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The wait for the Webb… — 15 Comments

  1. What happens when it needs a mechanical repair? As I remember it, the Hubble was repaired more than once in its first decade.

  2. I had to watch the launch from a safe space. I’ve been waiting for this for so long. This is going to be beautiful.

  3. We are living in momentous times that will be much longer remembered in history than the treachery of the left in possibly destroying America. 53 years ago a man first set foot on another planet. That was only 66 years since the Wright brothers first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk. Now the Webb telescope may be able to discover whether dark matter and dark energy exist or is Newton’s and Einstein‘s theory of gravitation wrong? Is there life on other planets in the universe? The introduction of capitalism and free enterprise into space exploration will fulfill our destiny to be spacefaring.

  4. I have an Image from Hubble as my Wallpaper on my Phone.
    Hope Webb is just as awesome.

  5. Regarding Earth 2.0: I am convinced that the future of the Human Race will not be on planets located at the bottom of deep gravity wells, but in large artificial habitats that are spun to produce ‘gravity. All of the resources we need exist in comets and asteroids. Humans will be able to live anywhere that there is mass and energy to manipulate.

  6. I read somewhere–can’t find it again–that the very packed list of locations that–one by one–the telescope will be focused on, is being kept secret.

    I would really like to see what Webb will find if it focuses on the Trappist-1 system, with it’s reported 7 earth sized planets orbiting that star.

  7. Ray Nathanson–There have been a number of highly intelligent people–for example, Carl Sagan, Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking–who have pointed with alarm to the obvious fact that, while the human race is located solely here on Earth–all our eggs in one basket–and we are subject to any number of possible “extinction level” events, from large asteroid impacts, to out of control wars, massive volcanic activity and the resultant “Nuclear winter,” hostile “Skynet” type AIs, biological agents run amok, any number of things.

    Thus, they have all called for us to settle human breeding populations–as soon as possible–in as many places as we can throughout our Solar system and, then, out to the stars.

  8. Roy Nathanson,
    Whether we ever make it out there or not, but I agree that those deep gravity wells do burn up fuel getting up and down. Perhaps engineers will be able to use the very thin Martian atmosphere for an economic controlled descent .But getting the craft back up does tend to burn up a lot of fuel.
    If “ reaction-less motors” could ever be built, that might change the equation, but those are still sci- fi, not reality.
    Going out, the left would have to give up it’s fixation on solar power, the inverse square law being what it is when it comes to solar energy….

  9. The ideal location for humans to reach is the rings and moons of Saturn. Both Moon and Mars have the problem of dust as well as being gravity wells, but the Moon in particular is a necessary way station.
    Venus is a death trap, as is Mercury. Jupiter has a murderous magnetosphere.
    Rings of Saturn quench the high energy particles that might get trapped in its magnetosphere. Rings and moons of Saturn are sources of volatiles necessary for survival and propulsion.
    Mankind will have a chance for long term survival once we reach the environs of Saturn. Anything closer to the Sun poses great challenges.

  10. Edward,
    The permanently shaded portions of the polar regions of Mercury might not be that much different than the polar regions of the moon. There may even be water at the Mercuric poles.
    And then there is that old Russian suggestion of cloud cities on Venus. But that would be quiet the feat of engineering just to get set up.

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