The thrust of curiosity that leads men to try to go where no one has gone before. (The Space thread)

[Crazed_Insanity]

SpaceX Starship has won sole source contract for moon lander... beating out Amazon’s blue origin and the usual US defense contractors...

NASA being chronically underfunded, just can’t afford to fund multiple programs like the crew capsule... considering SpaceX’s cheaper crew capsule has already flown astronauts to the ISS twice and the more expensive Boeing version is still retrying to dock with the ISS unmanned, I guess if you can only afford to put all your eggs in one basket, SpaceX is probably one of the safest baskets out there right now!

Congrats Elon!

One thing that’s worrying for me is that I’m working on the return to the moon part of the SLS program now... if starship is operational, NASA really doesn’t need Boeing’s stupid expensive and aging SLS rocket anymore. Scary. May need to switch program soon...

[sandydandy]

James Webb Space Telescope to launch tomorrow.

Launching tomorrow from Europe, hopefully televised. The Webb telescope is supposed to replace Hubble, and will generate even deeper deep field pictures. I’m excited!

[Rare White Ape]

Oh yeah this is a big deal. I’ve been looking forward to JWST coming online for years now. It’ll be a fantastic Christmas present

*it’s launching from French Guiana, which is a small country on the northern border of Brazil.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Need to wait like 6months after launch to calibrate and stuff… so sure is a Xmas present that’s very difficult to unwrap!

Still better late than never. I’m sure the new images will be awesome!

[sandydandy]

Better link.

The one above was from WSJ where you have to have a subscription in order to read the article.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Mo better link: https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/25/...ission-success

Anyway, glad to know it’s now up there in one piece!!! Merry Xmas NASA!

[Leon]

Wooohoooo!!!

[FaultyMario]

With all the things that could go wrong during deployment, you get a sense of "no way they planned this thing for 10 years of operations", that's probably the lower limit.

Here's to hoping everything goes as it should.

[Dicknose]

*it’s launching from French Guiana, which is a small country on the northern border of Brazil.

While politically its Europe (its part of France), its definitely not geographically!
Also - space launches from there are a major part of the economy. Its a good location - near equator on an east coast.

[FaultyMario]

All major elements of the JWST have been successfully deployed.