Well…any of you who have been here before know me to be a science geek who still watches every rocket launch that is televised and reads a lot about things happening in science…and tomorrow, something really cool is happening at 7:24 in the morning…the James Webb space telescope is going to be launched from French Guyana and I’m a little nervous about that….The Arianne V rocket that is going to launch it has a great reliability record so getting it to space probably won’t be the problem…but there are over 300 discrete actions that have to happen to get it ready for observing and if any one doesn’t go right, we will have a 12 billion dollar lump of coal in our stockings. Since the mirror and sun shield are too big to fit on even the biggest rockets, they had to be folded into a much smaller package…and then it has to unfold itself once in space and on the way to the L2 Lagrange point a million miles away…and they are using that point since it is the point where the Earth and the sun’s gravity balance out and it takes a lot less fuel to keep in place…but that takes it so far away that if it doesn’t go right, there is no way to service it…I do have faith that NASA can make it work…I am a little nervous….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well…any of you who have been here before know me to be a science geek who still watches every rocket launch that is televised and reads a lot about things happening in science…and tomorrow, something really cool is happening at 7:24 in the morning…the James Webb space telescope is going to be launched from French … Continue reading I’m a little nervous…<\/span>