How important is the research LISA would do if they ever finished building?

[fellupahill]

Is LISA the only option in detecting gravitational waves?

Anyone have some insider info on the talks about cancelling, going with smaller scales, or just a general update on the situation?

What else could LISA do other than observe that gravity waves are actually present? and what would it tell us?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

It would seem that the NASA/ESA partnership to build LISA has been cancelled though ESA is going ahead with a similar project called eLISA-NGO.

 

[fellupahill]

It would seem that the NASA/ESA partnership to build LISA has been cancelled though ESA is going ahead with a similar project called eLISA-NGO.

Why is the US so against scientific research now? Didn't they pass up a chance to have the LHC in the US only bigger?

 

[Pengwuino]

Why is the US so against scientific research now? Didn't they pass up a chance to have the LHC in the US only bigger?

It's not that the US is against scientific research. The James Webb Telescope has taken up so much of the funding (by going way over budget) available for astrophysics that programs had to be canceled.

 

[jtbell]

Also, as you have probably noticed, there has been a lot of anxiety about government spending, deficits, and debt lately. This has led to great reluctance to spend money on new projects and budget cuts for existing projects, in general.

(Further discussion along this line belongs in our Politics & World Affairs forum, not here.)

 

[fellupahill]

Ok, I would like to restate my original questions (Sorry, I can sometimes ask a lot of them :) )

Is LISA the only option in detecting gravitational waves?
What would detecting gravitational waves do for relativity and the search for quantum gravity?

What else could LISA do other than detect the presence of the waves.

 

[PAllen]

I'm not sure about LISA, but gravitational wave astronomy in general could tell us things about interior of neutron stars that could not be determined any other way.

I am not as sanguine about motivations of people and politicians as Pengwino suggests, but this is absolutely the wrong part of the forum to discuss that.

 

[Pengwuino]

Ok, I would like to restate my original questions (Sorry, I can sometimes ask a lot of them :) )

Is LISA the only option in detecting gravitational waves?
What would detecting gravitational waves do for relativity and the search for quantum gravity?

What else could LISA do other than detect the presence of the waves.

As for whether it's the only option, not really, although this may be splitting hairs. LIGO was the earth-based precursor to LISA, but it hasn't seen anything yet. I've always been under the impression that LIGO was always going to be a stepping stone to greater things like LISA and that LIGO was only ever capable of detecting very nearby (in a relative sense), very powerful gravitational activities like supernovae . LISA would be a more sensitive detector to that end.

 

[fellupahill]

It's not that the US is against scientific research. The James Webb Telescope has taken up so much of the funding (by going way over budget) available for astrophysics that programs had to be canceled.

NASA Acknowledges James Webb Telescope Costs Will Delay Other Science Missions
Dan Leone, Space News
Date: 07 November 2011 Time: 11:47 AM ET

WASHINGTON — Saving the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) — an infrared deep space observatory now expected to cost $8.8 billion — means that some other NASA science missions slated for launch after 2015 will have to be delayed, the U.S. space agency acknowledged in a report delivered to Congress in late October.

NASA, however, did not say in the report which missions might be delayed.

"That is still in discussion, even for 2012, within NASA and the administration," JWST Program Manager Rick Howard told members of the NASA Advisory Committee's Science Committee during a Nov. 1 conference call.

Howard also held to the line, which NASA has repeated since the summer, that specific offsets to pay for JWST will not be identified until U.S. President Barack Obama delivers his 2013 budget request for NASA to Congress. That traditionally takes place in February.

U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, demanded in September that NASA identify its planned JWST budget offsets prior to the publication of the 2013 budget request. Wolf's subcommittee proposed killing JWST in its version of NASA's 2012 budget. [Defending the James Webb Space Telescope: Q&A With John Mather]

NASA was legally bound to deliver the so-called breach report because JWST has exceeded its baseline cost estimate by more than 30 percent. Since 2009, the telescope's projected development cost has risen from $2.58 billion to nearly $6.2 billion, a 140 percent increase, according to the report, a copy of which was obtained by Space News.

Howard said NASA delivered the 10-page breach report to U.S. lawmakers Oct. 24.

In the report, NASA also acknowledged for the first time that building and operating the long-delayed flagship telescope for five years will now cost $8.835 billion, or about $100 million more than the agency conceded in August. NASA still envisions launching the telescope aboard a European rocket in October 2018, according to the report.

Source.

I didn't even know it was that big of a deal. Is it going to be a lot more powerful than Hubble?

What makes this more important than projects like LISA?
I read somewere(cant find the right page) just today that LISA has other applications all of which seemed rather important. So again, what makes this JWST special enough to trump the work of LISA?

Also, if someone could provide a link to some good information about JWST and the upgrades from hubble?

 

[Pengwuino]

I didn't even know it was that big of a deal. Is it going to be a lot more powerful than Hubble?

To give you an idea:

You can get a good idea over at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_webb_telescope

 

[Sam Gralla]

JWST is "too big to fail" at this point. It is horribly over budget (apparently due to a combination of mismanagement and unforseen difficulties), but it has cost so many billions already that it won't be cancelled. The claim is they've now gotten over all the technical hurdles, so we just have to wait.

LISA is not the only option for gravitational wave astronomy--there is also LIGO. LIGO was constructed mostly on time and budget, and reached its design sensitivity. At that sensitivity a detection was possible but not expected (needless to say they didn't see anything). They are currently upgrading LIGO to "Advanced LIGO", which will reach a sensitivity such that routine detection is expected.

That said, LISA can do *way* more than LIGO and the science case for LISA is tremendously compelling. I'd be shocked if something like it isn't built some time over the next twenty years. As for the politics, ESA decided NASA was an unreliable partner, and demanded that future missions it funds have no NASA funding component. This killed LISA as it was originally designed (too expensive for ESA to do alone), but a scaled-back version has been proposed. A decision on whether this version is funded should come along in a few months (as last I heard).

If you want to know all the amazing things LISA can do, read this fantastic recent review, http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.3621.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

JWST is "too big to fail" at this point. It is horribly over budget (apparently due to a combination of mismanagement and unforseen difficulties), but it has cost so many billions already that it won't be cancelled. The claim is they've now gotten over all the technical hurdles, so we just have to wait.

I hope you're right although my understand was that whilst JWST got extra funding the total amount of funding was capped. If any more setbacks or obstacles arise the JWST program might be back in the position of having to ask for more money and it might not get it.