NASA's biggest worry right now: What if something goes wrongwith the Webb telescope?

On Saturday, 10 February 2018 02:34:20 UTC+1, RichA wrote:
On Friday, 9 February 2018 19:32:52 UTC-5, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Fri, 9 Feb 2018 15:31:13 -0800 (PST), RichA
wrote:

On Friday, 9 February 2018 09:33:45 UTC-5, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 18:37:05 -0800 (PST), "Scott M. Kozel"
wrote:

On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 4:44:37 PM UTC-5, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 13:37:37 -0800 (PST), RichA
wrote:

1M miles from Earth. Think Musk's cheesy rockets will be able to ferry people out to its solar orbit point to fix it? No, forget it. Musk's rocket would likely disintegrate upon return to Earth because the re-entry from a "left orbit" attitude is much more difficult and vehicle-stressing than coming down FROM orbit.
So, for the foreseeable future, the Webb must work, or it's an orbiting hulk, a far worse predicament than was faced by Hubble.

It's an engineering tradeoff. Do you use a low orbit to allow
servicing, at the expense of a great deal of utility (as with HST), or
do you put it much higher, where it can do better science, but can't
be serviced?

Of course, there was never a need to service the HST. Entire
replacements could have been launched for less than the cost of the
servicing missions.

And if they used the shuttle to launch the replacement they could have
brought the old one back if they felt that was important.

Yeah, but the shuttle was a boondoggle from day one. Largely
unnecessary, and vastly more expensive than alternatives.

Who cared if it cost more? Nothing they have now (well, they really don't have anything, hence the Russian ferry service) is remotely as flexible.

We don't appear to have much need for the things the Shuttle was
capable of. It was designed to build the ISS, which is something else
we never really needed, and which sucked money out of the most
important things NASA does: monitoring the Earth, operating space
telescopes, and conducting robotic investigations of other bodies in
the Solar System.

Don't agree about the Shuttle, agree about ISS, it's a travesty.

If there wasn't a space station you'd have to invent one.