On Christmas Eve this year, NASA will launch the James Webb space telescope. I heard one of the interviewees say, "...we do not currently have the technology to make repairs on this telescope..." I will spend a good deal of time this week, as I do every week convincing clients to NOT deploy technology that cannot be supported. I simultaneously feel that launching critical, unrepairable technology into space is a brave, confident, and hopeful act and a terrible, stupid waste. Reading through comments made by scientists who have worked on the telescope and who will depend on it for their research, I am not alone.
A curated collection of things that tickle my funny bone