How the US Government Chose to Ruin the James Webb Space Telescope, and Blamed NASA

[n2doc]

Posted on: September 8, 2011 5:02 PM, by Ethan Siegel

"A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else." -John Burroughs
The greatest tool for astronomers of the past 20 years has, without a doubt, been the Hubble Space Telescope.

But Hubble isn't the end of astronomy and astrophysics; there's a whole lot more Universe out there simply begging to be understood. How did the first stars form? What do the earliest galaxies look like? When did the first galaxy clusters show up? And, needless to say, so much more. To get there, we need a significantly larger telescope, in space, capable of viewing wavelengths of light far longer than the ones Hubble is sensitive to. And that's just what the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) -- with seven times Hubble's light-gathering power -- promises to be.



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I'll note that the $8.7 billion includes approximately $800 million ($0.8 billion) for five years of support and operation -- step 6, above -- that was not included in the revamped $6.5 billion figure. The reason for the huge, $1-1.5 billion and three year differences is because NASA has had to lay off workers and stop work on many components due to a lack of funds.

In a nutshell, the government did an independent review in 2010, determined what was necessary to finish the job as cheaply and quickly as possible (an extra $1.4 billion, with $250 million extra in each of 2011 and 2012), didn't do those things, and now lets NASA both take the blame and deal with the fallout as it's faced with unavoidable cost overruns and delays.


complete and interesting and frustrating article here:

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/09/how_the_us_government_chose_to.php

We can spend endless amounts on worthless missile defense systems, but this gets mismanaged to death. It is 85% complete

[Duppers]

1. K & R

And thx!!!

[Odin2005]

2. if the JWT doesn't launch I am going to be so pissed that...

..."furious" won't even begin to describe it! :grr: