NASA - James Webb Space Telescope - Discussion Thread 2

[libra]

Thought they would've flown it to Guiana.
Lets hope the ship doesn't run into any hurricanes.

I think it's too big to fit in a plane now.

I'm trying to remember, and maybe somebody has better information, but there's an issue with the road from the airport to the launch site. I think that the road from the port to the launch site is smoother. So even if they could have flown it, they might have chosen sea transport anyway. But I could be in error about this and somebody may have better info.

They increased the size of the container so that it no longer fits in the C-5.

Port is 8 km to processing facility vs 70 from airport

From memory: Kourou "airport" is actually Cayenne (which was once France very own Alcatraz  - remember that movie, Butterfly / Papillon) - and it is a long way from Kourou. By contrast the city of Kourou had a port (a bit like Port Canaveral although much smaller !) which is - quite logically - closer than Cayenne.

For the record, back in the day (50 years ago) Europa's Blue Streaks were ferried to Kourou by ship, from Le Havre.
After Europa F11 miserable failure late 1971 the entire program was canned in the spring of 1973 as F12 launch campaign was already started.

Blue Streak F12 had already been shipped from Le Havre and was thus at sea when Europa was cancelled. The Blue Streak nonetheless made it to Kourou only to be stored, then sold to a scrapper which sold the remains to a farmer which turned it into a... chichen coop ! Just like the scrapped N-1s in Tyuratam / Baikonur being turned into the city street furnitures.

[bolun]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58498676

JWST must now itself travel by sea from its construction base at Northrop Grumman in California. This involves a trip through the Panama Canal.

Information about the voyage is being kept secret so as not to attract the attention of pirates.

Jack Sparrow?   

[Jim]

One question, I've only seen pictures of the Webb Telescope in an upright position. Will it be OK to transport it on its side as shown by the canister in the photo above?

It was designed to be transported in that container.  The telescope without spacecraft was transported from GSFC to JSC and then to Redondo Beach in that container.

[libra]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58498676

JWST must now itself travel by sea from its construction base at Northrop Grumman in California. This involves a trip through the Panama Canal.

Information about the voyage is being kept secret so as not to attract the attention of pirates.

Jack Sparrow?   

Laughed loud. Unfortunately, piracy still exists nowadays. French Guyana has a major issue with illegal gold mining poisoning the rain forrest with mercury.
https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20210909-mountains-of-gold-rivers-of-mercury-poisoning-of-guiana-and-the-french-amazon
Although I am at lost why would they be interested in JWST.
Then again, with Jack Sparrow very precarious mental state, you never know... peanuts, cuttlefish, mayonnaise, guillotine, and rum...
...
Why... why is the Webb gone ?

[Blackstar]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58498676

JWST must now itself travel by sea from its construction base at Northrop Grumman in California. This involves a trip through the Panama Canal.

Information about the voyage is being kept secret so as not to attract the attention of pirates.

Jack Sparrow?   

The actual concern is terrorism against a $10 billion piece of American technology.

I was in a meeting back around 2015 where somebody discussed that they were working on the transportation security plan. Even then, they were thinking about how they would keep it secure. You can be sure that when it moves, there will be a US Navy warship shadowing it and security forces on, around, and above the ship.

[Robert Thompson]

The mirrors are a large concentration of lightweight strong beryllium, coated in IR reflective gold.
18 mirrors * 46 lb Be * $150/oz

[hoku]

Thought they would've flown it to Guiana.
Lets hope the ship doesn't run into any hurricanes.

I think it's too big to fit in a plane now.

I'm trying to remember, and maybe somebody has better information, but there's an issue with the road from the airport to the launch site. I think that the road from the port to the launch site is smoother. So even if they could have flown it, they might have chosen sea transport anyway. But I could be in error about this and somebody may have better info.

Apparently at least one of the bridges between the airport and the launch site isn't designed to support the full weight of STTARS + JWST (which, according to the 2nd post linked below, totals in excess of 80 metric tonnes). I vaguely remember that the bridges were designed to support transports of the Hermes shuttle (launch mass of around 20 t?).

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=10453.msg1228976#msg1228976
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=10453.msg1758615#msg1758615

[libra]

Thought they would've flown it to Guiana.
Lets hope the ship doesn't run into any hurricanes.

I think it's too big to fit in a plane now.

I'm trying to remember, and maybe somebody has better information, but there's an issue with the road from the airport to the launch site. I think that the road from the port to the launch site is smoother. So even if they could have flown it, they might have chosen sea transport anyway. But I could be in error about this and somebody may have better info.

Apparently at least one of the bridges between the airport and the launch site isn't designed to support the full weight of STTARS + JWST (which, according to the 2nd post linked below, totals in excess of 80 metric tonnes). I vaguely remember that the bridges were designed to support transports of the Hermes shuttle (launch mass of around 20 t?).

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=10453.msg1228976#msg1228976
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=10453.msg1758615#msg1758615

Hermès ended at 25 mt, with the disposable module in the back. And weight was still creeping upwards when it was canned in 1992.
And outside the CSG, French Guiana is a rather poor and backward place - shame to the Métropole, which doesn't treats its overseas territories in a great way, as seen once again during the COVID pandemic. Better than Brazil or Surinam, no question about that; but poorer than the Métropole, with badly lacking basic infrastructures. But I'm veering off topic.

In passing, if terrorists try to seize Webb near Kourou, the French foreign legion is there in strength to protect the place. In fact French Guiana harsh jungle is their playground.

"Go ahead, make my day" as would say Shuttle driver Clint Eastwood.

[GWR64]

Why was the Ariane 5 chosen as the launcher?
So that ESA is "involved" in JWST?
The Delta IV H would have been possible too, right?

[Crispy]

It's a proper partnership; there are European instruments on there also. In return, European scientists get allocated time on the telescope.

[libra]

Why was the Ariane 5 chosen as the launcher?
So that ESA is "involved" in JWST?
The Delta IV H would have been possible too, right?

At an insane launch cost...

[RotoSequence]

Why was the Ariane 5 chosen as the launcher?
So that ESA is "involved" in JWST?
The Delta IV H would have been possible too, right?

At an insane launch cost...

In hindsight, an extra $165 million in launch costs wouldn't have been all that big of a deal.

[hoku]

Why was the Ariane 5 chosen as the launcher?
So that ESA is "involved" in JWST?
The Delta IV H would have been possible too, right?

At an insane launch cost...

In hindsight, an extra $165 million in launch costs wouldn't have been all that big of a deal.

Well, I think ordering a Delta IV Heavy launch sets you back by more than that - NRO was budgeting up to $440 million for a DIVH launch.

Anyway, "word on the street" (in ~2004?) was that the NGST/JWST project was in one of its existential budget crisis, when ESA offered to cover the launch with Ariane V. NASA accepted, and the JWST project lived on to fight another day (and to accumulate further cost overruns ;-)

[GWR64]

Why was the Ariane 5 chosen as the launcher?
So that ESA is "involved" in JWST?
The Delta IV H would have been possible too, right?

At an insane launch cost...

In hindsight, an extra $165 million in launch costs wouldn't have been all that big of a deal.

Well, I think ordering a Delta IV Heavy launch sets you back by more than that - NRO was budgeting up to $440 million for a DIVH launch.

Anyway, "word on the street" (in ~2004?) was that the NGST/JWST project was in one of its existential budget crisis, when ESA offered to cover the launch with Ariane V. NASA accepted, and the JWST project lived on to fight another day (and to accumulate further cost overruns ;-)

Thank you, I understand.

[slobber91]

Driving past Space Park in Redondo Beach on my way to the airport this morning, I came across a certain space telescope headed south:

[Blackstar]

Anyway, "word on the street" (in ~2004?) was that the NGST/JWST project was in one of its existential budget crisis, when ESA offered to cover the launch with Ariane V. NASA accepted, and the JWST project lived on to fight another day (and to accumulate further cost overruns ;-)

I don't know if the specifics of this account are true, but the generalities are. The ESA launch offer "saved" NASA money. However, I think there were delays in agreeing to the deal, which also resulted in greater costs. I remember hearing somebody say that if NASA had simply gone for a US launcher from the start, it probably would have cost the same or less than the delays over signing up ESA. But I heard that before the JWST cost ballooned again, and then again. Figuring out this budgeting stuff is hard.

However, bringing the Europeans aboard also made it much harder to cancel the program. That's always something that NASA people consider, although they won't say it out loud.




Addendum: I should add a bit more explanation. I'm not exactly sure of the JWST case, but when it comes to science spacecraft, delaying choosing a launch vehicle costs money. The reason is that a launch vehicle represents a specific set of characteristics, and the spacecraft is designed to those characteristics. If you delay picking one, then the designers have to essentially hold two sets of characteristics in their design, and that costs money. So (rough example) if a Falcon is a 5 and an Atlas is a 3, the designers want to design to either a 5 or a 3, but until that decision is made, they have to design for both a 5 and a 3.

This was a problem for New Horizons back in the 2000s--there was a delay in picking the launch vehicle that cost a few tens of millions of dollars. I seem to remember the PI, Alan Stern, saying that NASA "saved" money on the launch vehicle choice, but the delay cost the program about the same money that they saved, so it was a wash (and he was not happy about it). This might be in his book.

I also now have vague memories that when NASA indicated they were going to use Ariane, Boeing (or ULA) protested the decision, resulting in a delay that increased costs to the JWST program. I'm sure that somebody could dig through old copies of Space News and find more information about this.

[Jim]

I don't know if the specifics of this account are true, but the generalities are. The ESA launch offer "saved" NASA money. However, I think there were delays in agreeing to the deal, which also resulted in greater costs. I remember hearing somebody say that if NASA had simply gone for a US launcher from the start, it probably would have cost the same or less than the delays over signing up ESA. But I heard that before the JWST cost ballooned again, and then again. Figuring out this budgeting stuff is hard.

The costs and logistics of traveling outside the US over the years for meetings and for the launch campaign is not cheap.
the extra items they have to bring to Kourou (tankers of purge gas, tools, GSE, comm, etc)
Just the people involved with export control and such.

The US process of encapsulating the spacecraft in the PPF has less contamination risk vs on top of the launch vehicle.  The mitigations have extra costs

A US launcher would have been cheaper in the long run.

[MATTBLAK]

Which U.S. launcher do you think could have been used, Jim - Atlas V-551 or Delta IV-Heavy?

[libra]

Driving past Space Park in Redondo Beach on my way to the airport this morning, I came across a certain space telescope headed south:

Bon voyage en Guyane, Webb. And be careful of COVID - it is flaring up again, there...

[Jim]

Which U.S. launcher do you think could have been used, Jim - Atlas V-551 or Delta IV-Heavy?

Delta IV Heavy