...
| russellbeattie wrote:
| First, you're being conspiratorial. I know that seems to be
| the fad nowadays, but honestly, that way lies madness.
|
| I'm wondering how well it's going to do as we pass through
| the Perseid cloud. I just did a search online and nothing
| obvious came up about it.
|
| I don't know if the debris is (are?) spread out enough to
| affect the area around the moon, and I'm sure NASA has
| planned for it, but the news of that meteor which lit up over
| the Midwest made me wonder how the telescope is faring.
|
| https://youtu.be/WDwUmVVpJ4s
| mulmen wrote:
| > I'm wondering how well it's going to do as we pass
| through the Perseid cloud. I just did a search online and
| nothing obvious came up about it.
|
| Reasonable question but JWST is a _lot_ smaller than Earth.
| echelon wrote:
| > First, you're being conspiratorial
|
| What a dramatic accusation to shut down conversation.
| That's frankly uncalled for.
|
| I'm expressing fears about a very expensive and time
| consuming investment.
|
| A positive media spin for NASA means their budget remains
| unscrutinized and unfettered.
|
| I never said NASA is telling the media to say these things.
| It may be a general sense of "talk highly about our
| expensive things so we can keep doing expensive things".
| How any department, public or private, keeps getting itself
| funded.
|
| We're seeing a lot of these pieces. It feels as though
| scientists are telling journalists this byline, because
| it's everywhere. Nothing wrong with that.
|
| > I'm wondering how well it's going to do as we pass
| through the Perseid cloud.
|
| I don't think we know yet. We're about to find out.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| It was just meant as an aside. Friendly generic advice to
| help save your sanity.
|
| More advice: You're probably just hungry or in a bad
| mood. Whenever I overreact on HN or taken something the
| wrong way (which sadly has happened more than once)
| that's usually the issue. Go have something sweet to
| increase your blood sugar, maybe take a walk. It'll help.
| :-)
| [deleted]
| wumpus wrote:
| > A positive media spin for NASA means their budget
| remains unscrutinized and unfettered.
|
| Wow. No, it doesn't.
| [deleted]
| joering2 wrote:
| Classical "one person, overnight entrepreneurship success" that
| took 10 years of making and a team of skilled employees.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Kinda like how common people think Elon Musk "invented"
| Tesla, while he's not even one of the founding engineers. Yet
| he's invulnerable in the company despite impregnating senior
| leadership with impunity. Perception is reality
| sega_sai wrote:
| Astronomer here. This is clearly an overhyped title. Sure JWST is
| great and a lot will hopefully come from it, but we don't need to
| overhype it. So far we learned from JWST that it is performing
| well, but no ground breaking results (but for sure they will
| come). (Tbh I stopped reading quanta because every time there is
| a news "X solved problem nobody thought could be solved" and
| titles like that.)
| [deleted]
| falseprofit wrote:
| The appropriate levels of hype and/or excitement to discoveries
| in science and math are entirely subjective. You just aren't as
| excited about it as their target audience.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Agreed. I'm cautiously optimistic that new science gets done
| soon, but so far, no existing science theories/data has been
| "reshaped".
|
| I'm also hopeful that it doesn't get hit with any more
| micrometeoroids, because that risk is larger than expected and
| it will bring the party to a close much earlier than expected.
| _joel wrote:
| I don't know, finding the oldest known galaxy ever is a pretty
| big one in my book. GLASS-z13 at the sprightly 13.4 billion
| light-years away.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| I'd wait for spectroscopic confirmation before declaring this
| the most distant discovered galaxy.
|
| Last I read about this (6 days ago), this was just a galaxy
| _candidate_ , based on photometric measurements (not a
| spectrum).[0] It still could be some different type of
| object. The spectrum will give much more information.
|
| It's exciting of this discovery pans out, and it's exactly
| the sort of thing JWST is supposed to find, but it's still
| too early to say that this object has been definitely
| determined to be a distant galaxy.
|
| 0. https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.09434
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think the machine itself, the comms, the general tech behind
| it is already groundbreaking enough to justify the title.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| That would be a feat of engineering. Not astronomy
| [deleted]
| wumpus wrote:
| Isn't there enough credit to go around?
|
| BTW, the people who work on these details inside astronomy
| are called "instrumentalists", whether they're scientists
| or engineers.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| No, and it's not a diminishing comment to suggest
| otherwise. It's a great achievement. It's not reshaping
| astronomy at this time.
| wumpus wrote:
| I was hoping you would be interested in how the actual
| astronomy community thinks about it.
|
| Few of them would agree with your statement.
| z9znz wrote:
| I like to imagine the possibilities if we stopped spending money
| on military and instead spent it on research and science. [edit -
| perhaps this is misunderstood as me suggesting money spent on the
| telecope is wasted; quite the contrary, I'm arguing that we
| should be spending MORE on efforts like this!]
|
| Granted, there are some breakthroughs that come from military
| research, being generous that would still amount to a small
| fraction of what we could be discovering and improving if the
| goals were different.
|
| And honestly, we should be spending $$$$ on food development
| research. We're going to need to know how to grow food in new
| ways soon, as the old ways have reached their limits. Food seems
| kind of important...
| lven wrote:
| Great idea! US DOD budget: 700B. We only really need nukes to
| keep the peace and maintain our interests. Nukes cost 20B/yr to
| maintain (both stockpile and delivery methods). The rest of the
| military budget is a bunch of garbage whose availability and
| global deployment makes it more likely USA engages in needless
| conflicts. A nukes only military is so cheap and effective. USA
| could do a yearly nuclear readiness demo on July 4th, like
| detonating a ICBM on the moon or in space for the whole world
| to see.
| mulmen wrote:
| The cost of the US Military is a _feature_ , not a bug. It
| employs hundreds of thousands of people and provides training
| and education for their long-term well-being.
|
| Is there a historical example of any military where a single
| weapon was successful? How would Vietnam have gone
| differently if the US was nuke-only? How do you defend your
| own territory with nukes? Seems easy to defeat.
| sph wrote:
| > detonating a ICBM on the moon or in space for the whole
| world to see
|
| No. Outer space is not an American property. Please detonate
| it in your backyard.
| vanattab wrote:
| How would a nuke only army be effective? Your going responded
| to 911 by just nukeing Afghanistan? Or by saying 911 was not
| worth any response?
| asdff wrote:
| Not every nuke needs to be a city destroyer. You could use
| tactical nukes instead of tanks and mass infantry for
| example. Maybe you have a few elite squads on the ground
| who basically just serve to mark targets for orbital ICBMs
| to quickly destroy. Wars would be over by the time the
| ICBMs are launched. You could identify key industrial sites
| in advance of the war and basically blow up any capability
| for a follow up response or armament buildup as soon as war
| were declared. With enough ICBMs you could overwhelm air
| defenses; maybe with a swarm approach you could get away
| with a lot of decoys that are just made of cheap inert
| material versus the air defenses that have to assume each
| decoy is active. People think an ICBM only army would just
| be a huge hammer, but really it would be best used like a
| robotic surgical scalpel.
| suby wrote:
| I know you're not necessarily advocating for this
| strategy and just sharing that they're much more advanced
| / tactical weapons now, but this strikes me as too
| cavalier.
|
| It might be true that we can create nukes which have
| minimal fallout and minimum impact area (I have no idea
| to be honest), but this ignores the broader consequences
| such a strategy would bring. Namely that you remove the
| taboo of using nukes and start to normalize it. It then
| becomes more justifiable for other countries to also use
| nuclear weapons, at which point escalation becomes ever
| more likely. Imagine the consequences if Russia were to
| use nuclear weapons in its war in Ukraine. Frankly we
| need as large a stigma as humanly possible on the use of
| these weapons.
| asdff wrote:
| What would even be the consequences if Russia were to use
| nuclear weapons in Ukraine? Maybe a lot, or maybe
| absolutely none depending how they are used. If they are
| used in a Nagasaki capacity then yeah, that would lead to
| repercussions, but you can do that with conventional arms
| too. See what the allies did to Dresden for instance, or
| the firebombing of Tokyo. The issue is not the weaponry,
| but the act of threatening civilians versus strictly
| military targets. If Russia used nuclear weaponry as they
| currently use their conventional missile weaponry in
| ukraine I'm not sure the international community would
| care more than they currently care about the war, in a
| world where the political taboo of using nukes did not
| exist.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| With hindsight, either of those look like better options
| than what we ended up doing (20 years, 2 trillion dollars,
| nothing to show for it).
| mulmen wrote:
| I agree the outcome of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
| could have been better. In fact I would even agree they
| were disastrous. But:
|
| If we had nuked Afghanistan we (probably) would have
| kicked off WWIII.
|
| If we had done nothing further attacks may have occurred.
|
| Both of those seem at least worse than what actually
| happened.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > A nukes only military is so cheap and effective.
|
| Also mindbogglingly dangerous. Do you _really_ want the
| _only_ response options to be: 1) nuke the world from orbit
| or 2) surrender, with _no middle ground_?
| njharman wrote:
| I think your post is sarcastic, given last sentence. But if
| not, or for readers who ...
|
| > A nukes only military is so cheap and effective.
|
| If it was effective, we'd see them in reality.
| asdff wrote:
| I feel like the only thing stopping it is political taboo.
| If the U.S. actually supplied tactical nukes for the bay of
| pigs invasion as planned I think we would see nuke only
| armies today. As it stands the only time it was used in
| combat was WWII and no one has ripped the bandaid off
| diplomatically speaking yet using them in another
| situation.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > If the U.S. actually supplied tactical nukes for the
| bay of pigs invasion as planned I think we would see nuke
| only armies today.
|
| IMHO, we would see _post-nuke_ armies... after all the
| nuclear wars destroyed the industrial capacity required
| to build more nukes.
| chasd00 wrote:
| with tactical nukes there would be no difference between
| nuke-only and regular militaries. You can dial down a
| nuke yield to be equivalent of a 2k lb HE bomb. Now
| you're right back to a regular military only, now, every
| bomb is a nuke instead of only a few.
| throwaway64643 wrote:
| Ironically, many contractors for this telescope are in military
| industry.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Or say, didn't have a massive amount of wealth owned by the
| rich, who really don't do much. But then again, if wealth was
| better distributed, there'd be far more consumption, and that
| is generally bad for the environment.
|
| But back to the point, I think napkin math for the military
| budget for one year is (if there was supply) solar and wind for
| the whole grid. It is close to a trillion dollars, and that is
| such a crazy number.
|
| The Iraq War #2 was such a tragedy of wasted treasure. That is
| the budget for mitigation/heading off climate change. It was
| the right time, the right amount of money.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I don't totally know how wealth distribution would fix this.
| It isn't like Elon Musk is hoarding millions of used cars,
| food and medical supplies. If we distributed all his wealth
| it would basically just be flipping some bits in computers to
| make the average persons number bigger. How does that
| correlate to actual wealth?
| asdff wrote:
| Well if you taxed people like Elon sufficiently maybe we
| would be able to use that to afford everyone in the country
| food, medical supplies and care, and more robust public
| transport. That quality of life increase to the public is
| certainly an example of an increase in wealth. You go from
| having no food to having it, having no healthcare to being
| covered, having less options for mobility to having more.
| These are valuable things that are now in greater abundance
| for you, that by definition is an increase in wealth.
| ericmcer wrote:
| No I am saying if you take 100% of Elon's money and
| redistribute it that would really only free up the things
| Elon consumes but can no longer afford. We can't turn
| money (which is just numbers in a computer) into doctors
| and food, it is just a lever for incentivizing
| production.
|
| What would happen if you gave everyone in the country
| money to get medical care but didn't increase the number
| of hospitals and doctors we have?
| gopalv wrote:
| > Granted, there are some breakthroughs that come from military
| research
|
| Nobody knew at the time that Hubble was literally a KH-11 class
| telescope, but one pointed the other way. The mirror size and
| the ability to be carried in the shuttle was probably to get
| some synergies out of those two projects.
|
| "Accessory to War" is a pretty deep take on this topic.
| rvnx wrote:
| Yeah and the rockets that send the satellites are directly
| inherited from world war 2 designs
| nemo44x wrote:
| To be fair, many of the original rocketry enthusiasts
| (German Rocket Society) were interested in the concept
| because it could put man into space. It was co-opted by
| governments to apply the research to weapons. In essence
| the government was willing to fund their research. However,
| there were rocket scientists that wanted no part of it but
| they were coerced into it.
| z9znz wrote:
| I figured that was the case for a lot of things we have
| developed, but it must surely be more efficient to not also
| have the military goals as part of the effort.
|
| Actually, I think the best thing we can learn from the
| military would be how to organize and mobilize large numbers
| of people toward some goal. The same could be said for
| religion. Then it's down to choosing a good goal...
|
| I've pondered what would happen if we could dedicate one
| weekend per month of sports to community improvement instead.
| Where I grew up, sports were a big part of life. Every
| weekend the many fields and venues were full of people
| working together (and competing). Just imagine if they could
| all be organized to put their energy (just one weekend per
| month) into goals that would benefit everyone in the area.
| Perhaps military command structures and communication
| processes could be of value here...
| EUROCARE wrote:
| I hope you're not thinking about forcing people into this -
| and if not, what's stopping you from just starting the
| initiative right now?
| allendoerfer wrote:
| You have just discovered collectivism. Individualism sounds
| worse, but to my understanding is ultimately just an excess
| of enlightment, which is _the better philosophy_ (tm).
| privong wrote:
| > Nobody knew at the time that Hubble was literally a KH-11
| class telescope, but one pointed the other way. The mirror
| size and the ability to be carried in the shuttle was
| probably to get some synergies out of those two projects.
|
| Along these lines, there's a lot of hearsay that the
| technology that enabled JWST's mirrors, sun shade, etc. to be
| folded up for launch and deployed once in space had already
| been developed for military satellites.
| omnicognate wrote:
| Interesting. From brief googling, it sounds like there were
| similarities/synergies, but "literally a KH11" is going a bit
| far.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| > Granted, there are some breakthroughs that come from military
| research
|
| Like the Internet that you are using right now.
| simonh wrote:
| Sure, but that doesn't mean it would not be possible to
| develop such technologies without military research. There's
| nothing about people with guns that is necessary for
| communications research.
|
| Having said that, I just posted across thread on why I think
| we still need the people with guns, so if that's the case we
| might as well take the incidental benefits where they come.
| mulmen wrote:
| Saying we should eliminate the military is the geopolitical
| equivalent of rewriting your service from scratch. The
| military-industrial complex is the system we have and know.
| Another system might work but there is no reason to believe
| the costs of developing it would be less than fixing bugs
| in our current implementation.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| 15 Core smart phone technologies with military origins [0]:
|
| 1. AI - Artificial intelligence
|
| 2. Cellular Communication Technology
|
| 3. Computers
|
| 4. CPU - Central Processing Units - Microprocessors
|
| 5. DRAM - Dynamic Random-Access Memory
|
| 6. DSP - Digital Signal Processing
|
| 7. GMR - Giant Magnetoresistance - Spintronics
|
| 8. GPS - Global Positioning Systems
|
| 9. HDD - Micro Hard Drive Storage or Hard Drive Disks
|
| 10. HTML Hypertext Markup Language and HTTP - Hypertext
| Transfer Protocol
|
| 11. IC-Integrated Circuits
|
| 12. Internet
|
| 13. LCDs - Liquid-Crystal Displays
|
| 14. Li-ion - Lithium-Ion Batteries
|
| 15. Multi-Touch Screens
|
| Probably a good time to reprise the fascinating Steve Blank
| presentation on "The Secret History of Silicon Valley" [1]
|
| [0] https://www.techevaluate.com/your-cell-phone-was-born-in-
| the...
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo
| badrabbit wrote:
| > I like to imagine the possibilities if we stopped spending
| money on military and instead spent it on research and science.
| [edit - perhaps this is misunderstood as me suggesting money
| spent on the telecope is wasted; quite the contrary, I'm
| arguing that we should be spending MORE on efforts like this!]
|
| Stopped? Then you get invaded and there is no more space
| program? We live in a world and when you are a country capable
| if launching JWST you are also a country that needs defending
| from other humans/countries. I do agree with making defense
| less of a jobs program making middlemen criminally rich.
|
| You know, even if we could stop defense spending as a whole I
| would say solving homelessness, health care and food security
| is a higher priority. But still, space programs should get
| their funding just not more than or taking away from helping
| your own suffering citizens.
|
| I think the federal government competing in the private sector
| in certain industries makes sense. In this case charging for
| space based comms and launches and using that money to fund
| space research makes sense. That aside the money should come
| from research grants and funding academia is receiving already
| if they are the ones using it. Of course, instead of reducing
| defense spending, spending defense in space is better, it was
| an arms race with russia after all that landed people on the
| moon.
| [deleted]
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Sadly, we can look at Europe to see what happens. You end up
| open to someone like Putin, looking to flatter their legacy.
|
| We need to do things like Elon is doing with SpaceX to
| fundamentally change the economics of scientific efforts like
| JWST.
|
| I think I disagree on food development research though. That
| money goes straight to Monsanto and Bill Gates on making
| copyrighted crops and pseudo-meat. How about we break up food
| production monopolies and spend our money figuring out how to
| have farmers compete. Put an end to subsidizing fuel crops.
| Support food diversity to avoid monoculture vulnerabilities
| (where a single disease can wipe out giant swaths of food
| sources). We need less "progress" on agriculture, and more
| restoration to healthy foods.
|
| Research on food distribution, yes.
|
| Research on fresh water supply, yes.
|
| The old ways for growing food aren't currently being used. We
| don't rotate crops anymore. We do stupid things like growing
| almonds in water-poor regions. We need to get back to growing
| food for people to eat, instead of for giant monopolies to
| "optimize."
| [deleted]
| njharman wrote:
| A large portion, 23%, of military budget is paychecks,
| healthcare, retirement for veterans. Tons more counting
| employees of all the industries that make up the industry
| portion of the military-industrial complex.
|
| A huge amount of the military budget is research and science.
|
| > some breakthroughs that come from military research
|
| rockets, jets, computers, encryption, RADAR, SONAR, internets,
| canning/food preservation, weather prediction - that's just
| things I know from being in tech (and knowing some history).
| I'm sure if I was a chemist, materials scientist, engineer, or
| doctor I'd be able to name tons more from those fields.
| capableweb wrote:
| > A large portion, 23%, of military budget is paychecks,
| healthcare, retirement for veterans.
|
| Does it? I'm no military nor budgeting expert, but quick
| search seems to say it's closer to ~5% of the total military
| budget that goes to veterans, see https://watson.brown.edu/co
| stsofwar/costs/economic/budget/ve... for one example
|
| Those breakthroughs you mention, you think they wouldn't have
| been made if it wasn't for the military? Some of those things
| are also borderline not invented by the military at all, but
| lets disregard that for now.
| hguant wrote:
| I believe you're misreading the breakdown - I read that as
| "23% of budget goes to personnel costs, which include
| paychecks (for active duty), healthcare (for military and
| their dependents until 26), and retirement for vets"
|
| I fully believe that only 5% of the budget goes to Veterans
| Affairs, at least in the US. The system is not very good at
| taking care of vets/
|
| >Those breakthroughs you mention, you think they wouldn't
| have been made if it wasn't for the military? Some of those
| things are also borderline not invented by the military at
| all, but lets disregard that for now.
|
| The list:
|
| >>rockets, jets, computers, encryption, RADAR, SONAR,
| internets, canning/food preservation, weather prediction
|
| * Rockets are an entirely military invention - the Hargrave
| rocket invented for the British Royal Navy in the
| Napoleonic Wars, the chinese pseudo-rockets used as
| artillery, the V2 rocket used in WW2 Germany, etc. I think
| one of the only non-military rocket scientists known to
| history is Goddard.
|
| * Jets - also an entirely military invention. I'm assuming
| you mean "jet air craft" here - WW2 was the first use of
| jets to power an airplane. The Soviets and Americans
| quickly followed suit.
|
| * Encryption - encryption has been in use in militaries
| since at least the roman era; another name for a
| substitution cypher is a "Ceaser Cypher." To be fair, this
| isn't exclusive to military use, as states have an interest
| in keeping their communications secure, as do banks, but in
| terms of "money invested in development of cryptography as
| we know it," the field was effectively invented whole hog
| during WW2 (again), as (military led and funded) analysis
| of how codes could be broken lead to the need for new
| encryption methods that were more secure. See also: the
| NSA. (note - I'm being sloppy with codes/cyphers/encryption
| here)
|
| * RADAR/SONAR - literally developed during WW2 by the
| British using US funds in order to detect submarines and
| the Luftwaffe terror attacks. The germans had a very
| sophisticated RADAR tech at the beginning of the war
| (directed radar for night defense), but failed to develop
| it any further.
|
| * Internets - the internet, as a system of interconnected
| computer networks, was funded by ARPA/DARPA, the DEFENSE
| Advanced Research Projects Agency. ARPA-net was first used
| by the Pentagon. Pretty much the entire US software and
| hardware industry was built off of US defense contracting,
| and this is no exception.
|
| * Canning/Food preservation - the biggest advances in
| canning/food preservation were the result of
| studies/competitions funded by the British Royal Navy in
| the 18/19th centuries. The British defense industry funded
| the development of canned goods as we understand them
| today. Interestingly, this is where a lot of our
| understanding about vitamins started to be learned by
| (heavy) trial and error, as the RN tried to figure out how
| to combat scurvy.
|
| * Weather prediction - meteorology as a science got tons of
| money from (you guessed it) the British Royal Navy, who
| understandable wanted to better predict conditions for
| their large navy that was made of wood and canvas. in the
| 20th century, meteorology got huge infusions of cash from
| the USAF, because planes care about weather and storms to a
| huge degree. This was a scientific field outside of the
| military, but even then, it was a matter of State security
| to predict the weather so you could understand crop growth
| patterns etc.
|
| So, to answer your question, no, I don't believe any of
| those technologies would have developed organically.
| runarberg wrote:
| > Rockets.
|
| From the wikipedia of V-2 Rockets:
|
| > The world's first large-scale experimental rocket
| program was Opel-RAK under the leadership of Fritz von
| Opel and Max Valier, a collaborator of Oberth, during the
| late 1920s leading to the first manned rocket cars and
| rocket planes,
|
| Looks like rockets were invented before a global war
| broke out with peaceful intentions, then the military
| used that invention for violence, as a global war broke
| out.
|
| Just because an invention is used for war doesn't mean it
| required one to be invented.
| hguant wrote:
| >Looks like rockets were invented before a global war
| broke out with peaceful intentions, then the military
| used that invention for violence, as a global war broke
| out.
|
| This presupposes that the V2 is the first use of rocketry
| in history which...well, it's just not true. You
| conveniently skipped over the bit about Congreve rockets,
| which were invented in the late 18th/early 19th century,
| explicitly for war, or the growing evidence about the use
| of gunpowder rocketry in Imperial China. Both of these
| uses were explicitly NOT peaceful. (not hargreve, I
| misremembered in the OP post).
|
| Also, if you bother to read the article you referenced,
| it makes it clear that literally nothing came of the
| experiments apart from that book. It took a war to get
| the funding and manufacturing resources available to
| actually _do the work_ of advancing rocketry.
|
| EDIT: to sound less like an asshole and engage with the
| comment on its face value.
| runarberg wrote:
| Technological inventions connect like a web. There is a
| reason James Burke named his show " _Connections_ ". We
| can move the goal post for any given invention wherever
| we like, really. If V-2 wasn't invented for the military,
| then we can simply move the goalpost such that we mean
| another type of rocket, but make sure not to move it
| sideways such that the invention could be used as a
| transport propellant or for signalling.
|
| But I wish to step aside now and acknowledge how silly
| this whole argument is--as most arguments are when it
| comes to alternate history. Historically the military has
| been the most well funded of all government enterprises
| so it should come as no surprise that many innovations
| happen under such well funded programs. But that does not
| mean that is the only possible outcome. Humans kept
| innovating and inventing even as funds were diverted to
| non-violent endeavors. Today we have universities which
| are well funded and engage in research, often handing out
| their gathered knowledge to the rest of humanity (James
| Webb space telescope can attest to this). Who know what
| we would have invented already if it wasn't for the
| military taking most of the attention of historic
| societies?
| kingaillas wrote:
| >Those breakthroughs you mention, you think they wouldn't
| have been made if it wasn't for the military?
|
| I don't think we'd have GPS (for example) without the
| military, among other things like nuclear energy/weapons
| and so on.
|
| Do you seriously think a corporation would have invested
| the money creating everything needed from the ground up,
| including ongoing maintenance of a satellite constellation,
| to let people fix their location on the earth? Where's the
| profit/ROI in that?
| runarberg wrote:
| > I don't think we'd have GPS (for example) without the
| military, among other things like nuclear energy/weapons
| and so on.
|
| I think you are wrong. Nations that don't have a military
| (e.g. Iceland and Costa Rica) still build entire systems
| of lighthouses, they chart the seas, they map their
| mountains etc. Countries spend a lot of money into
| civilian infrastructure. The ROI is in enriching local
| industry. A GPS system is no bigger ask for civilians
| then e.g. a railway network. In both cases the ROI is
| huge for local industry.
|
| As for nuclear energy. A lot of the scientist working on
| the bomb later became a huge proponents of non-
| proliferation (J. R. Oppenheimer being a prominent
| example). I think it is safe to say that the same
| scientists would have been even happier to work on the
| technology even if the motive was entirely peaceful.
| swarnie wrote:
| > rockets, jets, computers, encryption, RADAR, SONAR,
| internets, canning/food preservation, weather prediction -
| that's just things I know from being in tech (and knowing
| some history). I'm sure if I was a chemist, materials
| scientist, engineer, or doctor I'd be able to name tons more
| from those fields.
|
| Half of those inventions come from other nations who dont
| need to spend 800bn a year (or whatever it is now) + however
| much the CIA makes from selling crack.
| qorrect wrote:
| > + however much the CIA makes from selling crack.
|
| That gave me a good chuckle.
|
| Also, just because the military did them first, does not
| mean we wouldn't have created them. We might even have more
| inventions if we had a dedicated R&D team for America.
| swarnie wrote:
| Don't you have the start of something similar with DARPA?
|
| Maybe that would be expanded and given a civilian role?
| sorokod wrote:
| I recently learned that US army supports breast cancer
| research.
| uoaei wrote:
| Over 50% is contractors on bloated budgets.
| [deleted]
| theplumber wrote:
| Unfortunately we live in a world with countries such Russia so
| we have to invest in millitary too.
| zo1 wrote:
| Or America. Matter of perspective.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Invasions_by_the_Unit.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_armed_conflicts_involv.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_U.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r.
| ..
|
| I honestly didn't think I'd find that many Wikipedia pages
| listing the different "types" of thing America has been
| involved with. Wow.
| asdff wrote:
| We already more than outspend both russia and china on
| defense.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I like to imagine the possibilities if we stopped spending
| money on military and instead spent it on research and science.
|
| You'd get conquered and your conqueror would have more money to
| spend on their military?
|
| And even if you did manage to zero out the military budget
| without getting conquered, it's completely unreasonable to
| think that money would be reallocated to "research and science"
| in a democratic society. Almost all of it would go into stuff
| like basic infrastructure, social programs, and maybe culture
| war stuff. While comfortably employed geeks may sit in awe of
| the pretty space pictures, most people have more quotidian
| concerns they care far more about.
|
| So the fantasy is really one about a science-enthusiast world-
| dictator securely protected by his secret police.
| jylam wrote:
| The US could spend 2 times less on military and still be the
| biggest one in the world. And it as allies everywhere.
| kbenson wrote:
| Given how some think the lessening of US Navy projection of
| power and securing shipping lanes around the world is
| what's leading to global instability, and global stability
| has been very good for US economics the last 50+ years, a
| case can probably be made that at least some of that
| military spending in the past was extremely effective and
| useful.
|
| The theory is new to me, so I don't know enough about it to
| know how much I buy into it, but it's an interesting one.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _lessening of US Navy projection of power_
|
| While they continue to have more money allocated to them,
| operational mishaps occur more often, and navies look
| increasingly vulnerable in a real fight (see for instance
| the Moskva). Clearly "at least some of that military
| spending in the past was extremely effective and useful"
| isn't sufficient guidance on how to continue spending
| money.
| willhslade wrote:
| Can I just sidetrack this conversation? I've seen this new
| neologism "2 times less", which I infer from context means
| "half as much", and I don't like it.
| elpatoisthebest wrote:
| Unfortunately this is far from new. I tried fighting it
| for years and just gave up. Save yourself the grief. We
| already lost.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| it is bad grammar: you cannot use comparative adjectives
| on uncountable nouns
|
| that said, when I read it I did not notice. my brain
| automagically converted the phrase to half. the context
| was not lost but it is murky territory
| Jaruzel wrote:
| Surely '2 times less' is minus 100% less, if the amount
| originally spent is '1 times'?
|
| It's an illogical phrase to be sure.
| nodespace wrote:
| I think its like saying:
|
| "2 times (but instead of mutiplying do the oposite thing
| that makes it smaller)"
|
| Is where the "logic" comes from.
|
| Hm, I bet this parses as well:
|
| "An hour is .5 times more then a half hour."
|
| Although not quite as well.
| minhazm wrote:
| I wonder if this is actually true in practice. I think many
| of these countries, especially China & India are
| incentivized to understate how much they actually spend on
| their defense. Another factor is the cost of labor and
| goods is so different that even though the US is spending
| far more actual dollars, the actual output might not be as
| big of a difference as these articles might have you
| believe.
| akiselev wrote:
| Historically, countries almost never understate the
| strength of their armed forces because that would invite
| pointless conflicts with weaker adversaries. Unless the
| former is looking for some casus belli to invade the
| latter, it leads to the most pointless loss of life where
| the latter never stood a chance anyway but the former has
| to waste resources on the defense.
|
| I don't know how that calculus changes in the context of
| modern superpowers or China's ambitions for Taiwan but
| that's the reasoning historically.
| [deleted]
| signatoremo wrote:
| How can you possibly know how much a country spent on
| military to conclude they almost never understate their
| funding?
|
| A perfect reason a country may understate their military
| spending is to hide their capabilities. For that matter,
| they may overstate their spending as well.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| You have to ask yourself why a country would want to hide
| (as in demote) their capabilities.
|
| Overstating their capabilities is perfectly
| understandable.
| [deleted]
| epicureanideal wrote:
| There's a paper I read recently that adjusts for
| specifically military related purchasing power parity, in
| which case China was spending about 50% and Russia about
| 30% of the US. And of course in their region that might
| mean a locally more capable military, or the inability of
| the US to fight multiple wars simultaneously while
| maintaining global freedom of navigation for shipping, etc.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| At the point that you're talking about being able to
| simultaneously fight the next two military powers right
| in their respective backyards, you're no longer talking
| about defense.
|
| As for freedom of navigation, China is also in favor of
| that. It's their lifeblood.
| deepdriver wrote:
| >As for freedom of navigation, China is also in favor of
| that.
|
| Sorta-kinda. It's complicated.
|
| Vietnam, the US, the Philippines and others have clashed
| with China over the "Nine Dash Line." China-- and Taiwan,
| oddly enough-- refuses to respect the ruling of the UN
| Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) Tribunal on
| this matter. They've harassed other countries' fishing
| vessels and maritime police in the region, sinking at
| least one. There are ongoing tensions in the area between
| China and other countries' navies. China asserts
| sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, while
| other countries and the UNCLOS disagree and assert their
| right to freedom of navigation for military vessels. This
| has implications for customs and maritime law
| enforcement.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/07/chinese-
| vietna...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line
| SllX wrote:
| Not so odd in the case of Taiwan: I like them, they're
| _the_ China as far as I'm concerned the UN and State
| Department be damned on this front, but it's worth
| remembering that Taiwan officially does not see
| themselves as just an island nation off the coast of
| China. They claim the mainland, and all the island
| territories held by the mainland, and even Mongolia and
| some other land that the PRC has given up its claims to
| to settle border disputes. They're not likely to back
| down on any of their claims no matter how small.
|
| Some people in Taiwan might be willing to give that up in
| exchange for a guarantee of independence but as far as I
| know this is not at all a settled matter for them. It's
| very much like North Korea/South Korea.
| [deleted]
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| > China asserts sovereignty over almost the entire South
| China Sea, while other countries and the UNCLOS disagree
| and assert their right to freedom of navigation for
| military and other countries' navies
|
| China does not object to transit through the South China
| Sea. China objects to foreign military vessels entering
| into the territorial waters within 12 miles of what it
| considers its own islands. The US and its allies conduct
| these "freedom of navigation" operations explicitly in
| order to challenge Chinese sovereignty over said islands
| and reefs.
|
| But what you're discussing here is sovereignty over a
| certain set of islands and reefs that China (and several
| other countries) claims, not freedom of navigation
| through international waters.
| SllX wrote:
| A lot of our capabilities is simply being present
| (overseas bases) and being able to move to a theater of
| war (logistics).
|
| We are unlikely to ever fight a meaningful war with
| either Canada or Mexico, at least there are no signs of
| that ever being a possibility in my lifetime. Our
| adversaries are pretty much all overseas, and I'm pretty
| sure the Coast Guard could single-handedly defend against
| the threat posed by a possible Cuban invasion.
|
| So we have to spend on logistics and overseas bases and
| support infrastructure for those bases, in addition to
| our nuclear arsenal, satellites, the War against rust,
| communications technology, aircraft carriers, aircraft,
| submarines and artillery and all manner of other things
| which are intended to keep us in the lead in terms of
| capabilities, effectiveness and deadliness.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The US could spend 2 times less on military and still be
| the biggest one in the world. And it as allies everywhere.
|
| I don't think it's that simple: stuff costs more in the US
| vs other big military spenders, large != effective, etc. If
| the US cut its military budget, it would have to give up
| capabilities, and that will have bitter consequences (e.g.
| the liberal order will shrink even further (e.g. goodbye
| Ukraine, Taiwan, Baltics), China owns the seas, etc.).
| worker_person wrote:
| Last president pushed hard for NATO counties to up their
| military spending to agreed levels. Everyone laughed.
|
| Russia has been an excellent motivator for our allies to
| get serious on defense spending.
|
| Our absurdly oversized military has prevented a lot of
| serious wars.
| z9znz wrote:
| The same guy who thinks NATO should have been abolished
| and who fawned over Putin?
|
| The guys like him and Putin are ignorant little boys who
| will thankfully die off soon. We must try to find a
| different path.
| worker_person wrote:
| Just drinking the Hillary kool-aid I see.
| myko wrote:
| This is revisionist/wrong.
|
| Obama also pushed for more spending in NATO - and got
| commitments to do so as % of GDP. Growth was generally
| higher but spending was moving towards the % committed
| to.
|
| What the last guy did was tried to piss out allies off
| and destroy NATO. Even then most in the US generally
| agreed w.r.t defense spending, just thought he was going
| about getting our allies to do it counter productively
| and not recognizing the fact that they were spending more
| (mostly from commitments made during Obama's 2 terms).
|
| Folks who worked with trump claim he was planning on
| pulling the US out of NATO in his second term:
|
| https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/obama-nato-pay-
| fair-s...
| https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/obama-
| warns...
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/bolton-putin-waiting-for-
| tru...
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
| politic...
| [deleted]
| swarnie wrote:
| > You'd get conquered and your conqueror would have more
| money to spend on their military?
|
| I think this stop being true in 1945.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I think this stop being true in 1945.
|
| Huh? Russia (nee the Soviet Union) and the US are
| neighbors, if you've forgotten. They had a big ideological
| rivalry that started to get intense around that time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bering_Strait
| nabogh wrote:
| I think they're referring to the nukes
| swarnie wrote:
| And how many invasions have you noted across the Bering
| Straits since 1945?
|
| The world changed.... You dont need an 800bn standing
| army any more.
| moomin wrote:
| Less true than you'd think. America outspends the rest of the
| world by an incredible margin and could probably happily
| halve its budget without being invaded by Canada or Mexico.
| Many European countries have spectacularly (too) low levels
| of defence spending and are still doing Ok, because they're
| free-riding on NATO. Ukraine spent quite a lot, and spent it
| well, but Russia's so much larger it doesn't make enough of a
| difference.
|
| But yeah, there are many things we could better be spending
| the defence budget on than galaxy formation research.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| You almost had it. The US spend a good portion of the
| defense budget propping up NATO which is why European
| countries can get by with spending less. Love him or hate
| him, what Trump was trying to do in getting NATO to pull
| its fair share in defense spending was a good idea. Sure
| the US could spend waaay less and still ensure it won't get
| invaded (they'd have to come by sea or from Canada or
| Mexico). But Europe would piecemeal become part of a new
| Russian or Chinese Union.
| giantrobot wrote:
| You almost had it. Obama during his two terms pushed
| other NATO members to increase their spending to the 2%
| GDP target. They agreed and set long term goals to
| increase their spending and started to do so.
|
| Trump stupidly described other NATO members as "owing"
| the US. Not only had several countries met their spending
| goals by the end of the Obama admin most of the alliance
| was on track with increased spending including targeted
| equipment upgrade spending. Trump's complaints were that
| other NATO members hadn't met their goals ahead of the
| agreed upon schedule. This was going to be used for a
| pretext for withdrawing the US from NATO.
|
| NATO funding is not a simple issue. There's direct and
| indirect expenditures that "fund" NATO. It's not some
| protection racket. Funding can be direct funding I.e.
| military units/equipment maintained as a rapid response
| force or indirect funding I.e. spending to upgrade or buy
| equipment to keep up with the overall norms of the
| alliance.
| runarberg wrote:
| > You'd get conquered and your conqueror would have more
| money to spend on their military?
|
| There is no proof of that, not historic or otherwise. In fact
| there is evidence to the contrary, as previous times of less
| military spending seem to correlate with more peaceful times.
| Your claim on who lives in a fantasy world is entirely
| unfounded, and one can just as easily state that your
| description is the fantacy one.
| signatoremo wrote:
| > In fact there is evidence to the contrary, as previous
| times of less military spending seem to correlate with more
| peaceful times.
|
| What is the evidence? My impression has been militarily
| weak countries got invaded by stronger ones. Smaller
| countries were snapped up by bigger ones. I'm curious to
| see the evidence to the contrary.
| runarberg wrote:
| Just look at a graph of global military spending
| interlaced with time-periods of relative global peace.
| You will find a remarkable--but ultimately unsurprising--
| correlation. You will find for example that after the
| Napoleonic wars in the early 19th century, global
| conflicts reduced dramatically along with less military
| spending.
|
| Pre-industrialization, governments used to spend upwards
| to 90% GDP on their military, and tiny countries existed
| back then as they do today. Today there are quite a few
| smaller countries (and a handful of medium sized ones)
| that don't even have military at all. I think your
| narrative of smaller countries being snapped up by bigger
| ones is not a historic pattern at all.
| marricks wrote:
| Just a few thousand years ago we didn't spend huge parts of
| our useful resources and lives on militaries.
|
| I really don't see how our imagination has shrunk so far that
| we all participant and perpetuate this fantasy that a world
| full of violence, much of which is created by the US, is the
| world we must continue to live in.
| deepdriver wrote:
| Ancient Romans spent as much as 80% of their state budget
| on the military.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_the_Roman_army
|
| The military was the "the largest item of state
| expenditure" during much of China's Tang Dynasty.
|
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-
| chinese-h...
|
| Compared to this, 4% of the US GDP or 12% of annual US
| federal spending seems like a bargain, especially if you're
| Germany.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| comparing percent of federal spending is an odd way of
| doing things since the scope of government has noticably
| broadened.
| deepdriver wrote:
| Yes and no. The total economic pie was much smaller in
| antiquity, limiting the potential maximum scope of
| government. Even so, entitlement spending still took up
| its share of ancient budgets:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae
| swamp40 wrote:
| 'Twas ever thus.
| redblacktree wrote:
| > While comfortable employed geeks may sit in awe of the
| pretty space pictures, most people have more quotidian
| concerns they care far more about.
|
| As the great Gil Scott-Heron once said: "A rat done bit my
| sister, Nell with whitey on the moon."
| tablespoon wrote:
| > As the great Gil Scott-Heron once said: "A rat done bit
| my sister, Nell with whitey on the moon."
|
| I didn't know the reference, but I found it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nzoPopQ7V0 (2 min)
| m12k wrote:
| As William Gibson put it "The future is already here -
| it's just not evenly distributed"
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Probably the best application of that quote I've ever
| seen :-)
| asdff wrote:
| So why isn't michigan conquering ohio or vice versa right
| now? Why aren't the canadians from the hinterland coming in
| to take over vancouver? Because they are "on the same side"
| which is ultimately a meaningless political device. It's
| still humans versus humans in michigan or ohio or the U.S. or
| anywhere else. It stands to reason that one day we could
| possibly be all on the same side, and we could have no fear
| of conquest from our fellow humans, just like those humans
| who are in michigan have no fear of conquest by ohioans
| today. In that world, having an advanced military would be
| about as useless as an ohio police department having ICBMs.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I less agree that we would get conquered without a huge
| military. Hard agree about the social stuff though, in order
| to satisfy us we require exactly more than whatever we have
| at that moment, so spending on social well-being is
| limitless.
| [deleted]
| adriand wrote:
| > You'd get conquered and your conqueror would have more
| money to spend on their military? [...] So the fantasy is
| really one about a science-enthusiast world-dictator securely
| protected by his secret police.
|
| I think that's a failure of imagination, and that vision
| isn't one that history necessarily supports. Humans used to
| exist in small roving bands. Now we are organized into
| nation-states. I don't see a truly compelling reason why that
| trend towards greater organization can't continue. I am also
| certainly capable of imagining a world government that is
| responsive to the needs of people, maintains global peace and
| security, and focuses the vast majority of its budget towards
| constructive, not destructive, ends.
|
| I recognize that this doesn't look likely in the immediate
| future, but:
|
| - An alternative consisting of warring nations equipped with
| civilization-ending weapons is surely not the only path
| forward (it better not be, if we hope to stick around).
|
| - We are increasingly faced with existential problems that
| require a globally coordinated response.
|
| - Change often happens a lot faster than we think possible.
| The order of things is set in stone until suddenly it's
| washed away and everything is different.
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| > Humans used to exist in small roving bands. Now we are
| organized into nation-states. I don't see a truly
| compelling reason why that trend towards greater
| organization can't continue.
|
| The former is the answer to the latter here. Humanity is
| trending to a more unified, globalized, monolithic series
| of structures. Smaller cultures, countries and people
| groups have been conquered, dimmed, and "globalized". You
| can easily observe this in art and architecture.
|
| To be clear: you need both. Ironically, thinking that you
| can exist without a defensive military response is the real
| failure of imagination :/.
| qclibre22 wrote:
| "We haven't tried real pacifism before"
| iratewizard wrote:
| Imagining a world government as anything but dystopian is a
| failure of imagination
| uoaei wrote:
| Pretty much the opposite is true, by definition of the
| word "imagination".
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Humans used to exist in small roving bands. Now we
| are organized into nation-states. I don't see a
| truly compelling reason why that trend towards
| greater organization can't continue.
|
| Empathy and compassion.
|
| It's reasonable expectation for a person to care about the
| others in their "small, roving band." Evolution has
| selected for those that do, or at least it did for most of
| human history.
|
| But how far does that scale? Can we truly care about
| everybody in a village of 100? What about a territory with
| 1000 people? What about a small country of 100,000? What
| about a nation with 1,000,000 people or 1,000,000,000
| people?
|
| We're not robots. If we were, then larger organizational
| structures would perhaps clearly be the way. Look at all
| the wasted, duplicated effort between countries and states.
|
| But we're humans and we need some level of empathy and
| compassion for our fellow group-members for this stuff to
| work. When the organizational structure gets large enough
| it becomes dominated by cliques, infighting, etc. Now you
| just have warring nation-states with an extra level of
| abstraction.
|
| I think we're seeing this right now in the United States.
| This country is too big, too populous, too divided to be
| effective any more. Unified successes like Webb are quickly
| becoming the exception, not the norm.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Every thread on JWST starts this flamewar.
| prox wrote:
| A nice dream is to think what would happen when the budget of
| the environmental agencies would switch with the military
| globally. Imagine having 800 billion a year to fix things!
| dmichulke wrote:
| 800bn just for the US, that is
| ncmncm wrote:
| More than everybody else combined.
|
| Not that we get that much for the money: probably most of
| it is simple (wholly-legal!) graft, as with NASA's SLS
| rocket.
| simonh wrote:
| What we get for the money is a whole lot of aggressive
| expansionist wars, all over the world, that never happen.
| Unfortunately some still manage to slip through the net,
| like the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the Russian
| invasion of Ukraine, but if the west generally didn't
| spend a whole ton on military preparation I believe we'd
| see an awful lot more of those sorts of conflicts
| everywhere. Here's a historical graph of deaths from
| warfare.
|
| https://www.vox.com/2015/6/23/8832311/war-
| casualties-600-yea...
|
| You can see that after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
| deaths per population from warfare dropped off a cliff.
| Unfortunately deterrence is hard to quantify because it's
| about making things not happen.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| We also get all sorts of aggressive wars and foreign
| interventions from the US and its allies. Iraq, Libya and
| Yemen come to mind.
| simonh wrote:
| When what you have is a hammer... but that isn't an
| argument for not having a hammer in your toolbox.
| Nevermark wrote:
| Unfortunately, the spending also provided a huge military
| comfortably capable of over-responses and misdirection in
| the context of small but dramatic threats.
|
| A vast amount of US "defense" spending since 9/11 has
| been a "war on money" in the form of massive unending
| offensive plays against countries that had/have
| undesirable aspects, but that didn't declare war on the
| US.
| haupt wrote:
| It's certainly a dream. It would require some type of
| worldwide disarmament agreement since any power that had a
| military could ostensibly bully the ones that did not (and
| just take what they wanted).
| colechristensen wrote:
| >And honestly, we should be spending $$$$ on food development
| research. We're going to need to know how to grow food in new
| ways soon, as the old ways have reached their limits. Food
| seems kind of important...
|
| Eh, not really.
|
| A whole lot of the world's agriculture is done far from
| optimally. Funding agriculture university programs in Africa
| with extension programs like the land grant universities in the
| US would do great things. Disseminating information, tools, and
| capital for "third world" farms is the best thing that can be
| done for global food supplies.
| z9znz wrote:
| Being a bit selfish here, I'm talking about _my food_. And
| given what we've seen in the last few years involving supply
| chain disruptions (even the local ones in NL when the angry
| farmers try to block the grocery store distribution centers),
| it's clear to me that the best way to ensure food
| availability is to grow it locally.
|
| Every region that is currently dependent upon remotely grown
| food must learn how to grow more of their food locally. Maybe
| these will be high efficiency vertical farms, or maybe
| something else. But "merely" improving the efficiency of
| farming half a world away isn't going to be enough. And
| further, our current "efficient" farming is unsustainable.
| Our high output methods are causing many negative effects,
| not the least of which is soil quality degredation. Our soils
| are near barren and require immense additives (fertilizers)
| to enable us to continue high yield farming. And returning to
| the supply chain topic, fertilizer availability is on that
| list.
| fritztastic wrote:
| I agree, decentralization of food production is critical to
| sustainable and reliable food production. Some places even
| have community compost centers where people bring their
| scraps and can get compost for their gardens.
|
| A shift in growing crops more adapted to the local climate
| reality is also an important shift. A lot of places grow
| staple crops brought by colonizers centuries ago, which are
| ill suited to the local soil and require additional
| resources to grow, whereas less known types of grain and
| fruit/veg could be grown to produce higher yields with less
| effort and be more hardy in the area's
| temp/precipitation/soil.
|
| Initial costs of setting up local food growth might seem
| exorbitant, but would bring a lot of long-term cost
| reduction for people.
|
| Added bonus to this is reducing pollution caused by
| worldwide shipments of produce, and improving food taste as
| things grown nearby don't need to be harvested early and
| ripened in route, refrigerated, treated for pests.
|
| Another thing that would be beneficial, and this is the
| idealist in me speaking, is giving people the empowerment
| to control their own food supply, boosting communities,
| giving people the means to have more autonomy over their
| basic needs so they're not reliant on a global market
| currently dealing with a variety of issues, mitigating the
| risk that food imported will be scarce or too expensive for
| families to feed their members.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| This sounds like the folks who say, "What if we stopped paying
| for NASA and spent that money on our citizens instead?"
|
| I'm not saying it's wrong, but I think it often lacks
| nuance/insight. Money spent on NASA _does_ stay in our economy.
| It provides jobs, funds research, etc. There are pros and cons
| to doing it this way as opposed to giving it to our people
| directly. I like to imagine the possibilities
| if we stopped spending money on military and instead
| spent it on
|
| Money spent on the military is not removed from the economy. It
| stays in the economy.
|
| Some of that money directly goes right back into science via
| taxes. Other bits of it fund companies that do both research
| and military development. Other bits of that money fund college
| educations for tomorrow's science-doers. Etc.
| TedShiller wrote:
| That's cool but feeding hungry people might be even more amazing
| to be honest
| mden wrote:
| True, but achieving that sustainably is a problem at least 2
| orders of magnitude more difficult. Let's take the wins where
| we can.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I think this is a very counterproductive attitude. It shuts
| down the possibility of all art and science till we hit the
| goal of "nobody starves." But then it is super easy to move
| those goalposts. "Nobody is homeless", "nobody is poor",
| "nobody is suffering" and so on.
|
| And it is this very science that has provided so much more
| wealth and quality of life. Without it we would still be blown
| in the winds of famines and plagues.
|
| So you could say, no science that does not solve plagues. But
| then we would not have funded Computer Science and we would not
| have AlphaFold. You could say no to astronomy, deciding it is
| specifically worthless, but then you might be saying no to the
| fundamental physics discovery that doubles global carrying
| capacity or solves green energy production.
|
| This is also very much ignoring the fact that hunger is
| political, not technical or financial. We have plenty of food,
| but no way to distribute it in a politically tenable way.
| falseprofit wrote:
| So feed them.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| How is that going to meet scientific goals?
| TedShiller wrote:
| If you're starving, surviving is more important than
| scientific goals
| aunty_helen wrote:
| You're right. We should make sure everyone lives in a
| utopia without suffering before we try to make any progress
| as a race together.
| TedShiller wrote:
| I wouldn't call not going hungry "utopia".
| gjs278 wrote:
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Isn't it worth it to launch another one? Wouldn't the cost be
| minimal given that zero R&D is required?
| dhosek wrote:
| Why build just one when for twice the price you could have two?
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| Ha I just made a similar comment. A fellow Contact fan I see!
| dhosek wrote:
| I adapted the line when my twins were born.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| This reminds me of that time NASA was just gifted two unused
| hubble-sized telescopes by the NRO[1].
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-
| science/nasa-...
| mulmen wrote:
| Makes sense. Hubble is believed to be an adapted KH-11.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN
| zaarn wrote:
| Barely worth to launch another one. It would be more cost
| effective to invest some R&D into building a telescope with a
| different target wavelength to get more science than if you had
| two of the same telescope. The engineers will also absolutely
| want to fix any issues they found in Webb already.
| aalleavitch wrote:
| The degree to which science has advanced since the Webb
| project started can't be understated either. We have a
| fundamentally better understanding of the technology
| available and what we even want to look at. Much better to
| simply move onto the next project, of which there are
| currently very many.
| noelrock wrote:
| Was going to reply along these lines. I was fortunate to
| live with someone who was working on the James Webb and
| telling me excitedly about it -- back in 2006! Surely even
| with the various upgrades/spec changes/delays, things have
| moved sufficiently that whatever is started even today will
| be a marked upgrade.
|
| In any event, many many areas to aim at, and relatively
| limited funding unfortunately.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| What's the next project? Roman [1] doesn't seem as
| groundbreaking as Webb was.
|
| [1] https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/
| __alexs wrote:
| In 20 years we'll be talking about:
|
| * LISA: LIGO In Space (Amazing!).
|
| * LUVOIR: JWST but even bigger and UV.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| LISA is incredibly cool!
| sbierwagen wrote:
| I'd like to see a deep space version of the Gaia
| astrometry space telescope.
|
| It measures the parallax shift of stars, and is basically
| the one reliable way of directly measuring how far away a
| star is from us. Unfortunately, it's at L2, and therefore
| has a baseline of 1 AU. Another Gaia way out at 20AU
| would have capacities no Earth-based telescope could ever
| have.
| mulmen wrote:
| This seems like the kind of thing where two would
| _actually_ be useful. Is there any benefit to making both
| observations at the same time? Or are the scales so great
| that it doesn 't really matter?
| sbierwagen wrote:
| You'd almost certainly want to launch several. You get
| one data point per half-orbit, when you're at opposite
| sides of the Sun. This is tolerable for the Earth, where
| an orbit is one year. But a full orbit out at 20AU takes
| eighty four years! Collecting a useful number of samples
| with one spacecraft would take centuries, while two
| spacecraft in opposition on the same orbit can measure
| parallax instantly.
| lkbm wrote:
| I somehow didn't realize we already had pre-Webb stuff at
| L2. Luckily, Wikipedia has a list: https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_po...
| aalleavitch wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proposed_space_ob
| ser...
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| There has been a lot of work on earth based telescopes
| (eg the 30 meter, giant Magellan, and some array based
| telescopes) that are going online in the next decade.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Are superior terrestrial 'scopes even possible, anymore,
| with Starlink interference getting worse each week?
|
| Serious question. Or can its interference be filtered out
| effectively?
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Yes they are very much possible, and cheaper than space
| too.
|
| What starlink does is ruin part of the images, and if the
| thing you were interested in observing happens to be
| blocked by a starlink trail you're hosed: a thing
| literally blocked what you tried to see and you lost the
| nigh (because usually you get just a bit of the a night
| for your observation). Other things that ruins your night
| is clouds, so starlink effectively makes the weather at a
| site worse, only you find out _after_ the night that it
| was all a waste.
|
| To some extent you can plan around it, but as the mega
| constellations grow they'll have to avoid each other more
| frequently and there's no rules for how that shits
| coordinated, so you maybe you can know in advance that
| the night is wasted.
|
| But the risk that a satellite is in an undocumented orbit
| by the time you try to observe will likely be very high
| in the future.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| For the most part, yes, with adaptive optics and
| corrective measures being taken to deal with more
| satellites in orbit, ground telescopes are superior or at
| least comparable to space telescopes given their ability
| to be much larger.
|
| Space telescopes these days are primarily being designed
| for observations that simply can't be done while in the
| atmosphere (eg the wavelengths JWST and NGR look at). The
| value of a space telescope in the same wavelength range
| as what ground based telescopes usually use would mainly
| benefit in terms of being able to have much longer
| exposures.
| wumpus wrote:
| Yes, there are many kinds of science which can be done
| more cheaply from the ground.
|
| Even considering the effect of Starlink.
| maskedinvader wrote:
| My understanding is ground based telescopes imaging in
| the same wavelengths also have to deal with distortion in
| the atmosphere, star link interference would be easier to
| filter out compared to the other stuff (which is why
| locations for these mega ground based telescopes are
| chosen with utmost care )
|
| Disclaimer. Not a physicals or astronomer, just a
| enthusiastic backyard amateur astronomer who reads a lot
| about telescopes .
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Both of these would be groundbreaking, but they're still
| very much at the "Maybe..." stage.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/nasa-might-put-a-huge-
| telescope-...
| code_biologist wrote:
| Paul Sutter has a great astronomy and physics podcast
| called "Ask a Spaceman". His "Five Exciting Missions
| After James Webb" episode (20 min) got me really excited
| for the future:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiYVsoxbxAI
| jacquesm wrote:
| This one is probably my favorite:
|
| https://www.space.com/nasa-telescope-far-side-of-moon.html
|
| Though I'm not sure if it will ever be built.
| mulmen wrote:
| Even if such a device never made an observation or
| discovery the experience of building it and making it
| operational would be worthwhile.
| Phrenzy wrote:
| I wonder if they have a list of craters already picked
| out.
| foobarian wrote:
| I wonder how feasible it would be to count on Starship to
| succeed, so that each flight could deliver one hexagonal
| mirror segment, eventually culminating in a giant composite
| mirror
| delecti wrote:
| Based on how JWST folded up, the width of the hexagonal
| segments is already a sizable chunk of its overall launch
| diameter. Doing what you suggest could absolutely result in
| a bigger overall telescope, but the complexity would be
| increased vastly more than the overall telescope diameter.
| ncmncm wrote:
| You would not need to fold it at all. Instead, launch
| dozens of Webb-scale scopes for a fraction of the price,
| able to point in that many directions at once.
| delecti wrote:
| I don't think you understood what I meant. If you launch
| the segments by themselves, the width of a single segment
| would still be limited to the internal diameter of the
| launch vessel, we're not going to just bolt a naked
| mirror to the front of a rocket.
|
| If you compare how the JWST was folded, the width of the
| individual segments was already close to the maximum
| allowable diameter of the launch vessel. Leaving the rest
| of that launch vessel empty won't get you a much bigger
| final mirror.
| ncmncm wrote:
| I understood perfectly.
|
| Starship is 9 meters wide.
| vasco wrote:
| > Barely worth to launch another one
|
| How do you figure? A fleet of space telescopes research teams
| could interact with through an API without much cost and zero
| approval, would for sure advance science by a lot. I find it
| weird to see a statement like this, so maybe you have
| something else in mind. It's a stretch to go from "building a
| different one would give new classes of insights" to "having
| more people being able to use this thing we only have 1 of a
| kind is barely worth it".
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| "Why build one when you could build two for twice the
| cost?"
| falseprofit wrote:
| The cost is nothing next to what we spend on war
| [deleted]
| divbzero wrote:
| There aren't plans to launch an identical telescope. Perhaps
| the costs of manufacturing and testing are high enough that we
| might as well launch a different telescope with different
| capabilities?
|
| The Roman Space Telescope is a wide field instrument that is
| now under development and slated to launch in 2026 [1]. The
| Astro2020 decadal survey from the National Academies also
| recommended "a large (~6m diameter)
| Infrared/Optical/Ultraviolet space telescope" to observe
| exoplanets [2].
|
| [1]: https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-falcon-heavy-to-launch-
| ro...
|
| [2]:
| https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/26141/interactive...
| [deleted]
| digdugdirk wrote:
| An absolute ton of the cost of this was down to the extremely
| precise manufacturing required to make it. Some of that would
| be reduced now that they've made it once, but we're still
| talking about one-off components here. It won't be an order of
| magnitude.
|
| One thing I am curious about is how many spare parts were
| produced - in small scale high precision manufacturing like
| this there's often multiples of components produced, with only
| the highest spec components shipped out. What could we cobble
| together with the rejects and leftovers? And what would that
| give us, results wise?
| structural wrote:
| This is actually where NASA gets a significant amount of
| hardware: manufactured parts from intelligence programs that
| were the rejects from those production lines. Hubble was a
| prime example of this, but there are many others.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| You got any source for that claim?
| themitigating wrote:
| Why does he need proof? People always say government is
| bad and evil therefore can't you just "feel" this is
| true?
|
| Now take this as a fact and next time someone makes an
| accusation use it to show a history.
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| I would assume at least one duplicate part, as when a friend
| made a component for a sattelite he had to build a second so
| they had an identical part on earth to study/test in case of
| later issues.
|
| I'm guessing this is standard practise.
| jeffnappi wrote:
| For example check out this video from Smarter Every Day[1]
|
| Measuring the sun shield alone was a 5+ year long project.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/Pu97IiO_yDI
| elicash wrote:
| I'm reminded of this quote from the movie Contact: "First
| rule in government spending: why build one when you can have
| two at twice the price?"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ2nhHNtpmk
| themitigating wrote:
| Didn't that work out for them in the film because some
| crazy person blew up the first one?
| totallyblasted wrote:
| One of the best films ever made!
| nickff wrote:
| The other huge cost drivers are testing and calibration. Even
| if you have all the parts to make another one, you'll spend a
| lot on expensive labor to put it together, tune, calibrate,
| and verify it.
| somat wrote:
| I think the ship has sailed on that one, the time to make(and
| test) a second one would have been at the same time the first
| was being manufactured.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| First rule in government spending: why build one when you can
| have two at twice the price?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et4sMJP9FmM
| chess_buster wrote:
| This burned into my brain when I was a teenager.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ajuc wrote:
| Wait for starship, make a new bigger one that doesn't have to
| fold like crazy fragile origami, manufacture and send 10 of
| them for the price of making and sending this one.
| peter303 wrote:
| LUVOIR is a foldable mirror telescope, larger than JWST, UV to
| near IR, like Hubble. Congress has a bad test in mouth from
| JWST delays and overruns. Pehaps dozens of majornew discoveries
| will help.
|
| Roman is next in queue with many of its parts already built and
| operational around 2028.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Scientifically: probably
|
| Politically: no
| TIPSIO wrote:
| It would be so cool to have a Google Earth / zoom-like
| experience of everywhere you can see, like this:
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-...
| 6510 wrote:
| Then have various tiers of telescopes that you can hire to
| zoom in on a spot.
| causi wrote:
| Launching another one wouldn't let Bell and Northrop extract a
| 2,000% budget overrun so it's not gonna happen.
| bmitc wrote:
| There's no way the cost would be minimal. I would even wager
| that it would be just as or more expensive to build a duplicate
| than to build a new design based upon what was learned. Given
| the decades over which the James Webb Telescope was developed,
| it has parts and designs in it that are, well, decades old.
|
| And the bill of materials is unlikely to have been the primary
| cost factor. Extensive research, development, and testing was
| performed.
| _joel wrote:
| I'd be keener to see some of the larger diameter rockets coming
| online soon be used as a housing. 9m to play with there and
| perhaps with NASA's amazing origami skills then that could
| really open the door to some huge space telescopes.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Yeah I think they'll be building LUVOIR with the tooling and
| software designed for the Webb, but much larger so it fits
| into Starship/SLS and for a wider range of wavelengths.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| Anyone know how much of a difference are due to post processing
| of images when comparing webb and hubble? For example in the
| image of NGC7496 galaxy, Webb has more resolution right, but did
| they make the colours more intense/shifted, or are these pictures
| a sort of representative of what we could see with our eyes
|
| https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2022/07/NGC749...
| krisoft wrote:
| > are these pictures a sort of representative of what we could
| see with our eyes
|
| The JWST sees in infrared. Our eyes don't. This makes it not
| representative of what we would see with our eyes.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| So when comparing Webb and Hubble images, we cannot rule out
| that the colours have been enhanced in post processing and
| comparisons taken with a grain of salt?
| biorach wrote:
| Hubble images are also frequently "enhanced".
|
| Not all the wavelengths these telescopes capture can be
| seen by the human eye so some post processing is necessary
| for the "publicity shots"
|
| A lot of the real science is not done visually but by
| analysing the data
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| False color images are common in astronomy as they're
| working with spectrum ranges wider than our eyes. There's
| nothing about this that requires a grain of salt style
| skepticism.
| 8note wrote:
| The colours are arbitrary anyways. Thanks to redshift, they
| represent distance in time and space away.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Though I suppose if one has the distance one could shift
| back to the color it would be without redshift. Kinda
| tricky with light from multiple sources in a single pixel
| of course, and I'm not sure it would be terribly exciting
| overall.
|
| Still, would be interesting I think.
| whatshisface wrote:
| There is no naked eye picture to compare it with, so you
| can't say enhanced. To answer your question, though, the
| JWST pictures and the Hubble pictures were turned into RGB
| images in the same way.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The Webb pics would be invisible to humans without
| enhancing the colors.
|
| Though most things probably look pretty similar in visible
| light.
| simonh wrote:
| The main problem with visible light is it's absorbed and
| scattered by dust. It's Webb's ability to see through all
| that dust in the IR spectrum that reveals a huge amount
| of information and images Hubble and our eyes would never
| be able to see.
| laxd wrote:
| I feel like "what would it look like if I was there with my
| own eyes?" is a question that is decreasingly interesting the
| more you think about it.
|
| Your wall would look very different depending on whether the
| sun or your lamp shines on it. Or maybe you're in complete
| darkness?
|
| What does the sun look like up close? Your eyes would
| malfunction.
|
| A picture could look very different depending on lens and
| camera settings.
|
| Your perception could be very different from that of someone
| who has just woke up in a dark room, walked in from the sun,
| or peaking on acid.
|
| I guess "convey information" would be an important principle
| to both brains and astronomists.
| infogulch wrote:
| To anyone wondering how the sausage is made I recommend this
| video [1] by Nebula Photos who reprocessed the same raw data
| that NASA used to create the released nebula picture. At around
| 19m he talks about how he arranges the images in layers based
| on the wavelength of the filter that was used during its
| capture.
|
| About false color... Real things in the universe have real
| color -- they emit light in a variety of wavelengths -- even
| when that color is outside of the perceptual range of your
| eyes. The colorized photos like the ones released by NASA or
| Nebula Photos just expose the real relative color differences
| present in the original data, just shifted into a range that is
| you are able to perceive. "false color" images are definitely
| _not_ someone taking a colored pencil to a black and white
| photo of a nebula and "coloring it in" to look nice, the
| colors are actually meaningful and give you more information
| about everything that the telescope actually detected than what
| a black and white photo could show alone.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVuonz26P0w
| jakear wrote:
| All the colors are false, it's imaging inferred.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| But aren't the percieved colors redshifted? Aren't these
| "false color" images just blueshifting the colors back to a
| visible light image, which is how they would look if they
| were moving at the same relative speed as us?
| jakear wrote:
| Roughly speaking sure, but the color mapping function they
| used just paints the longest wavelength the telescope can
| see "red" and the shortest "violet". No attempt is made to
| properly "undo" redshifting.
|
| I've been unable to find any technical reports on the
| technique, but the gist of it is here:
| https://www.axios.com/2022/07/17/james-webb-space-
| telescope-...
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| It does seem like the redshift would need to be fixed on
| a star-by-star basis depending on how far away is the
| star.
| falseprofit wrote:
| I think you mean galaxy-by-galaxy.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| depends on the observation. Anything in our galaxy or
| nearby galaxies is actual infra-red light at the source.
| giantrobot wrote:
| That is not true. The light reaching us from most objects
| in our and nearby galaxies is pretty close to the
| original wavelength emitted. It takes extremely relative
| velocity to red shift for visible wavelengths to shift to
| infrared.
|
| Most stellar objects emit a whole bunch of wavelengths of
| light, some emit _more_ IR than visible. Interstellar
| dust doesn 't red shift light due to velocity but because
| the molecules absorb higher energy photons and re-emit
| lower energy photons.
| z9znz wrote:
| Politely suggesting that false has some negative
| connotations, perhaps "artificial" would be a better word...
| or even illustrative or representational.
| jefftk wrote:
| "False" is the traditional word here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_color
| z9znz wrote:
| Fair enough. Then it's really a matter of intended
| audience. It is a correct technical term for the color-
| domain educated audience. Could be that I'm one of the
| few outside that audience, but probably not :).
|
| The wikipedia article does note that pseudo-color is an
| alternative, and that carries less generally negative
| connotation.
|
| This is all nitpicking anyway, but thanks for the bit of
| education!
|
| [added - although now I can pick at the definition of
| "true color", since it is based on the idea of how a
| color would appaer to a human viewer. We know pretty well
| that there's quite a variance of perception of color
| amongst humans, so there arguably is no "true color".
| There's just X% of people see this color. :) ]
| lapetitejort wrote:
| For a similar term that can confuse outside audiences,
| see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_force
| lattalayta wrote:
| Would love for someone to correct me if I'm wrong - but isn't
| this similar to how we look at nightvision or other heat
| seeking camera images? We falsely color them so that the
| temperature ranges are visible in the image, but it's not
| something that our human eyes perceive.
| visarga wrote:
| > or are these pictures a sort of representative of what we
| could see with our eyes
|
| Webb can do "imaging spectroscopy", where it can take an image,
| but it will take a spectrum and every pixel of the image as
| well. In imaging spectroscopy, there is information on the
| spectrum of wavelengths present in each tiny piece of the
| image. This can help clue scientists in as to what elements or
| chemicals might have created that spectrum.
|
| https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-hubble-imag...
| peanutz454 wrote:
| The pictures are rarely what you will see with the human eyes
| (not as much colour).
| giantrobot wrote:
| First, all astronomy PR images are edited to _look_ good to
| normal people. Sharpness is enhanced to bring out fine details
| and wavelengths are mapped to attractive colors to make an
| attractive composite. If you are a scientist working with data
| from Hubble or Webb you 're working on the raw data and ignore
| the PR images entirely. The PR images are derived from the
| scientific data but they are not themselves scientific.
|
| Both Hubble and Webb also take observations with fairly narrow
| filters. In a PR image these essentially grayscale images are
| mapped to a color channel, red, green, or blue. The wavelength
| mapped to the "red" channel might be a mix of 650nm and 600nm
| filters. This blend will not look like what your eye would see
| but makes for a pretty desktop wallpaper.
|
| Webb in particular only sees in the IR bands which your eye
| can't see. Making a PR images from Webb images arbitrarily maps
| IR wavelengths to RGB channels.
|
| That's not to say a researcher won't filter and process the raw
| data. But their goal is to extract useful scientific
| information and not just produce an attractive image. They'll
| spend more time looking at graphs from the raw data than the
| actual 2D array of pixels.
|
| For instance, if you know the composition for an object you
| know what it's spectra should look like. If you compare that
| spectra to what's received you can calculate the red shift of
| every pixel. Doing this for the whole image can then let you
| tell the red shift of an entire object giving an idea of its
| proper motion relative to us. For say a nebula this can show
| how it's moving and give an understanding of its 3D structure
| even though the images are all 2D.
|
| I don't mean to disparage the PR images. They can often be used
| to explain phenomena to non-experts (not that I'm an expert).
| But they're never really going to show what the human eye might
| see, most stellar objects would look like mostly diffuse white
| blobs even "up close". Most things emit a number of wavelengths
| which just mix and look white to us. It's only with narrow band
| filters that telescopes can actually pick out fine details of
| most objects.
| O__________O wrote:
| Are the plans for the future use of the telescope public?
| zaarn wrote:
| NASA generally publishes the telescope time allocations to my
| knowledge, you can atleast find the allocations for the next
| year already on the internet.
| Cerium wrote:
| Yes, you can see the observing schedule and a list of approved
| programs:
|
| https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/observing-sched...
|
| https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-progra...
| _joel wrote:
| Yes, they plan the year in advance. All submissions for time
| are based on anonymous proposals too so there's no bias in
| selection, plus they're open to the public so amateur
| astronomers that have the skill to be able to write such a
| proposal, can get time on it, just the same as any other
| instituion.
| ISL wrote:
| I'd encourage those with the skill to do so to apply for
| telescope time. A friend of mine, with no prior observational
| experience, had a good idea for a Chandra observation,
| applied in partnership with an astronomer, and got the time
| necessary to make the measurement.
|
| It really does happen.
|
| Things like a Sagan 'pale blue dot' image would be a longer
| shot, but astronomers are humans, too -- if there's a _very
| cool_ and human idea out there, the committees might be
| receptive there. (i.e., catching the glint of light off a
| Mars Observer solar panel or some such thing).
| ars wrote:
| Is it capable of seeing Pioneer, or is that way too small?
| ISL wrote:
| My guess is that it is too small, but the RTG _is_
| warm.... :).
| sbierwagen wrote:
| The JWST call for proposals page is here: https://jwst-
| docs.stsci.edu/jwst-opportunities-and-policies/...
| lordalch wrote:
| My understanding is that due to Webb's location at L2, it
| can never point back at the Earth, because that would
| basically be pointing directly at the sun.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| I read that as meaning "Pale blue dot" in the sense that
| Carl Sagan wasn't a professional astronomer or a NASA
| employee, he just said "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if you
| tried taking a photo of Earth from the Pioneer probe" and
| they did it.
| ISL wrote:
| Sagan was a professional astronomer in Cornell's
| astronomy department, but his rationale for making the
| pale-blue-dot image was less as a scientific endeavor and
| more as a way to tell us more about ourselves.
|
| Incidentally, there was a lot more to that imaging
| campaign -- Voyager captured a "Family Portrait" of our
| solar system as its last imaging hurrah:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Portrait_(Voyager)
| _joel wrote:
| It also can't be pointed as the the optics need to be
| actively cooled, hence the giant sunshield and cooling
| pumps, so it'll never point towards earth/sun
| Aperocky wrote:
| Depend on what you mean by public, if made publicly available
| to universities after claims and research proposals, great.
| General public is probably a bad idea and waste of resources.
| wumpus wrote:
| The general public can submit an observation proposal, which
| will then have to compete with all of the other proposals in
| peer review.
| dhritzkiv wrote:
| I think the parent poster meant is there a timeline/roadmap
| of future milestones/missions that are publicly available
| dylan604 wrote:
| The plans are to view things in space. Is that not publicly
| known?
|
| But in seriousness, if the observation schedule is going to be
| listed publicly, I'd imagine it would be on the Space Telescope
| Science Institute's website as they are in charge of the
| telescope's usage.
|
| https://www.stsci.edu/jwst
| caycep wrote:
| that being said, I feel like there's going to be a ton of
| datasets to be mined for some time. When I was a summer intern in
| ~2000, they were still writing papers out of Viking data from the
| '70s
| mrtri wrote:
| seanhunter wrote:
| I couldn't believe that first image. You could clearly see the
| gravitational lensing causing the light to form arcs. Even for
| someone who knows nothing about astronomy it was super exciting.
| ycombinete wrote:
| Apparently some of those discs were the same galaxy see in
| multiple places due to the power of the lensing?
| thamer wrote:
| Yes, and they confirmed it was the same galaxy using
| spectroscopy: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images
| /2022/035/01G...
| londons_explore wrote:
| Presumably the path lengths are probably not identical...
| That means we might be able to see the same galaxy twice at
| different points in time?
|
| That should be a really good way to check our models are
| accurate!
| jagraff wrote:
| This has actually been done before - scientists have been
| able to image the same supernova multiple times from a
| gravitationally lensed galaxy:
| https://www.universetoday.com/151581/astronomers-saw-the-
| sam...
| leeoniya wrote:
| i read somewhere recently that this difference in path
| lengths can be measured in days, depending on distance
| and how off-center the lensing is.
| victor9000 wrote:
| Interesting, it should be theoretically possible to use
| gravitational lensing to view a past version of earth,
| no?
| beckingz wrote:
| You would probably need a telescope larger than earth to
| do this.
| Spare_account wrote:
| Using interferometery of orbiting observatories
| (potentially on solar orbits, to leverage the entire
| diameter of the solar system), this is conceivably
| possible
| mortehu wrote:
| Is there anything we can do deliberately to use
| gravitational lensing other than aiming a telescope at a
| part of the sky where this is happening by random chance?
| superposeur wrote:
| I seem to remember an astronomer mentioning that it is
| possible to interfere the light from gravitationally lensed
| double images. Lacking appropriate intuition, this would be
| amazing for me as I'd think the photons would lose coherence
| over the course of their multi billion light year journeys
| (but maybe not?). Does anyone know about this?
| api wrote:
| Photons travel at c, so don't they experience no time?
| Wouldn't they be zero old?
| HPsquared wrote:
| Interferometry is common in radio telescopes, and was the
| method used in the recent imaging of a black hole by the
| Event Horizon Telescope, which used interferometry between
| multiple telescopes on different sides of the earth. It's
| also used a bit in optical telescopes, but harder to do.
| Basically yes, interference can still be used even over
| these extreme distances. The speed of light is pretty exact
| I suppose!
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_Telescope
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_interferometer
| whekdhek wrote:
| It's a nice image, but it's not the first time we've seen
| something like that pretty clearly.
| https://news.uchicago.edu/story/gravitational-lens-reveals-d...
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Gravitational lensing was how general relativity was "proven"
| back in 1919 [1] (4 years after publication). Einstein had
| predicted this weird effect but it was impossible to see in
| action because the only observable object massive enough to
| cause lensing was the sun and you cannot take a picture of
| it. In 1919 they managed to take a picture of the sun during
| a total sun eclipse which showed the effect clearly.
|
| [1] https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/how-
| the-1919-s...
| jffry wrote:
| It's not even the first time this little bit of the sky has
| been imaged by one of our space telescopes, but that makes
| the image no less beautiful.
|
| It's really cool to see all the additional, older galaxies
| visible in JWST's infrared which were not previously visible
| to Hubble!
| 867-5309 wrote:
| I wonder if it's additive/accumulative i.e. every star in the
| galaxy lends itself to the effect, or if it comes mainly from
| the SMBH at the centre of the galaxy, or a combination of both?
| throwaway64643 wrote:
| I guess it's mostly from dark matter.
| TedShiller wrote:
| I'm not sure that assessment is accurate
| falseprofit wrote:
| What part?
| jacobedawson wrote:
| "The telescope's first public image shows a cluster of
| galaxies called SMACS 0723, which is so heavy it warps and
| magnifies the light from distant galaxies beyond it."
| TedShiller wrote:
| This is accurate. However, it wouldn't be just based on the
| assessment of someone who knows nothing about astronomy.
| seanhunter wrote:
| I said it was exciting for me as someone who didn't know
| about astronomy. I'm very amply qualified to make that
| assessment. Gravitational lensing and how it shows in
| images is something I learned about by attending a
| lecture.
| [deleted]
| Linda703 wrote:
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