Vocal Voices

It has arrived at the ESA's Kourou launch site in French Guiana for launch on the 18th of December. It has an optical mirror of about 6.5m versus 2.4m of the famous Hubble telescope - about three times the power. It is a technological and engineering marvel and I admire it greatly - on those terms, but what does it do for us here on Earth today? Nothing much.

We need to turn these brilliant minds to solving the problems we have created on Earth:, today. Not the twee Earthshot garbage promoted by the grinning egg, William, and the stick insect, Kate.

The more I look at the Royals, the Queen, Anne and Camilla excepted, the more I reckon the monarchy might not survive.

cromwell wrote:The more I look at the Royals, the Queen, Anne and Camilla excepted, the more I reckon the monarchy might not survive.

Seconded.

There is always the chance that something like the JWST will, by allowing us to see so much more of what happens in space, nudge us over the hump of that one amazing discovery that will unlock energy for the masses.

Or not.

But not at NASA prices and NASA timescales. For that you need someone like SpaceX who can decide to build a communications web around the world, design it, launch it and operate it, in under a decade. NASA, on current timelines, would take a century and burn half the US GDP.

I don't think we should stop exploring. It will, over time, have fantastic benefits with the scientific knowledge learned which will have benefits far beyond the fields in which the study is done.

I spoke to one of the physicists who worked at CERN before the latest upgrades that allowed the positive identification of the Higgs Boson. I asked if he was dismayed that after a career of work the final breakthrough came after he had left. His answer was salutary. He said that whilst it was a pity to have missed it, the current crop of scientists were working on the foundation of the work he and his counterparts had done to gain the levels of understanding necessary to do what they do today. So a large part of the find was his already.

This is how it goes with Science. We look in one place and find answers to something else in another place. Taking those scientists off the JWST might just take away a wonderful future for our progeny. Should we do that? It is an interesting question. Because, apart from the money, the work done by the team would probably not assist in other "real world" problems. Those are within our ability to fix. We just don't want to pay for it.