James Webb Telescope Launch: A Live Masterclass of Complexity and Risk Attitude

This week's episode is super special, with Ricardo talking about the launch of the James Webb Telescope, scheduled for December 24th.

He explains that the project to build this telescope is extremely complex (we haven't found an even bigger term to describe how complex the project is). And for a project of this size, the level of competence of the professionals involved doesn't matter. Even having the best team in the world, the project is so complicated that anything can happen.

The James Webb has a technology that has never been used, such as the five very thin protective layers of insulating material to allow the telescope to operate at 100 degrees Celsius on one side and at -235 degrees Celsius on the other side. Imagine over 300 degrees in less than 50 cm on five sheets so thin they look like hair.

The launch of this telescope will be part of our history. For 30 days from the moment it is launched from French Guiana, a series of 50 unfolding processes will begin that will last practically one month until it reaches its endpoint, about 1.5 million km from Earth. The Hubble Telescope has located about 550km from Earth to give you perspective, and the new telescope is 2,700 times farther away.

It is a very high-risk project, as it is extremely sensitive equipment with 344 points of failure. If one of them doesn't work, the entire project may not deliver the result, and 25 years of development and more than 10 billion dollars could be lost.

Watch the launch on the 24th at 7:20 AM ET, 9:20 AM Brasilia time, 12:20 PM WET at https://rvarg.as/webb

Listen to the podcast to learn more about this amazing project.

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Episode transcript

The transcript is generated automatically by Podscribe, Sonix, Otter and other electronic transcription services.

Hello, everyone; welcome to the Five Minute Podcast! Today, a very special podcast that is very close to my heart because it's a real case. On 24 December, based on the recording I'm doing today, it's confirmed that the Webb telescope will be launched from the French Guiana, go into what's called Lagrange Point. It's something like a million miles or one point five million kilometres away from the Earth is just this. It's far, and it's far, really, really far. It's much further than the Moon, and it's a place that no man has even got close to that. And one sentence I want to start. I'm not here to talk about the development of the potential web delays. This is not. I just want to talk about what will happen in the next 30 days because what we'll see is history and one of the sentences I saw in one of the videos, and I just loved it because it's a clear understanding of the complexity. One of the scientists said it does not matter how good you are, how competent you are. It's so complicated that anything can happen, just to give you some ideas for those who are not used to the web, the Webb Telescope is an infrared telescope that will be very far away because it's a way of getting out, says the best possible set of images of, I would say, early galaxies and more detailed information about exoplanets and this.

And one of the key things is that the temperature must be extremely cold on the optical mechanism, and also extremely hot on the other side, that will make all the engines and all; I would say, the getting of sun and energy. So it goes from I will read here from minus three hundred and ninety one Fahrenheit or minus two hundred and thirty-five Celsius, up to plus two hundred and twenty-nine Fahrenheit off or 100 degrees. We are talking about 300 degrees of difference in something like half a meter or something like two feet. This is just to give you an idea of five layers of extremely thin material, and this material will be launched completely folded like origami. This tennis court-sized telescope will fold in a five-point four-meter diameter inside the Ariane Rocket, and when it's released half an hour after its release, it will start the process, and the process is not simple at all. A hundred seventy-eight release mechanism 50 unfoldings and what is critically and this is something that I love giving you as an example, where it's not suitable, for example, for you to use an agile approach on that because it's not serviceable. It's not something that you release. And then, ok, it's not working you fix. There is no fix if you cannot communicate with the telescope or if something goes wrong, it's over, it's over.

It's a ten billion dollar and twenty-five years of work just lost. People spend their entire careers on that. I did some calculations here on my computer. There are three hundred and forty-four failure points. If you imagine that each of these failure points has a 99 percent chance of going right and a one percent chance of going wrong. If you multiply ninety-nine percent times ninety-nine three hundred and forty-four times, there is only three percent of chance that everything will work well. Of course, I'm using ninety-nine for you to have 97 percent confidence, every single point must work with ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent. It makes me freak out because it's so complex, and it's so risky. Imagine something that in the first half an hour you take, imagine that you take something a close, you know, address or anything that you have that is so fragile and put inside your washing machine and turn on the centrifuge. This is what will happen in the first 28 minutes. You'll have a rocket burning fuel like crazy, shaking, vibrating everything. So imagine how complex it is to do that. And during these twenty-nine days, and this is the scope of this episode, this origami will be unfolded up to the telescope. Start to be ready and fully deployed to, I would say to. We start testing; of course, it would take half a year for the telescope, start sending images, but these 30 days, these 29 days will be really a challenge and why I'm recording this and tell.

Don't miss this opportunity. If you work with projects, don't miss the chance to follow a little bit closer. Of course, I'm passionate about astronomy and astrophysics, but even if you are not as a learning opportunity, try to see Go to the Web Telescope Web page. Follow the release. Followed the first minutes. It will be absolutely a magnificent course in risk management and project management. And when you see that, remember a thousand two hundred people, 200 scientists that dedicate all their effort to that with this massive, massive threshold of risks. And finally, I met the program manager of the telescope, Greg Robinson, a couple of years ago at NASA. And he's brilliant, and I'm sure he's leading this in the best possible way. And I'm cheering here to everything go well and this to become a historical example for us to follow when we are doing very complex projects. If you think about something complex. Ok, then you can think about this telescope. So take a look at the videos that I'm sharing and pay attention to the twenty-fourth because it's a great chance that will make history on that. Ok? For those celebrating Christmas, I want to wish you Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

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James Webb Telescope Launch: A Live Masterclass of Complexity and Risk Attitude

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