I've found that there's a weird internal psychology I have with any news relating to Webb. I'm just as excited and hopeful as everyone else. But somehow the whole story underscores the perils of singular hope. It also seems to underscore the inherent issues with massive, carefully planned, "vertically" scaled science projects a la 20th century NASA. I've carved out a little nook in my psyche to cope with the outcome that something goes wrong during the Webb's incredibly complicated launch process and all those years of effort come to nothing.
It's also made me wonder if there's a way for humanity to pivot to more "horizontally" scaled science. I'm imagining a kind of science conducted by aggregating the data collected by many cheap, easily produced instruments instead of a few incredibly fragile, extremely difficult to build contraptions. I have an intuition that we'll increasingly run up against practical limitations in undertaking ever more complex projects of this kind in the coming years.
It's also made me wonder if there's a way for humanity to pivot to more "horizontally" scaled science. I'm imagining a kind of science conducted by aggregating the data collected by many cheap, easily produced instruments instead of a few incredibly fragile, extremely difficult to build contraptions. I have an intuition that we'll increasingly run up against practical limitations in undertaking ever more complex projects of this kind in the coming years.