Congress wants to cut JWST

On Jul 8, 6:27*pm, Alain Fournier wrote:
Fred J. McCall wrote :









*wrote:

On Jul 8, 6:12 am, Pat *wrote:

How exactly does knowing what exactly the universe looked like ten
thousand years after it first came into being, or a hundred years after
it first came into being, going to help us?

Understanding the basics of how the Universe works - dark matter, dark
energy, string theory - could lead to new technology, the way that
understanding the atom did.

Not bloody likely. *'How the Universe works' is not a local
phenomenon, nor one we can get to. *Atoms are everywhere.

We don't have enough energy, we don't have enough land.

And nothing coming out of a telescope will make more of either.

Maybe you were being sarcastic or maybe you haven't heard of Kepler,
Tycho Brahe, Newton and the Newtonian law of gravity. Not found by
looking in a microscope, the telescope was more useful.

Ditho for Henri Poincaré and relativity. Observations of the orbit of
Mercury were important for that.

For making energy, General Relativity from Einstein, specially the
E=mc^2 part (or if you prefere the complete formula,
E^2 = m^2c^4 + (pc)^2). Again, it is the observations on the orbit of
Mercury that were quite important in finding that.

As Quadibloc said it would be good to understand dark matter and dark
energy.

Alain Fournier

Our Fred just doesn't want to discover any nearby wandering/rogue
planets, or to better understand dark/clear matter.

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On Jul 8, 7:22*pm, Fred J. McCall wrote:

But since you can't see it (hence 'dark'), a telescope isn't going to
help you with that.

Observations and measurements made with telescopes are what led to the
discovery of dark matter and dark energy.

If the effects of things unseen could not be seen, we wouldn't even
know about the existence of gravity, electricity, or magnetism.

John Savard

On Jul 8, 6:37*am, Pat Flannery wrote:

I didn't know where "Sulaco" came from BTW, assuming that both it and
Nostromo were either Chinese or Japanese owned spacecraft, based on the
sound of their names:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostromo

I thought "Nostromo" came from some Italian opera.

John Savard

On 7/7/2011 10:11 AM, Rick Jones wrote:
Pat wrote:


I keep wondering if the fact that the JWST was to be launched on a
Ariane V is playing any part in it maybe getting axed?

Ah, but now that Elon Musk and SpaceX have announced Falcon Heavy,
and, ostensibly it has even more lifting capacity than Ariane V:

Yeah, put the JWST was designed to fold and fit specifically under the
Ariane V payload shroud:
http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/images/ariane4.jpg

Pat

On 7/8/2011 5:16 PM, Alain Fournier wrote:

I didn't know where "Sulaco" came from BTW, assuming that both it and
Nostromo were either Chinese or Japanese owned spacecraft, based on the
sound of their names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostromo


I don't know about Mandarin or any other Chinese dialect, but Sulaco
and Nostromo aren't Japanese.

Nostromo isn't just not a Japanese word like it isn't an English word.
To a Japanese Nostromo is an unpronounceable string of letters, like
wrzktouiis would be to someone English.

I just couldn't figure out where a name like that would come from; it
didn't sound English, European, or Russian, so that left only Asia or
India as a likely alternative.
I knew Conrad had written a book named Nostromo, but assumed it was the
name of some ship in the book, like the Pequod in Moby Dick.
Regarding the different ways the ideograms are read and pronounced in
China and Japan reminds me of a story a friend from Bombay told me; in
introducing English to India, the British did the country an inestimable
service and laid the groundwork for their own downfall at the same time;
most Indians could read and write Sanskrit no matter where in the
country they were, and the written words would have the same
meaning...but how they pronounced the words varied wildly over even
small distances - he stated that he could go a hundred miles from Bombay
and not be able to understand what anyone was saying, or be understood
himself.
But when English came along, pretty soon everyone in India could be
understood by everyone else when speaking that, the way the Middle Ages
used Latin as a universal language.
This allowed India to achieve a unity it had never had before, and was
step one towards driving out the British.

Pat

Quadibloc wrote :
On Jul 8, 6:37 am, Pat wrote:

I didn't know where "Sulaco" came from BTW, assuming that both it and
Nostromo were either Chinese or Japanese owned spacecraft, based on the
sound of their names:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostromo

I thought "Nostromo" came from some Italian opera.

Makes sense. It means Master in Italian.


Alain Fournier

Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain wrote:

Fred J. McCall wrote :
wrote:

On Jul 8, 6:12 am, Pat wrote:

How exactly does knowing what exactly the universe looked like ten
thousand years after it first came into being, or a hundred years after
it first came into being, going to help us?

Understanding the basics of how the Universe works - dark matter, dark
energy, string theory - could lead to new technology, the way that
understanding the atom did.


Not bloody likely. 'How the Universe works' is not a local
phenomenon, nor one we can get to. Atoms are everywhere.


We don't have enough energy, we don't have enough land.


And nothing coming out of a telescope will make more of either.

Maybe you were being sarcastic or maybe you haven't heard of Kepler,
Tycho Brahe, Newton and the Newtonian law of gravity. Not found by
looking in a microscope, the telescope was more useful.

Ditho for Henri Poincaré and relativity. Observations of the orbit of
Mercury were important for that.


And we don't need anything like something the size of JWST for any of
that.

Obviously Brahe, Kepler, Newton, Poincaré and Einstein didn't use
telescopes anything like JWST. What is your point?

For making energy, General Relativity from Einstein, specially the
E=mc^2 part (or if you prefere the complete formula,
E^2 = m^2c^4 + (pc)^2). Again, it is the observations on the orbit of
Mercury that were quite important in finding that.

No.

You are kind of right here. I mixed up a few things. Still, Einstein got
to that equation by building on to Henri Poincaré's relativity and Henri
Pincaré did use Mercury's orbital motion to develop his theory.

Great discoveries have been done in the past by looking into telescope.
But we are supposed to know that this will never happen again because
Fred J. McCall says so?


Alain Fournier

Pat Flannery wrote:
Alain Fournier wrote:

I didn't know where "Sulaco" came from BTW, assuming that both it and
Nostromo were either Chinese or Japanese owned spacecraft, based on the
sound of their names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostromo

Since Nostromo is the name is the freighter ship in the movie "Alien" I
do not expect anyone to name a spacecraft that actually flies that for a
very long time. Who wants a ship whose name invokes images of creatures
from AE Van Vogt's "Voyage of the Space Beagle" who breed wasp style as
parasites and then take ove the ship? May as well call your ship "Home
of the Space Vampires".

I don't know about Mandarin or any other Chinese dialect, but Sulaco
and Nostromo aren't Japanese.

Nostromo isn't just not a Japanese word like it isn't an English word.
To a Japanese Nostromo is an unpronounceable string of letters, like
wrzktouiis would be to someone English.

I just couldn't figure out where a name like that would come from; it
didn't sound English, European, or Russian, so that left only Asia or
India as a likely alternative.
I knew Conrad had written a book named Nostromo, but assumed it was the
name of some ship in the book, like the Pequod in Moby Dick.

It's the name of the central character of the novel. A person's name.
I figured it was intended to sound like it came from one of the Romance
languages but that got garbled across the generations. Then again is
was Joseph Conrad. He was not a native English speaker and that shows
in his writing. Conrad novels typically read better when they are
spoken like you're in a Rocket J Squirrel and Bullwinkel Moose
cartoon. Try it some time. ;^)

Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain wrote:


Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain wrote:

Fred J. McCall wrote :
wrote:

On Jul 8, 6:12 am, Pat wrote:

How exactly does knowing what exactly the universe looked like ten
thousand years after it first came into being, or a hundred years after
it first came into being, going to help us?

Understanding the basics of how the Universe works - dark matter, dark
energy, string theory - could lead to new technology, the way that
understanding the atom did.


Not bloody likely. 'How the Universe works' is not a local
phenomenon, nor one we can get to. Atoms are everywhere.


We don't have enough energy, we don't have enough land.


And nothing coming out of a telescope will make more of either.

Maybe you were being sarcastic or maybe you haven't heard of Kepler,
Tycho Brahe, Newton and the Newtonian law of gravity. Not found by
looking in a microscope, the telescope was more useful.

Ditho for Henri Poincaré and relativity. Observations of the orbit of
Mercury were important for that.


And we don't need anything like something the size of JWST for any of
that.

Obviously Brahe, Kepler, Newton, Poincaré and Einstein didn't use
telescopes anything like JWST. What is your point?


My point is that the justification offered for JWST is specious,
easily rebutted, and part of why the thing will be easy to cancel.

Note: That doesn't mean I'm against the telescope. I just think that
claims about how it will somehow 'save mankind' are stupid hyperbolic
grandstanding that accomplish the precise opposite of their intent.

I don't know who said that the telescope will save mankind. I agree with
you that such a statement would be stupid hyberbolic grandstanding.

For making energy, General Relativity from Einstein, specially the
E=mc^2 part (or if you prefere the complete formula,
E^2 = m^2c^4 + (pc)^2). Again, it is the observations on the orbit of
Mercury that were quite important in finding that.

No.

You are kind of right here. I mixed up a few things. Still, Einstein got
to that equation by building on to Henri Poincaré's relativity and Henri
Pincaré did use Mercury's orbital motion to develop his theory.


You're still mixing things up. He did no such thing. That was later
and Einstein did it as evidence post development.

Nope, read about Henri Poincaré's. He did take Mercury's orbit into
consideration when he developed his relativity. And Einstein did read
Henri Poincaré and obviously used his ideas to get to the above formula.

Great discoveries have been done in the past by looking into telescope.
But we are supposed to know that this will never happen again because
Fred J. McCall says so?


What 'great discoveries' and what was the cost benefit analysis of
them?

As stated above Newtonian gravity = G M1 M2/r^2, and E^2 = m^2c^4 +
(pc)^2) to name a few. There are others but those are biggies.


Alain Fournier

On Jul 10, 7:34*am, Alain Fournier wrote:
Fred J. McCall wrote :









Alain *wrote:

Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain * wrote:

Fred J. McCall wrote :
* *wrote:

On Jul 8, 6:12 am, Pat * *wrote:

How exactly does knowing what exactly the universe looked like ten
thousand years after it first came into being, or a hundred years after
it first came into being, going to help us?

Understanding the basics of how the Universe works - dark matter, dark
energy, string theory - could lead to new technology, the way that
understanding the atom did.

Not bloody likely. *'How the Universe works' is not a local
phenomenon, nor one we can get to. *Atoms are everywhere.

We don't have enough energy, we don't have enough land.

And nothing coming out of a telescope will make more of either.

Maybe you were being sarcastic or maybe you haven't heard of Kepler,
Tycho Brahe, Newton and the Newtonian law of gravity. Not found by
looking in a microscope, the telescope was more useful.

Ditho for Henri Poincar and relativity. Observations of the orbit of
Mercury were important for that.

And we don't need anything like something the size of JWST for any of
that.

Obviously Brahe, Kepler, Newton, Poincar and Einstein didn't use
telescopes anything like JWST. What is your point?

My point is that the justification offered for JWST is specious,
easily rebutted, and part of why the thing will be easy to cancel.

Note: *That doesn't mean I'm against the telescope. *I just think that
claims about how it will somehow 'save mankind' are stupid hyperbolic
grandstanding that accomplish the precise opposite of their intent.

I don't know who said that the telescope will save mankind. I agree with
you that such a statement would be stupid hyberbolic grandstanding.

For making energy, General Relativity from Einstein, specially the
E=mc^2 part (or if you prefere the complete formula,
E^2 = m^2c^4 + (pc)^2). Again, it is the observations on the orbit of
Mercury that were quite important in finding that.

No.

You are kind of right here. I mixed up a few things. Still, Einstein got
to that equation by building on to Henri Poincar 's relativity and Henri
Pincar did use Mercury's orbital motion to develop his theory.

You're still mixing things up. *He did no such thing. *That was later
and Einstein did it as evidence post development.

Nope, read about Henri Poincar 's. He did take Mercury's orbit into
consideration when he developed his relativity. And Einstein did read
Henri Poincar and obviously used his ideas to get to the above formula.

Great discoveries have been done in the past by looking into telescope..
But we are supposed to know that this will never happen again because
Fred J. McCall says so?

What 'great discoveries' and what was the cost benefit analysis of
them?

As stated above Newtonian gravity = G M1 M2/r^2, and E^2 = m^2c^4 +
(pc)^2) to name a few. There are others but those are biggies.

Alain Fournier

According to Fred (our resident Yemenite Jew that's pretending to be
anything but), all science books having anything whatsoever to do with
astronomy or off-world matters should be burned. According to Fred,
our public resources should only be invested in perpetrating and
fighting wars, as well as profiting from those wars, global inflation,
pollution and making energy as spendy as possible so that only the
rich and powerful can subsequently afford to have any the nifty
products, services and quality of life via energy. If our Fred could
take away fire wood or scraps of coal from the poor or those
disenfranchised, he'd gladly do that as well.

http://www.wanttoknow.info/
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