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Comment by RhodoYolo | Hacker News Reader

Do you have a list or link to any mega projects you are currently excited about?

Starshade is a crazy concept that could do more for the search for life than any previous approach by allowing us to block out a star to directly view its planets.

https://youtu.be/-jA2ABHBc6Y?t=3652

Non-youtube link. https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/1015/flower-power-nasa...

Three that sound pretty exciting to me are ITER [1], the Extremely Large Telescope [2] and the James Webb Space Telescope. I'm sure there is also more I haven't heard of yet!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope

James Webb is the one I worry about the most. ITER has a taken a long time, but they're making steady forward progress with it.

Whereas I live in fear that James Webb will suffer a failure during launch or deployment that just turns it into a very expensive explosion.

I agree. Or even if nothing explodes, I'm worried that during the unfolding something will break or get stuck and, and unlike Hubble it won't be "easily" repairable (if at all). Hopefully this doesn't happen, because it is a once-in-many-decades project.

Roman Space Telescope, LISA.

[1] https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/

[2] https://lisa.nasa.gov/ , https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/LISA

I didn't know about these two. Thanks for sharing!

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