Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope trumps Trump cuts, is launch-ready ahead of schedule

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is ready for launch ahead of schedule despite repeated attempts by both Donald Trump's first and second administrations to cut funding. The space agency is now targeting early September to send forth the telescope, a full eight months ahead of schedule. The instrument boasts a field of …

[may_i]

Now what comes after terra?

"...is expected to send 20,000 terabytes of data..."

How about 20 petabytes of data? This is a tech rag after all.

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: Now what comes after terra?

How many Encyclopaedias Britannica is that?

[Paul Herber]

Re: Now what comes after terra?

Just about average for an extraterrestrial porn collection, apparently.

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: Now what comes after terra?

You got to pump up those numbers, those are rookie numbers in this racket.

[A Non e-mouse]

If they'd renamed it the "Donald Trump Super Awesome Telescope" it wouldn't have been under risk.

[wolfetone]

They'd be at risk of trading standards though...

[Paul Herber]

"trading standards"

Socialism!

[Nik 2]

And if that didn't work, the Donald Trump _is_ Super Awesome Telescope certainly would.

[KittenHuffer]

No! It would need to be the "Trump Wide Aperture Telescope"!

[Gary Stewart]

Insert (snicker, snicker) wide aperture joke here!

[Excused Boots]

"Insert (snicker, snicker) wide aperture joke here!”

Gaping aperture shirley?

[DS999]

You mean "insert goatse.cx here"

[KittenHuffer]

I guess I left myself wide open for that joke!

[IrritatedUser]

Updated, but not sure if the truth deserves the Joke Alert.

[Bill Stewart]

Nancy Grace Roman

It turns out Nancy Grace Roman was a real person, an important NASA astronomer who died in 2018, and this isn't just a cheap attempt at naming it after right-wing TV ranter Nancy Grace to get Trump to pay for it :-)

[Doctor Syntax]

"despite repeated attempts by both Donald Trump's first and second administrations to cut funding"

Nevertheless, when it's in orbit it will be claimed as a Trump success.

Then he'll insist it's renamed after himself. Of course DDTT has a certain structure to it : Despite Donald Trump Telescope.

[MachDiamond]

"Nevertheless, when it's in orbit it will be claimed as a Trump success."

That's on-brand for any politician to claim any successes as their own and any failures to bad decisions by their predecessors or the "other party".

[Joe Gurman]

Well….

….when I worked at our nation’s four-letter acronym agency, phrases like, “planning long term (for example, for the Habitable Worlds Observatory – a telescope capable of directly imaging habitable worlds) is becoming complicated when every year brings a new fight over budget” just meant it was time for the non-drinking-on-government-property game of playing the video of John F. Kennedy at Rice University in 1962 saying, “We seek to go to the moon and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

[Excused Boots]

Hang on, isn’t it named after (gasp) a woman?

Is such a thing allowed in Gilead?

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

Yes, but F.Elon Musk is responsible for getting it into orbit. I sense a rapid (un)planned disassembly coming on...

[Bebu sa Ware]

I sense a rapid (un)planned disassembly coming on...

If it had to be… please let drop on to Mar·a·Lago preferably while the orange shit·gibbon is sitting on his golden throne polluting both the internet and the environment with his excrement.

[Bebu sa Ware]

named after … a woman?

I immediately thought of that too.

If she were a woman of colour I would take odds on its meeting a Patriot on the way up.

Sitting on the bus today I was thinking that patriot is at least someone who will defend their nation when the pressing need arises. Patriotism it is said is the last resort of scoundrels. It struck me that the US is currently creating many nations of patriots as a consequence of breeding its own "collusion" of scoundrels.

[MachDiamond]

Moral of the story

If you are working on big space projects, get them done quickly. Every hour lets the candle under the string that restrains the axe burn down a bit more.