Its so hard to explain to people not in the know just how miraculous JWST is. the fact that it wasnt canceled after blowing budgets and deadlines, after massive setbacks from accidents, and that the extremely complicated launch and deployment went off without a hitch. Hell even the functional resolution of the scope ended up higher than predicted. A project that started in 1996! I remember reading about it in some science magazine when i was 7 years old, and saw its first image when i was 27.
I will forever remember the interviews with the team in the weeks up to launch. Some high level direct i cant remember the name of made it clear that this is the last time he expects we will have a project formatted like this because it was the pinnacle of complexity. Alternatively, future projects will be multiple simple deployments of parts into space where they are remotely and semi-autonomously assembled. So nail biters on the scale of JWST launch day are probably only going to be seen again with manned exploration missions, and even then, the amount of complexity and factors that can go wrong should be significantly reduced.
My son absolutely loves space so this will be huge to him. He is not even 10 yet and all of this is his future. If he sticks to this interest he will see things in his lifetime that I never get to dream of seeing. I guess that's true for all parents but this seems more exciting.
Why haven't we developed a "generic" satellite that we can "mass produce" and send one to every moon and planet in our solar system?
It would be so amazing to have constant images coming from each body in our little neighborhood.
Launching stuff seems to be cheaper now. And (I would imagine) making 10 satellites that are identically is only slightly more expensive than making one. And I would think cameras and radios would be similar for each planet/moon.
What am I missing? Why is that not a thing right now?
The only planet with visibly changing features on a regular basis is Jupiter. And we can get good photos of it from Earth. So, just pictures, might be good for PR, but not very useful scientifically.
Interplanetary vehicles are still purpose built and expensive. It is also generally a lot harder to get to another planet than you would expect. As for our own moon, it has an irregular distribution of mass, so nothing that orbits it stays up for very long. Read about PFS-2 if you are interested.
I'd imagine that dream isn't too far away though, since orbiters are needed before a manned or most unmanned missions can be sent to a body. NASA's MRO still cost us 700m though, and only 90m of that was related to the launch.
Every planet is different so every probe needs to be different. Inner planets can use solar panels, outer plants did nuclear generator. Outer planets need larger radio dishes. Cameras for Venus are useless, what we really need are more landers. Mars is well photographed so more rovers makes sense.
One reason that platforms aren't useful is that there aren't enough probes for economies of scale. My understanding is most of the cost is the space-rated components. NASA is starting to reuse instruments, the proposed Uranus probe will use ones from other missions.
While launching is cheaper it is still insanely expensive.
Even if starship brings down the cost it's still pretty likely the probes would just get bigger and more feature capable increasing costs for some time.
I will forever remember the interviews with the team in the weeks up to launch. Some high level direct i cant remember the name of made it clear that this is the last time he expects we will have a project formatted like this because it was the pinnacle of complexity. Alternatively, future projects will be multiple simple deployments of parts into space where they are remotely and semi-autonomously assembled. So nail biters on the scale of JWST launch day are probably only going to be seen again with manned exploration missions, and even then, the amount of complexity and factors that can go wrong should be significantly reduced.