I still don't have faith in the absurd origami sun shield they've built. I think there is a very real chance it gets to its largange point and then runs into a problem deploying. They will spend months trying to fix it and finally give up around this time next year with all of that time and money pissed away.
At this stage I think it would have been faster, cheaper and lower risk to have either developed a launcher that could have fit it inside a fairing with a more conventional and less compact shield......Or would have been acceptable to take the performance hit to either stick this thing in Earth orbit so it could be serviced.....Or have given it a less effective but much safer and more conventional chassis so it could have gone to L2 without the massive risk of failure.
EDIT: I know that those alternatives would yield suboptimal results but you have to balance capability and cost with risk. JWST is 20 years in the making and very very expensive. This thing will only have an operational life of 10 years even if everything goes to plan. So under the best case it wont have the staying power and upgradability of Hubble unless someone figures out a cost effective way to get astronauts to L2 and back.
At this stage I think it would have been faster, cheaper and lower risk to have either developed a launcher that could have fit it inside a fairing with a more conventional and less compact shield......Or would have been acceptable to take the performance hit to either stick this thing in Earth orbit so it could be serviced.....Or have given it a less effective but much safer and more conventional chassis so it could have gone to L2 without the massive risk of failure.
EDIT: I know that those alternatives would yield suboptimal results but you have to balance capability and cost with risk. JWST is 20 years in the making and very very expensive. This thing will only have an operational life of 10 years even if everything goes to plan. So under the best case it wont have the staying power and upgradability of Hubble unless someone figures out a cost effective way to get astronauts to L2 and back.