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The Telescope has made it safely into orbit but would have been a ten-billion-dollar loss if the launch vehicle had failed. So could a Launch Escape System have been fitted, as on crewed missions, to at least give a chance of saving the telescope if things had gone wrong?

GordonD
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    I'll bet the answer has to do with losing payload mass as a compromise for the mass of the escape system. Considering the state of the technology of rocket launches, the payload mass has a higher value/priority. – fred_dot_u Dec 25 '21 at 23:45
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    After you pull something off the launch stack with a LES you still need to get it on the ground in one piece. For crewed missions, they're designed to survive reentry, so you get a lot of landing capability "for free", but with JWST you'd need to build that capability into the payload, which adds weight. – Cadence Dec 26 '21 at 00:59
  • Given all the concerns raised after JWST was "dropped" several inches during ground preparation, I think it's likely that even if you were able to jettison JWST from a doomed launch, it would not be usable for anything afterwards other than museum exhibit. – Jeremy Friesner Dec 27 '21 at 04:44

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