James Webb Space Telescope and Mundane Space Travel

 The JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) has been in the works for 30 years. A significant portion of that time was spent making sure that it would work in the proper way. Every contingency was accounted for, and solutions were created by smart people to address those contingencies. 

Every space launch has a huge team of experts sitting on the ground, watching their terminals for any chance of a misplay. Going to space is not only expensive; it requires a large amount of highly skilled talent to make sure it works. 

This brings me to what I have noticed most Sci-Fi fiction takes for granted: easy space travel. As easy as driving a car out of the parking lot. When the Millennium Falcon takes off from Tatooine, it's with the same level of care as driving a used car out of a lot. And I think this is a misrepresentation of the danger and criticality of space travel. 

The Challenger explosion was caused by a single rubber O-ring that got too cold before launch. A single point failure on a minor component caused a massive explosion and loss of life. When you are in a car, and you get a flat tire, you can pull over and get it fixed. Airplanes require long checklists to be performed before they take off; anyone who doesn't do that is risking their life. 

Hell, I trained to be a bus driver, and every time you start up a bus you need to go through a fifty item checklist. 

The point I want to make here is that going to space and escaping Earth's gravity requires a lot of energy and a single critical point failure can cause massive damage. Thus, I think that it will be a long time before we see a rust bucket like the Millennium Falcon take off from a sleezy spaceport with as little thought as leaving a driveway. In the real world of space exploration, that's an easy way to die in a fireball. 

My basic premise is that, due to the amount of energy it takes to leave Earth's gravitational pull, a failure would be orders of magnitude more damaging than a car accident, even with super tech like antigravity engines or such. The tiniest error in spaceflight can lead to a Challenger-level explosion. Thus, Sci-Fi depictions of spacecraft are fundamentally flawed in this manner.