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Top 5 Awesome Things About the Webb Telescope

2011-02-02 · list · Hank · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature · mode: Personal essay · tags: community lore

Hank argues that the world gets better both by decreasing suck and by increasing awesome, so space spending is worthwhile, and lists five reasons the James Webb Space Telescope is awesome though it will not cure malaria.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting: Hank said in his last video he must make a James Webb Space Telescope video, and commenters asked for it

  • ★ In his last video Hank said he needed to make a video about the James Webb Space Telescope, commenters asked for it, so today he does. — 00:00:00

00:00:11 — Two ways to make the world better: decrease the suck and increase the awesome; answer to critics of NASA spending; the soccer analogy

  • ★★★ Hank believes there are two ways to make the world a better place, decreasing the suck and increasing the awesome: not mutually exclusive, but not the same. — 00:00:16 · world suck

    “You can decrease the suck, and you can increase the awesome.”

  • ★★ Decreasing suck is extremely important, probably in the end more important than increasing awesome, Hank says. (hedged) — 00:00:30 · world suck

  • ★★★ To people who say NASA's money could be better spent on services for humanity, Hank answers that he does not want a world that only focuses on suck and never on awesome. — 00:00:35
  • ★★ In a suck-only world, both soccer teams would guard their own goals all game; we must prevent bad things but also make good things happen. — 00:00:48
  • ★★ That is why Hank loves the James Webb Space Telescope, which he finds freaking awesome. — 00:01:05

00:01:21 — Top five: size, folding 'transformer', one million miles away at L2 and unfixable, seeing planets, seeing 13.4 billion years into the past

  • ★★ The telescope is huge: its total mirror ('meter') size is seven and a half times the Hubble's, and its heat shield is the size of a tennis court. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ The telescope is a "freaking transformer": too big to fit in a rocket whole, it is folded up and unfolds when it arrives. — 00:01:35
  • ★ Hank jokes that the telescope unfolds in 'like twelve thousand' different ways that could go wrong, which freaks him out. (playful) — 00:01:46
  • ★ No one will see it unfold, but NASA's computer animators provided the images Hank shows. — 00:02:02
  • ★★ The telescope will operate one million miles from Earth, about four times as far as the Moon, at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point two. — 00:02:07
  • ★★★ Unlike the Hubble, which was repaired many times, the telescope cannot be fixed if it screws up: one chance, or it is a six-billion-dollar piece of space junk. — 00:02:23
  • ★ Hank jokes that 'we went to fix the Hubble like ten thousand different times'. (playful) — 00:02:28
  • ★★ The telescope will see individual planets orbiting stars in our galaxy (from 25 light years away it could see Earth), determine their chemical composition, and watch solar systems form. — 00:02:44
  • ★★★ It can see 13.4 billion years into the past, impressive since the universe is 13.7 billion years old: we will see the first galaxies and stars form. — 00:03:05

00:03:26 — None of it is necessary, but it is awesome: the dawn of everything we know; sign-off

  • ★★★ None of this is necessary to life on Earth or will cure malaria or install democracy in Egypt, but it is awesome in the truest sense: increasing awesome Hank can get behind. — 00:03:26 · malaria

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Hank writes that the telescope will peer through clouds of dust into stellar nurseries, give the most detailed views of our universe ever, and offer insights into how solar systems, galaxies, stars and the Universe itself formed. — video description

Threads in this video

  • first on record · Is space exploration worth the cost? — Hank answers critics who say NASA's money should go to services for humanity: the world needs increasing awesome as well as decreasing suck, so the telescope is worth it. (00:00:38)

Mentioned

Central: James Webb Space Telescope · world suck

Also: Egypt · exoplanet · Hubble Space Telescope · Lagrange point · malaria · NASA · SportsCenter · Transformers

Also centred on James Webb Space Telescope: Can I be Space President? · It's HANKO DE MAYO!!!!! · 29 Days of Astronomical Terror · Thoughts From the Universe - Woah

Replies to

Later videos replying to this one

Part of an exchange of 6 videos, 2011-01-24 – 2011-02-04.