Spot the Space Station Tonight!

[sojourner truth]

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I was busy and missed it last night.

It showed up for a few seconds tonight, but not very bright because of its orbital trajectory. I saw something else though. A similar object moving about 5 times faster than the ISS and heading from west to east at a high rate of speed. This was about a minute before the ISS was due to make its showing. Not sure what I was seeing, but it was a straight, fast trajectory.

[sojourner truth]

I see they finally launched the James Webb space telescope. It is about 3 decades overdue and who knows how many billions of dollars overbudget. Originally supposed to launch in 1998 or something like that, and the retrogrades at NASA figured out how to milk sympathy from scientists and money from the government.

At any rate, the thing orbits in an L2 orbit, which is about a billion miles from earth, and if something goes wrong with its deployment, all is lost. What a huge gamble. Too far away to get to and fix if as much as one thing goes wrong.

[sickofpc]

I think the cost was ten billion....supposed to take six months to have everything operating on the station before it is functional. ... What they are saying it will do is unreal...and...scary.

[sojourner truth]

If, and it would seem that is a big if, it does what it is designed to do, it will be earth shattering. But, from my view, it is a wonder of engineering. My take on engineers is that if it isn't broken, it doesn't have enough moving parts, and that would seem to spell pout this miracle of science and engineering. It is so complex, and all, and I mean each and every part, must function as designed or it will be a lot of time and money flushed down a hole. Now, does "error free" and "works perfectly" sound like anything that NASA has ever done? Not to me.

But the way I work is that I always think the worst will happen and everything usually works out fine. We shall see.

[Ludwig]

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I think the cost was ten billion....supposed to take six months to have everything operating on the station before it is functional. ... What they are saying it will do is unreal...and...scary.

They're saying that it will study every phase in the history of our Universe, from the first luminous glows following the "Big Bang," to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System. I believe that there is a huge delta between what they say and what they will actually accomplish, even if all goes as planned.
By the time it's operational, it will have cost NASA more than $9 billion in our money. What will we get for it? Perhaps some happy scientists.
Besides a lot of scientific papers and back-scratching between the scientists, we have nothing to show for the Hubble telescope and I don't expect we'll see much from the Webb either. What the heck, what do scientists care. They're not footing the bill.

[Shotgun Jeremy]

The Hubble has made over 1.3 million observations since being launched in 1990. During that time, some of it's major accomplishments have been:
-pinning down the age of the universe
-discovered two moons of pluto
-helped determine the rate at which the universe is expanding
-discovered that nearly every major galaxy is anchored by a black hole
-created a 3-d image of black matter
-provided conclusive evidence of supermassive black holes
-took the famous photo of the "Eagle Nebula" which was later named "Pillars of Creation"
-showed that the dwarf planet "Eris" was bigger than Pluto
-showed never before seen evidence of two asteroids colliding
-revealed distant galaxies with a redshift greater than 8, showing the universe as it was when it was less than 1/10 its current age
-showed galaxies from when the universe was less than 4% of its current age, and an object from when the universe was less than 3% of its current age.
-discovered for the first time the true color of a planet orbiting another star and discovered water vapor erupting off the surface of Jupiter's moon, Europa
-became the first telescope to see an asteroid disintegrating
-revealed the most detailed weather map of an exoplanet, ever


That's all been done by a telescope launched 30 years ago. With how much technology has advanced since then, we should have some pretty exciting times ahead of us with this new telescope.

[Ludwig]

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The Hubble has made over 1.3 million observations since being launched in 1990. During that time, some of its major accomplishments ... That's all been done by a telescope launched 30 years ago. With how much technology has advanced since then, we should have some pretty exciting times ahead of us with this new telescope.

Discoveries that bring thrills down the legs of astrophysicists but have done nothing to improve or advance humankind or the Earth on which we live.

[sojourner truth]

Well, when one considers that the search for answers will never give us but a fraction of 1% of the knowledge we seek, it seems more like a remanent employment scam for scientists and researchers than anything. I would not be so concerned had the James Webb been on time and on budget, but the greed of the assembly teams and researchers, plus the endless redundancy in engineering and staff positions makes one very suspect of the reasons so much emphasis is placed on a search for "answers" when we all know that every time an answer is found they always have 20 more questions. Seems like a great scheme to me.

[Shotgun Jeremy]

If we just kept our heads in the dirt because there's too many questions that are asked, we wouldn't have half the technology or knowledge we have now. We have all sorts of technology by-product that has come from programs such as this. We have technologies that are too expensive to perfect for an average company, but we're able to perfect with the large funding from programs like these. We can spend all day debating if we really need some of these things, but if you really want to get down to it, all we really need is a cave, stick and fire. Just let nature take its course and let everyone fend for themselves. Luckily, we do have inquiring minds that have brought us the modern advances we have now, and part of that inquiry is aimed at the cosmos.

Here's another fun fact - .48% of our entire US government spending goes to NASA.

I'd say there's far better things to complain about with government spending than that less than one half percent.

[Ludwig]

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If we just kept our heads in the dirt because there's too many questions that are asked, we wouldn't have half the technology or knowledge we have now. We have all sorts of technology by-product that has come from programs such as this. ...

The world would be better off without some of those technologies. It seems that morality and ethics are not considerations when the technologies are produced.

Luckily, we do have inquiring minds that have brought us the modern advances we have now,

Luckily indeed as many of those "modern advances" come from Lucifer (the origin of luck)

and part of that inquiry is aimed at the cosmos.

Yes, fools rush in where angels fear to tread. From the beginning, humankind, prompted by the devil, has wanted to become like God. Ergo, our exploration of the cosmos.