Comment by mmooss
18 days ago
NASA's work has been reduced to a "handful"? What is the point of writing that? And there is far more to cost of missions and their hardware than launching them. How much of JWST's cost was the launch?
18 days ago
NASA's work has been reduced to a "handful"? What is the point of writing that? And there is far more to cost of missions and their hardware than launching them. How much of JWST's cost was the launch?
> NASA's work has been reduced to a "handful"?
NASA has launched about 200 probes since the 1950s. That's maybe 3 probes a year.
> What is the point of writing that?
Building one-offs is extremely expensive, meaning few will be built.
> And there is far more to cost of missions and their hardware than launching them. How much of JWST's cost was the launch?
Cost goes down dramatically when you build a twin. Maybe even by 90%. And then you get twice the science done! After all, twin Voyagers were made and launched, and twice the science indeed happened. Makes you wonder what we'd have learned if the twins had more siblings!
For contrast, 9600 Starlink satellites have been launched.