How does this compare to the 'man on the moon' projects of China? It appears that from a purely scientific standpoint, this telescope will have a bigger impact than those of other space programs. Is my thinking on the right track here?
Also, is this complementary in function (and mission) to the Hubble? It appears to me that the spectrum is split up between Hubble and James Webb.
As an aside, it is interesting that the telescope is named in honor of a Lawyer turned administrator of NASA, James Webb (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Webb). He must have been very capable indeed (or perhaps had the talent of attaching himself to very successful programs) because he was tapped by Kennedy to lead NASA at a time when the space race was at its peak. What's also weird is that James Webb worked as an administrator in all sorts of Government departments before being tapped to run NASA.
Programs like man on the moon make their contribution to mans knowledge through the engineering required to achieve the end, rather than in what they discover when they get there.
> Also, is this complementary in function (and mission) to the Hubble? It appears to me that the spectrum is split up between Hubble and James Webb.
Hubble's IR compliment was spitzer until it ran out of liquid helium. Webb is spitzer's replacement, with orders of magnitude more resolution.
Spitzer has qualified a lot of interesting mid IR targets to go look at in more detail.
In general non-vis space telescopes are more interesting than visible spectrum ones: Our vision only covers one octave so the odds that some random important physical process will best be observed in the visible spectrum isn't that great.
The visible spectrum is also the same spectrum that is well transmitted by the atmosphere so many vis observations can be conducted from earth with much larger and less costly instruments. Adaptive optics can mitigate atmospheric distortion at least somewhat, but there is no solution to non-transmission but space.
The atmospheric transmission has a two fold impact too: To study the atmosphere of extrasolar planets we need to study wavelengths that their atmospheres block. ... which, of course, are also wavelengths that our atmosphere blocks.
> How does this compare to the 'man on the moon' projects of China?
I don’t think space research has to be a zero sum game with one prescribed approach. The nature of research is that we need a multiple pronged approach into the unknown. If CNSA wants to pursue ‘Man on the Moon’ or JAXA wants to study asteroids, I see this as a win for humanity.
Also, is this complementary in function (and mission) to the Hubble? It appears to me that the spectrum is split up between Hubble and James Webb.
As an aside, it is interesting that the telescope is named in honor of a Lawyer turned administrator of NASA, James Webb (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Webb). He must have been very capable indeed (or perhaps had the talent of attaching himself to very successful programs) because he was tapped by Kennedy to lead NASA at a time when the space race was at its peak. What's also weird is that James Webb worked as an administrator in all sorts of Government departments before being tapped to run NASA.