<p>The James Webb Satellite seems to be a highly successful project and it looks like humanity will get useful observations from it for many decades to come. But the question is... why not make 3 more copies of JWST and launch them into orbit so that we could get new data 4x faster? Or even 9 copies to get data 10x faster?</p>
<p>Since all the engineering has already been done and the satellite has been tested in practice, surely this would be much cheaper and faster than designing a new satellite from scratch? And you'll get a bit of savings from economies of scale, as you'll make several copies of the same part.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-20T18:22:48.257Z
'Economies of scale' really don't kick in for complex things at the 1-10 level. Sure, the next one won't take 20 years, but each one will basically be a one-off repeated.
Jon Custer
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-20T19:32:25.367Z
This is a completely different question to the claimed duplicate, which is asking about interferometric combination of multiple telescopes.
ProfRob
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-20T21:11:15.457Z
@JonCuster they kind of do? At the very least you no longer have to pay the engineering teams and just copy&paste the original designs
JonathanReez
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-20T21:11:49.953Z
Finite resources (money, time, people) and infinite questions dictates that money be spread across as many different technologies as possible. In other words, what money there is will be always better invested in telescopes that *differ substantially* from all previous telescopes.
uhoh
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-20T21:15:01.713Z
@uhoh doesn't this assume that JWST will be able to survey 100% of the visible stars over its lifespan? I've added a [related question](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/49983/what-percentage-of-visible-stars-will-jwst-be-able-to-survey-over-the-next-10-ye).
JonathanReez
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-21T02:20:42.223Z
Economies of scale are about mass production, not small run ultra precise things like this.  Not even close. It could easily be much more expensive to try and make more in any reasonable time frame for a variety of reasons.  The benefit of EoS comes from the fact that even an extremely small savings per widget will offset the incredible amount of upfront cost required to build out the mass production facilities and get everything up and running.  But it only works because the small savings is multiplied by gigantic volumes, not 10.
eps
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-21T08:25:13.620Z
We do have a few telescopes, each doing something different: Chandra does X-ray astronomy. The Fermi telescope observes in gamma rays. The Swift Observatory searches for gamma ray bursts. Gaia measures the position of stars with exquisite accuracy. Kepler and later TESS look for transiting exoplanets. Planck mapped the cosmic microwave background, etc etc.  The point being, that you get a lot more science by having **different** telescopes.
James K
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-21T18:57:40.260Z
@eps but it would still be faster/cheaper than building a brand new telescope from scratch? Instead of waiting another 10 years for a JSWT replacement, you launch 9 more clones of it in 5.
JonathanReez
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-21T19:50:13.367Z
@Jonathan The design of most of the JWST components was finalised by 2007. Some of the relevant technology has advanced since then. And I expect that the builders of the JWST would have done some things differently, in hindsight. So although cloning the JWST might save a little time & money, it would be better to build an improved design, with more modern technology. Also, we need to actually *use* the JWST for a while to get a clearer idea of what the design should be of the next high resolution infrared telescope.
PM 2Ring
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-21T19:53:40.113Z
You could build 9 or 10 cheaper than the first, but *not* **cheaply**. It's not like the first one costs billions, but the next 9 will cost hundreds-of-thousands. Economies of scale work when the market is huge (think a minimum of "thousands" to "millions" of copies) and you desire a decrease in costs measured in orders of magnitude. If we wanted 1,000,000 JWST's launched in the next 5-10 years to create a constellation of telescopes with a target price of $250,000 USD each, then "economies of scale" might kick in. @ElonMusk, can you help us out?
Greg Burghardt
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-26T02:45:07.273Z
The battle your up against is "can we make the JWST today?". The people, teams, and labs may have retired or left by now (or possibly some passed away). If we can access the volume of knowledge used to make it the first time I am sure building a second time will be massively cheaper (no R&D, no inventions, just doing a known thing, albeit a very delicate, extensively tested, and complicated thing). But it's not clear if that re-use of knowledge can actually happen. You don't need economies scale for this to be an obviously good idea. But you do need to actually re-use knowledge.
Sidharth Ghoshal
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-26T05:05:41.600Z
@SidharthGhoshal well, ideally they would have done this in the very beginning. Launch a fresh JSWT every month until a new design is ready.
JonathanReez
<james-webb-space-telescope>
Why not launch a few more copies of JWST?
JonathanReez
# Why not launch a few more copies of JWST?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2022-07-20)

The username_5 Webb Satellite seems to be a highly successful project and it looks like humanity will get useful observations from it for many decades to come. But the question is... why not make 3 more copies of JWST and launch them into orbit so that we could get new data 4x faster? Or even 9 copies to get data 10x faster?

Since all the engineering has already been done and the satellite has been tested in practice, surely this would be much cheaper and faster than designing a new satellite from scratch? And you'll get a bit of savings from economies of scale, as you'll make several copies of the same part.

**Tags:** james-webb-space-telescope

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: 'Economies of scale' really don't kick in for complex things at the 1-10 level. Sure, the next one won't take 20 years, but each one will basically be a one-off repeated.  
> **username_2**: This is a completely different question to the claimed duplicate, which is asking about interferometric combination of multiple telescopes.  
> **username_0**: @username_1 they kind of do? At the very least you no longer have to pay the engineering teams and just copy&paste the original designs  
> **username_3**: Finite resources (money, time, people) and infinite questions dictates that money be spread across as many different technologies as possible. In other words, what money there is will be always better invested in telescopes that *differ substantially* from all previous telescopes.  
> **username_0**: @username_3 doesn't this assume that JWST will be able to survey 100% of the visible stars over its lifespan? I've added a [related question](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/49983/what-percentage-of-visible-stars-will-jwst-be-able-to-survey-over-the-next-10-ye).  
> **username_4**: Economies of scale are about mass production, not small run ultra precise things like this.  Not even close. It could easily be much more expensive to try and make more in any reasonable time frame for a variety of reasons.  The benefit of EoS comes from the fact that even an extremely small savings per widget will offset the incredible amount of upfront cost required to build out the mass production facilities and get everything up and running.  But it only works because the small savings is multiplied by gigantic volumes, not 10.  
> **username_5**: We do have a few telescopes, each doing something different: Chandra does X-ray astronomy. The Fermi telescope observes in gamma rays. The Swift Observatory searches for gamma ray bursts. Gaia measures the position of stars with exquisite accuracy. Kepler and later TESS look for transiting exoplanets. Planck mapped the cosmic microwave background, etc etc.  The point being, that you get a lot more science by having **different** telescopes.  
> **username_0**: @username_4 but it would still be faster/cheaper than building a brand new telescope from scratch? Instead of waiting another 10 years for a JSWT replacement, you launch 9 more clones of it in 5.  
> **username_6**: @Jonathan The design of most of the JWST components was finalised by 2007. Some of the relevant technology has advanced since then. And I expect that the builders of the JWST would have done some things differently, in hindsight. So although cloning the JWST might save a little time & money, it would be better to build an improved design, with more modern technology. Also, we need to actually *use* the JWST for a while to get a clearer idea of what the design should be of the next high resolution infrared telescope.  
> **username_7**: You could build 9 or 10 cheaper than the first, but *not* **cheaply**. It's not like the first one costs billions, but the next 9 will cost hundreds-of-thousands. Economies of scale work when the market is huge (think a minimum of "thousands" to "millions" of copies) and you desire a decrease in costs measured in orders of magnitude. If we wanted 1,000,000 JWST's launched in the next 5-10 years to create a constellation of telescopes with a target price of $250,000 USD each, then "economies of scale" might kick in. @ElonMusk, can you help us out?  
> **username_8**: The battle your up against is "can we make the JWST today?". The people, teams, and labs may have retired or left by now (or possibly some passed away). If we can access the volume of knowledge used to make it the first time I am sure building a second time will be massively cheaper (no R&D, no inventions, just doing a known thing, albeit a very delicate, extensively tested, and complicated thing). But it's not clear if that re-use of knowledge can actually happen. You don't need economies scale for this to be an obviously good idea. But you do need to actually re-use knowledge.  
> **username_0**: @username_8 well, ideally they would have done this in the very beginning. Launch a fresh JSWT every month until a new design is ready.  

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## 0 answers

