[mrtksn]

They didn’t pick that either, it was supposed to launch earlier but a clamp broke down when attaching the telescope to the rocket sending vibrations all over it and and as a result they had to inspect for damages, further delaying the launch. Then the weather wasn’t good and delayed once more.

[rrss]

They did though. It was delayed, they chose to delay it from October to December 18 to December 22 to Christmas instead of like the first week of January or whatever.

It’s not like this thing is launching to Mars and they’d have to wait a couple years if they miss this week - it could launch on 210 days of each year.

https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/faqs/faq.html#launchWind...

I don’t mind at all, I just think it’s a bit funny.

[sailingparrot]

So they should have delayed to next year after the clamp issue? Hundreds of people that were on site from Europe and the US, now go back home. You move the JWST back in a safe storage place, moving it is always risky, as the clamp issue showed.

You now plan a new date in January, knowing Omicron is spreading and countries are starting to close their borders once again, and knowing Kourou had to be closed for like 6 months already once because of COVID, preventing any launch.

Do you want to take the risk of your 11B$ payload maybe getting stuck in a hangar for 6 months? Any issue with the ventilation, de-humidifiers or hundreds of other things could potentially damage it.

Then you bring everyone back on site, and now you have to reinspect everything, rocket and payload and restart the whole process, move JWST back again into the assembly tower, again a risky manoeuver, and as always, many things including weather can make the launch window slides for days. Being stuck in Kourou for weeks is not as fun as it may seems.

So no, it makes 0 sense to move the date around for something non-critical, and I'm pretty sure everyone already on site would rather just get it done now and celebrate christmas with their family a few days late, than add unnecessary stress on JWST and themselves for potentially months.

[rrss]

lol

thanks for the treatise on the consequences of a few more days delay, but all I’ve said is that I find it amusing that the launch has ended up on Christmas day. They could have conceivably tried to avoid the holidays, but obviously they are not, and this is fine.

[myself248]

what's funny about it? You think there's anyone working on this project who isn't super excited to see it go up on Christmas?

No better gift than a successful launch. The folks working on preparations overnight surely see themselves as Santa's Elves in some fashion.

[gfodor]

Exactly - you highlight the problem. Launching on Christmas introduces unique situational entropy. They should do it later.