[yk]

I hope it's just badly thought through marketing. There is currently a AWS spot during nfl games, that shows a spectacular catch and then proclaims that the catch probability is only 3.6% or something. You are meant to be somehow impressed by the unlikelihood I believe, but that their model thought the catch is unlikely and the guy caught it implies a rejection of their model with p=3.6% < 5%.

The JWST marketing seems to work under a similar premise, they proudly proclaim that they couldn't mitigate hundreds of single points of failure, and you're supposed the be impressed by how difficult their task is. Hopefully the engineering did a reasonable job and the marketing is just playing up the wrong thing.

[jdiez17]

I don't think you are supposed to be impressed by the number of things that could go wrong. At least, that's not how I see it. They talk about the deployment phase with all these complex things that have to go exactly right as "the 30 days of terror." And that's a pretty accurate description of what many people with a stake in the JWST will be feeling. Not awe, but terror. This is a big part of space missions at the bleeding edge of science and technology, and I think it's great that many people are hearing about it!