Posted on 03/13/2021 1:20:16 PM PST by BenLurkin
The massive space telescope, featuring a 21 foot mirror, and a tennis court-sized protective cage, is far too large to stick inside a plane.
Instead, NASA will have to ship the massive mirror right through the Panama Canal for its eventual launch in French Guiana — and NASA is worried that the journey could attract robbers.
The shipping time and location will be hush-hush to ward off any extremely ambitious thieves. All we know is that it will sail off in late summer.
It’s an especially harrowing sea passage for a project that has been going on for over two decades. NASA has poured almost $10 billion into the project over that time period.
Surprisingly, it wouldn’t be the first heist of its kind. In 1984, a steel structure for the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope was kidnapped by its cargo vessel’s commercial captain, ,,,
(Excerpt) Read more at futurism.com ...
What, we can’t stick a couple platoons of Special Forces troops on the ship? Sheesh.
Don’t we have a Navy or Coast Guard ship that can guard it?
Is that a telescope in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?
Webb, the telescope that ate astronomy.
10 billion for one telescope? It better work.
Sure, but the distance from Cape Canaveral to French Guiana is only 1600 miles in latitude.
If it were that important, why not launch from, say, Hawaii's big island, only 1,000 miles north in latitude from French Guiana?
Not saying French Guiana isn't a good idea, but if there are unnecessary risks, why take them?
“Uh, don’t we still have a navy?”
They are all having a sulk over some slight and will not talk to each other?
My thoughts too.
“It will, now that they’ve told the whole world about it.”
What you said.
I hope all of these questions have been considered by NASA. If not we definitely have a major problem of competence which is another story in and of itself.
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NASA has long been a hot bed of major competence
Uh, don’t we still have a navy?
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They are busy with social justice issues and transsexual operations. They will get right on in as soon as the current bull dyke wars end.
They couldn’t fence it. I’d start by looking in the backyards of serious amateur astronomers. Maybe a bunch of them formed an outlaw gang to steal it. Astronomers gone wild.
Yep, those were my first questions, too. Wouldn’t you provide a serious military escort for a $10 billion telescope?
It is pathetic the “journalist” didn’t look into this.
Asking for a friend.
See post #8 - larger payload from equatorial launch sites
If it were that important, why not launch from, say, Hawaii's big island, only 1,000 miles north in latitude from French Guiana?
The European Space Agency launch facility Guiana Space Centre is at 5° 13' 53" N, whereas the southernmost point of the Hawaiian Island chain is at 18° 58' 3" N, plus just think of the shipping time from anywhere in the Gulf of Mexico to Hawaii.
Impractical.
Too small, the cage around the JWT is far larger than the Guppy
You don’t fence it you hold it for ransom.
What the heck are the U.S. Navy and Coastguard for if not to protect American property and interests?
Mrs Pirate to Mr Pirate, after he hangs the mirror on the wall in their house...
“Honey, I think this mirror makes my butt look big.”
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