Things aren't as simple as more money = more good.

Rapid progress requires adversity, the kind you'll find when nations compete for military power, for example.

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/universe-unc...

Those are galaxies. In a field of view "about 1/13th the diameter of the full Moon."

The problems are that anyone gave Musk/doge the time of day and that we're too used to the president giving no bid contacts to incompetent donors.

Edit: These are the detectors, which are the cameras. There is only one mirror assembly (with two mirrors) that focuses light into these instruments.

The Falcon Heavy has made 12 launches and all of them have been successful. It's built using the same engines as the Falcon 9, which has become the boringly reliable workhorse of space launch, and the rocket cores are very similar in design. I'd bet on a successful launch, and probably on a successful landing of the side boosters.

(Do we really need to politicize launch vehicles, of all things?)

06:25 AM Window Open

06:26 AM Window Close

Is it really just a 1 minute launch window? That seems incredibly tight. If there's any hitch in the countdown, that would pretty much mean a scrubbed launch. Not being well versed in orbital mechanics, why would the window be so short?

I was so excited for this. It was the one thing I really wanted to see happen in my own lifetime.

What a deeply moronic waste.

Are you talking about SLS?

Oh maybe you'd say that is "Senate Launch System", it's complicated, job program, 50 states sharing, and so on?

Roman has two science instruments, a wide-field imager (“WFI”) and a coronagraph (“CGI”) and they were both built by NASA for this purpose (optics, electronics, detectors, deformable mirrors).

The WFI optics includes filters and a prism and grism for spectroscopy, and of course the very large CCD arrays.

The coronagraph is a rather special tech demo and allows imaging of exoplanets (Jupiter-like) while blocking the light of the host star. (https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/coron...). It’s a precursor to HWO which is mentioned down-thread.

"mbps" is a meaningless abbreviation. You need to consistently and correctly use capital letters when communicating technical terms. You cannot "e e cummings" your way into effective writing.

500 megabits per second works out to 5.4 terabytes per day. No idea where you get 1.5, unless you were thinking of 500Mb/hour!

60 × 60 × 24 × 500 × 1000000 ÷ 8

Hubble in certain circumstances can see narrow and far. If you express this as a cone, you can extrapolate a volume.

It might be very useful to have something that can search wide and maybe not as far; nearer Earth dangers perhaps. Express that as a wider cone and extrapolate volume.

We should thank the government for spending tax money efficiently.

You should blame the legacy aerospace companies whom purposely inflate contracts and take forever to do things for there being a lack of competition, not Musk.

Falcon launches to the ISS typically have an instantaneous launch window (roughly, when the plane of the ISS's orbit sweeps over the launch site). If they miss it, they try again about a day later.

Falcon (both Heavy and its little sibling Falcon 9) uses subcooled densified propellants which limit how long it can sit waiting for launch while fueled before the LOX warms and expands too much.

A short window means they only have to compute and verify and program one trajectory.

The NASA budget was $5M as a placeholder, but Noel Hinners cut it to zero to light a fire under the community, instead of a bogus pretend-its-still-happening number.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Quest_f...

but 500 megabits per second to me is 500mbps?

ie. my cablemodem is 100mbps which is 100 megabits per second?

and that would [make Roman] 5.4 Terrabytes aka 5.4TB per day

but the transmitter is not at full speed full power 24/7

so it is 1.5TB per day in documentation that I do not have handy but vaguely remember

to repeat the more amazing part is that is from a MILLION MILES away, wow

(JWST "only" does 23mbps, 23 megabits per second)

the illegal Iran War costs over $120 BILLION, has used over 1000 Tomahawks at $4 Million each (and 1250 patriot missiles)

a BILLION was stolen from nuclear missile maintenance fund for QatarForceOne

another BILLION was stolen for all the DC renovations so far that no-one asked for

billion diverted to his fake "peace board"

so there is money for war and drapes and gold statues but not science that benefits the world

hell he spends $2 MILLION EVERY WEEKEND for GOLF, first term and this term, half billion before he is gone

we could have had people on Mars for all that (not even a project I support but still would be worthy science)

Does it stop making sense when your calculations for the Roman telescope indicate slower speeds than your connection, which you say is 1/5th the speed?

Now, since the Roman telescope will be at an L2 point, signal acquisition will always be subject to the Earth's rotation. So there will be multiple ground stations involved across the globe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network

If the quoted rate by NASA of 1.5 terabytes per day is accurate, then it will not be downlinking 24/7, but in bursts. 500Mbps is also the max, where the actual range will be 250-500. We'll need to account for RFI and packet loss, etc.

Yes, Musk is a crappy character, but that's not a reason to make things up. This isn't Reddit.

The Artemis program was developed out of the Constellation program, which was initiated sometime around 2005 or 6.

Of course there have long been plans to go back to the moon because its a cool fun thing to do and whoever happens to be president would likely be well remembered for taking credit for it. That doesn't give it credibility as a useful endeavor.

Humans have intuition and curiosity, they can spot something quickly in the distance that looks peculiar, go to it and quickly inspect it.