Comments by "H. de Jong" (@h.dejong2531) on "Mission Update: James Webb Has Reached Its Final Destination!" video.

  1. 0:23 no, there weren't 344 ways in which orbital insertion could have failed, there were 344 mechanical devices on the spacecraft that were single points of failure. Nothing to do with orbital insertion. 2:12 no, the Sun, Earth and Moon are kept behind the sunshield because their heat would interfere with observations. 4:09 the current estimate is that JWST has enough fuel for 20 years of operations.
    8
  2. Because L2 is the only one where you can use one sunshield to cover the Sun, Earth and the Moon. And the distance to L4/L5 is a lot bigger, which means a lower data transmission speed.
    4
  3. Hubble had the advantage that it could be serviced. This meant they could replace defective parts. Especially mechanical parts like reaction wheels will wear out over time. Hubble was in Earth's magnetic field, so it didn't need fuel to desaturate the reaction wheels, fuel is the limiting factor for JWST.
    3
  4. in about 5 months.
    2
  5. Nobody's claiming 'we lost the technology to enter outer space'. We've successfully launched more than 200 missions out of Earth orbit so far.
    2
  6. 1. They have to adjust each mirror to within a fraction of the wavelength of the light. 2. it takes a long time to cool the mirrors and instruments to operating temperature. They have to make sure that when the telescope cools off, gases don't condensate on the mirrors. This alone adds more than a month to the cooldown time.
    2
  7. it would only show a single bright dot.
    1
  8. waiting for the mirrors and instruments to cool down.
    1
  9. Yes, but that chance is very small. Space is empty.
    1
  10.  @Mysticsword  Yes. On average, JWST will encounter only micrograms of dust per year. We haven't found all of the asteroids around Earth yet, so an impact with an object we don't know about is possible.
    1
  11. JWST has been built with more redundancy than Hubble, to make sure it doesn't break down.
    1
  12. Light going in different directions generally doesn't influence each other.
    1
  13. To do that, you'd need to invent faster-than-light travel first. Also, if JWST were to look at Earth, it would see an opaque atmosphere. The reason JWST has to be in space is that the atmosphere blocks the wavelengths we're interested in.
    1
  14. yes, but it would show just a single dot. Hubble's resolution isn't high enough to see more.
    1
  15. Around June of this year.
    1
  16. For JWST's planned observations, it doesn't matter. There are only a few satellites that have to be out of the ecliptic plane, to observer the Sun's poles for instance.
    1