Who's watchin the JWST launch?

Was in a store negotiating the price of my new phone while it launched 😂 Had to explain why I was looking down at my phone all the time

Having a telescope that can see light-years away but can't stream at 1080p

Definitely watched it, as an ex-Arianespace contractor.

Compared to the antics of Rocketlab, Astra, Firefly, SpaceX (etc)... Oldspace rockets like the Ariane 5 are pretty boring to watch when it goes up through the clouds. Especially because there were so many clouds.

But, with a $10B payload, boring is great.

Seeing a Firefly prototype explode or an Astra rocket take off sideways is something you can still poke fun at, it's a setback but spectacular entertainment at the same time. If JWST had vaporized after launch... that would *almost* be like watching a lethal crewed flight, in terms of heartbreaking tragedy.

But, to be honest -- I'm actually much, much more hyped about what JWST is going to send back once it's fully operational.

@bittersweet the clouds were a dud, only got to see the rocket for 6 seconds

@EpicofGilgamesh

"see light-years away" makes no sense 😆

Also as someone with a background in satellite communications streaming in 1080p is much more difficult than you realize.

@BobbyTables that's the wittiest metric I could pull out of my ass, am not a space@BobbyTables

@EpicofGilgamesh Haha fair enough. Nothing personal.

Also some images take hours of exposure, so the video stream would be pretty boring lol. The stream from the IIS is much more interesting at least.

@BobbyTables it was a nice stream none the less

@BobbyTables the only thing that didn't make sense in that sentence was the scale. A lightyear is a relatively small distance since hoomans have already seen away in the order of 10^10 lightyears.

@electrineer

Yeah everytime you look up at the stars you're looking many lightyears away in distance, and many lightyears back in time.

Also... I think it's the only sentence where a lightyear kind of makes sense as a measure of time.