Cost overruns and delays add up to $6.5 billion for NASA's next-gen space telescope

[n2doc]

Panel cites mismanagement for escalating price tag on James Webb Space Telescope By Ron Cowen Web edition : 5:57 pm




The James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that promises to peer deeper into space and further back into the universe’s history, will cost at least $1.5 billion more than the $5 billion NASA estimated just two years ago. Moreover, the telescope will need an infusion of $200 million of that additional money in the next year, and a similar infusion the year after that, if it is to be launched on schedule in 2015. If the mission is delayed further, costs will only escalate.

Those are the conclusions of an independent review panel that investigated the extent and root causes of JWST’s financial woes and schedule delays at the request of Sen. Barbara Mikulski , a Democrat from Maryland and chairwoman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA’s budget.

The head of the review panel, John Casani of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., summarized the panel’s report during a November 10 telephone press briefing . Casani said his panel found that the design and construction of JWST, which is now being assembled, is technically sound. But the report points to mismanagement, he said, including faulty estimates of the project’s overall cost and a failure to realize that a greater proportion of funds would be needed during the telescope’s initial construction, as the cause of the overruns.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/65407/title/Cost_overruns_and_delays_add_up_to_%246.5_billion_for_NASAs_next-gen_space_telescope

[Peace Patriot]

1. Give NASA the money and STOP THE FOREVER WAR!

Anybody else here participate in Galaxy Zoo: Hubble? (Go to galaxyzoo.org where ordinary people are needed to help classify the millions of fantastic objects in the Universe that Hubble has discovered. You may be the first person to see some of these objects. Really!) Spend a little time at Galaxy Zoo and THEN decide what's more useful, the James Webb Space Telescope or killing more Afghanis or Iraqis or Venezuelans or Chinese or whoever's next on the Pentagon's hit list.

And please don't tell me "feed the hungry" first. If we'd just stop funding current and planned wars, we can feed everybody, educate everybody, provide everybody with health care AND reach out to the spectacularly beautiful and totally awesome Universe.

A hundred years from now, how will our civilization be judged? What are our priorities? Hm?

Give the money to NASA and STOP THE FOREVER WAR!

(Caveat: Probably our first priority, in being able to do what's right and what's best, needs to be getting rid of the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines. Just sayin'.)

[shireen]

2. +1

:thumbsup:

BTW, see my signature below? It's the Galaxy Zoo 2 Galaxy Font (SDSS images). :D

[Peace Patriot]

4. Ha! Hey Shireen! I don't have one yet. Just haven't had time to figure out how to do it.

But I'm glad to see a Zooite here at DU. It really does greatly expand your view of EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING. We are such little teensy ants running around, trying to figure things out , but with great big eyes and the only sentience that we know about (except for the dolphins, whales, elephants and some others whom we deign to call critters). Cosmic-comprehending brains wasting time trying to make more money than anybody else, or having to figure out Medicare Part D. As for our war machine....really, such a bloody waste of human intelligence! And human resources. You just have to SEE it--and Galaxy Zoo is one way--to understand our true context and what we are a part of. It is so, SO amazing, as you click through the zillions of galaxies and other objects that Hubble has photographed for the first time, and have to consider each one, in the classification program (which concentrates mostly on shapes and on oddities, just to get that done first, so astronomers know where to look for things), and read some of the discussions and postings of amazing objects, and sometimes just sit back in total wonder at what's "out there." It's not enough to hear about in the news. You soon forget what's going on in astronomy, in that corpo-fascist 'river of forgetfulness.' Galaxy Zoo puts you "out there" in an active way. You can contribute to this fabulously expanding pool of knowledge and you can experience it. A hundred years from now, not much else is going to matter.

And, if nothing else, it is a relief from the crazy stuff that our political establishment is engaged in and is foisting upon us, with their 'TRADE SECRET' code voting machines and their corporate filth. We need relief. And we need to think bigger, both about politics in this time and place, and about humanity's future. Galaxy Zoo offers refreshment and perspective. What a boon!

[jayfish]

3. And it was a Democrat who spun up the investigation.

...wonderful! $7.5 billion is a lot of money though. ...just sayin.

[txlibdem]

5. Where's Kris the Koal Man and his incessant whining about cost overruns?

He's usually the first one to bitch and complain about cost overruns of past or present nuclar power plants... Funny how he doesn't seem to care that this is billions of dollars wasted in a NASA program...

I just don't get it. If you care about cost overruns you should care about them all, not just the ones that are for technologies competing with the coal industry.