Talk:2447: Hammer Incident

big --162.158.187.153 02:04, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

I added a basic explanation. 162.158.212.224 02:28, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Do we really need a huge paragraph explaining all the reasons why any damage to a space telescope is a big, expensive deal? And I'm not sure this is a trial, it's probably more like an administrative panel hearing (like the hearings after the Challenger disaster). Barmar (talk) 14:26, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Giant comic

Is it meant to be that size? Does the bad luck apply to trying to upload comics at reasonable sizes?

It's fixed now

172.69.33.19 02:09, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Oooh boy, indeed... "Error creating thumbnail: File with dimensions greater than 12.5 MP" is the Wiki's assessment of the auto-uploaded image. I haven't checked the resolution, but the https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/hammer_incident.png one is apparently 4332x4838 (scales to 8% on my device), and I don't care to test the _2x version right now. I'm not sure that was the native res of it on creation, looks to be an accidental up-scaling prior to posting to xkcd itself. 141.101.98.6 02:20, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

The _2x version is actually the proper size for a normal comic - 578x645 pixels. Noëlle (talk) 02:21, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Still seems larger than normal to me, even the 2x seems larger than I would expect. 172.69.34.78 04:02, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Maybe the extra-large image is what the original looks like using the James Webb telescope? Maybe over-thinking. 172.68.132.145 04:19, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Or perhaps its an resolution/aspect ratio/zoom factor difference between it and the old telescope. Implying all other comics have secretly been placed in front of the other telescope 172.69.170.50 04:56, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps overthinking, if the main reflecting mirror was actually destroyed, the light entering the telescope would never be focused into the secondary mirror and the image would be "light size" so you would only be able to see a small portion of what you expect

It looks to me that, while most of the text is rendered smoothly in full resolution, the caption below the panel ("Man, NASA is really on my case about the James Webb Space Telescope.") is very jaggy on a pixel level, but only on the Y-axis. There could be quite a bit of information in there. No idea what it means, though. 141.101.77.36 07:29, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

It could be floating-point errors that indicate the code flow of the renderer Randall used. Or it could mean anything else. Curious to compare it to a correct rendering of that text with the same font, but wouldn't know what to do with the vector of edge differences myself. 162.158.63.140 09:03, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

It seems to be fixed now so I am sure it was an accident

Randall has now uploaded an even smaller resolution image of 289 × 323 ([1]), and I have added it to this comic explanation. Natg19 (talk) 17:15, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

inspiration

When I read this comic I was worried it might have been inspired by recent news of something breaking during the final assembly process. Fortunately this seems not to be the case. Among the many delays of the telescope, were any of them caused by mirror and/or cryo failures that might have inspired this comic? Quantum7 (talk) 05:53, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

What caused the most recent delay? It seems it's been pushed forward more as Randall predicted in the other comic. 162.158.63.140 09:03, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm guessing that it was the recent announcement of the planned science for the first year of operation. 162.158.74.21 16:48, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Cryogenic?

I get the sense that the title text is inspired by liquid nitrogen ice cream. -- 108.162.237.252 13:14, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Actual hammering applied to JWST

As Quantum7, I was worried too and googled "JWST hammer" only to find this actual contributor to the project… The Hammers Company, Inc. Greenbelt, MD in this list:

https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/meetTheTeam/team.html

Not all JWST-engineering seams to be that delicate – should we be worried? -- 162.158.203.15 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Amount of gold

The James Webb Telescope only has <$2000 of gold. [[2]] -- 172.68.189.191 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Yeah, I'm going to remove the gold thing. It's a complete red herring. The materials represent such a tiny fraction of the cost of coating a mirror that it's not even worth mentioning. Coating a mirror with aluminum or protected silver costs virtually the same as coating it in gold. The fact that the mirrors are made from beryllium is a much larger factor in the cost. Ahecht (talk) 16:37, 8 April 2021 (UTC)