Talk about penny wise, pound foolish. We spent $10B putting the JWST in space and now we're going to underutilize it to save .4% of that? Dumb.
stogot · 2h ago
Why are the budgets for operating these so expensive? The numbers in the article are staggering
cosmotic · 1h ago
We have multiple single humans with net worths over a thousand times their budget. The only thing that's staggering is what's getting priority over these monumental scientific achievements.
minebreaker · 58m ago
This comment makes me wonder, why don't those rich people make space telescopes just for fun? That's definitely what I would do. Besides, it must be a way funnier than buying Twitter.
AngryData · 40m ago
Anyone who has billions of dollars to spend is obviously treating their wealth like some sort of highscore and don't give a shit about anybody or anything else, otherwise they would have been spending their money once they were already in the 100 million dollar level because they are already so far beyond any needs or material desires for them or their next 6 generations of family.
vjvjvjvjghv · 19m ago
I often wonder about this too. Fund nuclear fusion to a level that it can succeed. Or fund newspapers that do truly independent journalism. It seems a lot of these things would be perfectly in reach for quite a few billionaires. Musk could probably pay for a Mars mission out of his own pocket.
tiahura · 1h ago
Monumental? Are they really anything other than cool wallpaper generators? Couldn’t the geniuses debating whether the universe is expanding at 50 or 51 mph be put to work doing something a little more useful?
Larrikin · 36m ago
Like optimizing and making sure people see ads?
This comment has to be sarcasm
hliyan · 1h ago
This is one of the most harmful attitudes to come out of otherwise smart people in Silicon Valley. Dismissing any effort that does not bear immediate, tangible fruit, failing to follow a chain of causality to long term benefits and discounting the intellect of people working on such efforts.
For example, a similar attitude would have dismissed J.J. Thompson's work on cathode rays and electrons in the late 1800's, and would have seen his intellect directed to steam engines and steel work. That would have seen a delay in the very technology ecosystem that enabled the parent to post their comment.
tiahura · 55m ago
Interesting doesn’t necessarily mean important. There are an infinite number of potential scientific endeavors, I don’t think it’s unseemly to suggest that a field’s likeliness to improve humanity’s quality of life should be a factor in determining funding.
vjvjvjvjghv · 16m ago
I think any advances in basic science is worthwhile. You can’t predict when or how it will become useful. Quantum mechanics or relativity were probably pretty useless for a few decades after their discovery.
Dx5IQ · 49m ago
Which is ironic given where this is posted. Do all startups yield a net result? Either to the VCs or the humanity?
mastermage · 2h ago
Because these are some of the most complicated and technically advanced pieces of technology that we have ever created.
To communicate with them we have a worldwide array of massive satellite dishes (Deep Space Network) which needs to be operated part of the cost is operating that. Then there is the scientist using the data. These are some of the greatest scientists in the world they are getting paid well enough. Then there is the engineers which make sure the spacecraft operates correctly which are expensive good engineers are expensive.and obviously all the other costs associated with it like facility, technology electricity etc.
micah94 · 2h ago
I think like they said, it's people. The JWST has "17 different modes" (yeah, I wish I knew what that meant exactly), but it sounds complicated. For all our tech, the bottom line is it requires humans to calibrate this thing and keep it that way (or one of 17 different ways) depending on the science that needs done.
magicalhippo · 1h ago
> The JWST has "17 different modes" (yeah, I wish I knew what that meant exactly)
It's explained in the user documentation[1]. You did read the documentation right?
For example[2]:
JWST Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) has 5 observing modes: imaging, coronagraphy, grism wide field slitless spectroscopy, time-series imaging, and grism time series.
This comment has to be sarcasm
For example, a similar attitude would have dismissed J.J. Thompson's work on cathode rays and electrons in the late 1800's, and would have seen his intellect directed to steam engines and steel work. That would have seen a delay in the very technology ecosystem that enabled the parent to post their comment.
To communicate with them we have a worldwide array of massive satellite dishes (Deep Space Network) which needs to be operated part of the cost is operating that. Then there is the scientist using the data. These are some of the greatest scientists in the world they are getting paid well enough. Then there is the engineers which make sure the spacecraft operates correctly which are expensive good engineers are expensive.and obviously all the other costs associated with it like facility, technology electricity etc.
It's explained in the user documentation[1]. You did read the documentation right?
For example[2]:
JWST Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) has 5 observing modes: imaging, coronagraphy, grism wide field slitless spectroscopy, time-series imaging, and grism time series.
With further details for each in subsections.
[1]: https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/
[2]: https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-near-infrared-camera/nircam...