# Couldn't the Webb telescope get better photos of Jupiter? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 15, 2022, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-the-webb-telescope-get-better-photos-of-jupiter/968010 "2022-07-15T13:24:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 34
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2022, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-the-webb-telescope-get-better-photos-of-jupiter/968010/34 "2022-07-17T16:33:23Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Only because it wasn’t built. We know the general expertise is there, because one of them _was_ built. It’s virtually axiomatic that tooling, setup, and other one-time costs dominate when manufacturing a singleton. Building a second is almost free, which is one reason why NASA almost always builds spares (which are useful, but not so useful that they’d warrant doubling the price). So… build a dozen spares instead. Just because you say it is “virtually axiomatic that tooling, setup, and other one-time costs dominate” doesn’t make it so. I don’t know what experience—if any—you have on building up, testing, and processing large spacecraft but there is an enormous amount of highly skilled ‘touch labor’ that goes into the process. I have a friend and former coworker who worked on JWST and who spent months at a time working EWW—averaging 60+ hours a week—just to try to maintain schedule, and they were perennially understaffed because the people who were skilled and temperamentally suited to this kind of work are always in short supply. The notion that the building up a “second is almost free” is so absurd as to taken as satire. The only thing that is really reduced for subsequent units is the non-recurring engineering (NRE), and perhaps a reduction on speciality components that can be built serially, but there is not going to be sufficient number of units to get any kind of volume discount, and even “tooling and setup” aren’t really saved because in order to build up units in a timely fashion there would need to be parallel build lines. These aren’t CubeSats that you can build up in a few weeks; just installing and testing the optical sensors and their power, adjustment, and thermal management system is the work of many months of dedicated labor that is not amenable to the tolerances of a production line process, and there are inevitably engineering changes and rework during any build that make each unit somewhat unique. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > And hell, the JWST was _supposed_ to be part of NASA’s “faster, better, cheaper” strategy! It was supposed to be a 9-figure project, not an 11-figure project. It’s just that they made the wrong cost decision at every turn (though possibly the right decision when it comes to preserving funding). This is just absolutely and objectively not true. “Faster, Better, Cheaper” was a mantra from former NASA Director Dan Goldin associated with the Discovery Program within the Planetary Missions Program Offices managed out of Marshall Flight Center. The JWST is part of the Great Observatories Program out of Goddard Space Flight Center in partnership with the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency;’ it always intended as a flagship-class program that even in the conceptual stage had a billion dollar price tag that grew to US$6.5B at CDR to achieve the desired capability. Much of the the post-CDR cost growth had to do with funding delays and budget limitations that increased total cost and was outside of NASA purview to control. I invite you to detail how NASA “made the wrong cost decision at every turn” with regard to the program, because while their are definitely criticisms to be made about the management of any large scale program, I’m curious whether you know enough about this program to even make such an assessment. Stranger --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-the-webb-telescope-get-better-photos-of-jupiter/968010)._