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Hubble Replacement on Slow Track
iamlucky13 writes "The targeted launch date for the James Webb Space Telescope, an infrared space observatory currently nearing the completion of the design stage, has been pushed back 2 years to help deal with a price tag that has grown to $4.5 billion. This advanced telescope is designed to build upon the achievements of the Hubble after its retirement, peering into deep space with it's large 6.5 meter primary mirror from the L2 point 1.5 million kilometers from earth. As the highest priority science mission on NASA's agenda, a decision was made to spread the extra cost over additional budget cycles rather than compromise it's instrument package. Regardless, some of the lower priority missions may feel the impact of the JWST cost growth."
Hey, man, it's just a telescope. It haven't done you no harm.
I think your a tad out of line there, taking i to so personal.
Or maybe you're on a competing project?
$4.5 billion? That's far too expensive. I mean, we could keep our troups in Iraq for almost another month for that kind of money! What are they thinking, wasting it on a stupid big telescope.
What's the matter with you , didn't you read the post?
I wouldn't take shit like that from anyone.
-God
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IMHO, delaying the execution of projects only makes them cost more
With some great techniques for correcting the disturbances our atmosphere creates and a lot of huge (e.g.http://www.gmto.org/) ground based telescope slated for construction, it seems that super expensive space telescope will fall out of favor. I think we def need to continue with the JGW scope though - or at least send something to Lagrange point 2 before china does.
They can make the mirror part, real cheap too.
I can see how support staff make up the bulk of the cost but you have to realize that once they send this thing up into space it has to work; there is no warranty. If things aren't quadruple checked and all the scenarious played out you may end up loosing the whole project. I'm not a big fan of spending so much money on things such as these (there are worse like the war in Iraq), especially with 10's of thousands of people dying of starvation everyday, but if we're gonna do it we have to do it right.
Judging by the latest sneak peek photo from NASA, it looks like money well spent.
That's right. We shouldn't trust scientists and engineers to be fiscally responsible, that's the job of government administrators. They always do the right thing, and when did you last hear of someone in government giving out jobs to "their favorite people"? Never happens.
Who cares about what it costs, just spend the money.
This may sound a bit jaded...but I read an opinion piece (can't find the link..sorry) talking about the fact that the deficit and overall debt is considered by many economists to be so far gone that we'll crash no matter what we do. So, why not just run up the credit card while it lasts? Pay for the space telescope (new one), get that fence up along the border. Spend...Spend...Spend...Seriously! I think the most accurate analogy was that when falling 50 yards the first 30 really are'nt that bad (where we are now). The U.S. is gunna crash and it's going to take the rest of the world economy with it. We might as well just enjoy the "card" while it's still good.
"Come on, from the last I heard, they don't have any flight modules being built yet! This is simply outrageous."
They haven't actually spent $4.5B yet, it's the price tag for the whole of the project.
Hence includes the labor work which hasn't yet been started.
They haven't spent $4.5B, they're going to spend $4.5B. From TFA: "...The mission's estimated cost remains $4.5 billion, including spacecraft development, launch and operations...".
Also from TFA: "The latest plan for the infrared observatory, ... is expected to be finalized in April". In other words, they haven't even frozen the specs yet.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I hear this a lot about the space program, but if you quickly crunch the numbers:
1,000 staff x $100,000/year (generous) = $100 million/year.
So where is this $4.5 billion really being spent? I think it raises a lot of questions. Setting aside, say, $500 million for the launch itself (again, generous), and $1 billion for 10 years of operating costs (still pretty generous), can the materials and construction of a telescope really cost more than $2.5 billion?
I hate to be cheeky, but if I could pay 1,000 people $100k/year, I could build you a seriously awesome space telescope for a lot less than $2.5 billion.
A-Bomb
We must ask them for what they have spent $4.5B. I would not be a least bit surprised that the large portion of it went down to pay the salary for support staffs (*) to continue on science projects, not directly to the R&D for the telescope and its instruments.
You think that people go into science for the security of jobs and the pay, or to fund thousands of well-paid staff? Of course not - there are far easier ways of earning money and 'building empires'. People go into science and research because they want to explore nature. They want funding for experiments and instruments to help with this. There is no way that the the pay and staff costs would be billions or anything close: there are very few millionare scientists, or research teams consisting of thousands of staff.
By the way, compared to the defence budget, 4.5B is insignificant.
I enjoy a good insane rant along with everyone else, but you can at least work on new material and not repost stuff you posted a couple of weeks ago.d =13993764&pid=13993764&threshold=-1&mode=thread&co mmentsort=0&op=Change
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=167827&ci
...there are no atmospheric effects such as seeing. The atmosphere is especially problematic for an infrared telescope such as the JWST, as a significant portion of the infrared spectrum is absorbed by the earth's atmosphere.
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, where does the road paved with evil intentions lead to?
What's not to like about that?
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Dude, I think you might have some insecurity issues around your telescope. Remember, it's all in how you use it. Here's some pointers to help get you started:i lla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&clien t=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
http://www.google.ca/search?q=viagra&sourceid=moz
Since the US is currently dumping $6 billion a month in Iraq ($9 billion+ of which can not even be accounted for since the war started,) why not launch an initiative to launch a satellite by an organization other than NASA?
Provide an incentive (say cash) to find a cheaper way to design and launch a satellite into space. NASA, as an arm of a bogged-down and partisan government, is clearly not using innovative and cost-cutting solutions to further its own goals. Take the US government funding out of the equation and maybe something will get done. If NASA has too much on its agenda, its time to find other qualified people who can do the job.
In my humble opinion, space exploration is just as important scientific study as any other out there. The images that the Hubble has delivered to the world are indeed beautiful, amazing and priceless.
See: http://heritage.stsci.edu/gallery/galindex.html
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
As a fellow Canadian, it's dissapointing that some would simply sit back and take cheapshots at the U.S. at every turn. Yes I realize you're probably just joking around, but considering the James Webb Space Telescope is in part being built by the Canadian Space Agency it's a shame (and rather ironic) people like you would sit back and mock the hard work of not only Americans, but Canadians as well.
There's plenty of reasons to make fun of the U.S. - this space telescope definately isn't one of them.
and we look out far enough, will we see ourselves?
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
"1,000 staff x $100,000/year (generous) = $100 million/year."
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That's not generous at all, since this is a one-off try... NASA needs to spend top dollar to get the best minds working on priority projects like this.
Also, you've costs other than payroll to deal with -- health insurance, recruitment, training, etc. Plus admin and support staff (which will be cheaper no doubt), as well as PMs (which will be more expensive, no doubt).
Throw in the fact that there is almost zero margin for error in terms of manufacturing tolerances, and that many of the parts are not regular production-line parts, and so cost a bunch more to have made... Plus, the mirror itself is being made of Beryllium, which is both expensive and toxic (so working with it is much more expensive).
"I hate to be cheeky, but if I could pay 1,000 people $100k/year, I could build you a seriously awesome space telescope for a lot less than $2.5 billion.I hate to be cheeky, but if I could pay 1,000 people $100k/year, I could build you a seriously awesome space telescope for a lot less than $2.5 billion."
I'm sure there are a bunch of things I'm not thinking of, but my point is that pulling numbers out of a hat to say that we're overpaying is a little ridiculous. Admittedly, the overruns are a serious problem, though.
Finally, this is not the first time that they've announced cost overruns for the JWST... see this link from 2003: http://www.space.com/spacenews/archive03/telescop
Original cost was to be 800 million, with an 8-foot mirror; cost was doubled and mirror diameter was reduced to 6 feet -- and this was with the EC contributing an additional 300 million.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
HST's instruments deal with several different portions of the spectrum. JWST is dedicated infrared. Those of us who actually work in astronomy keep pointing this out, but oh well. ;)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Really think about what is 4.5 billion these days ?
The us national debt increases more that 100 times that amount every year and they cant fund the hubble.
The problem probably is the people in power want the budget to be 45 billion but it will need to goto a no bid contract.
That's metres, not feet, i.e. the JWST primary mirror is now 6.5 metres across. It was actually very originally (in the mid-1990s) to be 4 metres in diameter, but Dan Goldin suggested NASA wasn't being ambitious enough and said that 8 metres should be do-able. Given that he had worked in the defence arena before becoming NASA administrator, it makes you wonder what he knew :`)
The drop back to 6.5 metres was part cost-driven, part schedule-driven (it takes many years to fabricate all those beryllium segments), and part risk-driven. While the mirror diameter shrank, the overall mass of the primary mirror didn't change much: it can now be stiff enough to ensure we can test it on the ground properly, hopefully avoiding a Hubble-type optical manufacturing / testing fiasco.
As for the "originally 800M$", well, it's a long story, but JWST was never really that cheap, when full lifetime costs were accounted for. Still, there has been a cost overrun as we've developed the mission, but you can believe that those of us closely involved with the project do feel a strong responsibility to ensure that the end result delivers some great science to help justify the expense.
Another important factor is that Lagrange 2 is a saddle point. You can't keep an object there without constant monitoring and course correction (aka thrusters). Given that there's no way to send a resupply shuttle, our dear rocket scientists will absolutely have to get it right the first time. That means perfectly arranged mirrors (unlike Hubble), long-lasting gyros (unlike Hubble), and of course big honking fuel tank.
So whatever the final cost is, the project managers absolutely must resist the urge to cut corners. I'd rather see us spend $5B on a successful mission than $4B on an unintentional lunar impactor.
So are you suggesting that we should abandon Mike griffen (engineer) and go back to somebody like Sean O'Keefe (accountant/Columbia) or Beggs(MBA/Challenger)? I will take the scientists/engineers everytime. By definition, they are already brighter and more capable.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The Right will only support funding for the new Hubble if it's used to find proof of the firmament. And of course the Left will only support it if it's used to find voters. Essentially, it's a huge quagmire.
But hopefully the issues can be solved so scientist can use it to search for what remains of freedom in the US.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I agree totally that the expense is justified... and sorry about the feet/metres mistake -- hadn't finished my first cup of coffee yet.
:)
Of course, I get the funny feeling that I'm not the only one who has made a metric/non-metric unit error when dealing with a space program
Re: cost overruns, no surprise there. That's how project budgeting in the federal govt works in general, IMO... especially with the present & past couple administrations.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
It is interesting to note, that the telescope in question is named for perhaps the greatest administrator NASA ever had, who ran the agency during the critical years of the Apollo program and quit in 1968 shortly before the Apollo 8 mission which first sent men around the Moon. James Webb was, by the admission of many in NASA at the time, the best administrator they could have had, even though he was not an engineer but a politician. I suspect if he were still around, he'd be able to get his telescope built on time.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Ok, so now that James Webb is delayed by two years (and I'd bet more before it launces) and the shuttle has been cut back so much that there are not enough flights left to finish the space station, shouldn't they restart the mission for robotic repair of the Hubble telescope so it stays functional until the replacement gets launched?
NASA is trying to save money, but they are ignoring all of the money that has been already spent on partially completed projects, both in hardware that will never launch and for breach of contract fees to subcontractors.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Yes, well as an American I'm trying to understand how you canadians get the cat to pee in the bottle for that swill you try to pass off as "beer".
...but, JWST IS NOT A HST REPLACEMENT!!
People have had that misconception for years now.
Benefits make up a large portion of the cost of employees (health care, retirement, etc.). Also because the government uses contractors for lots of the work, the contracting company is making a profit on top of what it pays its employees. Try again.
The same can be said about the cost of the war. What about you, and you're time then--you can be using this time reading slashdot to feed the poor!
Can someone please tell me why they're naming a telescope after the star of 'Dragnet'?
Oh, wait...
What's your opinion on the where telescope are going long-term - very long term. Would the moon be an ideal place for telescopes? Radio telescopes would be shielded from most of Earth's chatter and lens based scope's could be constructed even larger because of weaker gravity. It's nice to wonder what we might see with a telescope that had a 1 kilometer aperture. By the way, I envy your line of work.
I also don't understand the problem with my salary logic. $100,000/year is a damn good salary by any standard, and I am positive that most people working in the space industry are not making that much. Can there possibly be 1,000 people working on this telescope, even including all the janitors and secretaries? Again, the math shows quite simply that 1,000 people at $100k/year is $100 million per year. Even on a 5-year project that is still just over 10% of $4.5 billion budget. Instead of being an ass with your mod points, why don't you tell me where that money is being spent?
I live in Dubai. I'm watching the Burj Dubai http://www.burjdubai.com/ being built - the world's tallest building - and it will cost about half as much as the new space telescope and be finished in half the time. I'm also watching the Palm and World Islands being built. These projects are monumental. I am not trolling when I say I could build a seriously awesome space telescope for less than $2.5 billion. So could any number of other construction outfits.
A-Bomb
> Obviously the materials are exceptional, but how can an 8-foot piece of ground glass possibly cost $1,500+ million unless it's made out of diamond?
Well, it's actually 18 mirrors, made of beryllium, which will have to be unfolded and bent into perfect alignment, autonomously, at L2. If you think about the incredible technical hurdles necessary to pull that off, you can easily spend that much. It's not like you can put out an order for those kinds of optics, they take years of manpower to develop.
Heheh well i work for nasa, and altho as a junior engineer im payed ~60K/year, I charge 200K/year to whatever project im working on. So if some project is given a million bucks a year, you can afford to put 4 engineers on it full time and no more and you dont even have money left over for pizza. The extra 140 goes to keeping the lights on, paying human resources folks, etc. Senior engineers charge 250K/year to projects. As an aside, people dont seem to realize that the cost of engineering anything (spacecraft, ataris..) is mostly paying peoples salaries to sit there and tinker with Matlab for a year, then ordering the parts for the design theyve spec'd out is the cheap part.
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No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.
Recently, the DIRBE instrument on the COBE satellite confirmed earlier IRAS observations of a dust ring following the Earth's orbit around the Sun. The existence of this ring is closely related to the Trojan points, but the story is complicated by the effects of radiation pressure on the dust grains. The Lagrange Points
It's being spent on Carribean vacations and boats for the top NASA administrators. Let's do some more math. ($75,000 / boat + $10,000 / vacation) x perhaps 50 administrators = $4.25 million. Hmmm, so even if it is a big embezzlement scheme, that doesn't account for much either. I didn't dig up your original post to see why it was modded down, but I don't doubt the knee-jerk reaction from sensitive nerds.
The senior engineers probably do make around $100,000. They're really sharp people. The top PhD scientists probably make even more. Being an expert in your field tends to make you valuable, and spending 7-8 years being dirt poor in school becoming an expert tends to ingrain a sense of deserving compensation. Still, that doesn't account for the $4.5 billion price tag. Even launch costs are only a couple hundred million.
The $4.5 billion tag includes a lot of research and development and a lot of subcontracting. R&D is expensive and subcontracting multiplies the number of people involved. While the Burj Dubai Tower is an ambitious project, it's real challenge is expanding existing technologies to fit a really big application. The JWST involves new controls and instruments that have to be prototyped and tested thoroughly. If you've ever contracted out for one-off precision parts, you'll find it's very expensive. For example, I just had a part made where the cost of having it machined, both due to the cost and hardness of the material I needed and the precision I desired, was over $300 each, for essentially a block with a planed surface and a couple holes in it. NASA deals with even more exotic materials and far higher tolerance, especially with the mirrors. My tolerances were 0.5 mm on that part. The mirrors deal with single microns. You don't send that out to the local machine shop. The mills that grind these things cost millions of dollars to build, and are probably custom built for such projects. I could start listing all sorts of parts that drive the cost up, but it gets redundant.
Is this cost unheard of? Nope. Hubble cost $2 billion initially. I think the two service missions added another billion. I'm not sure in this case, but NASA budgets typically also include operational costs. Someone else mentioned something about a change in budget structure so that the costs of running the space flight centers is now factored into the cost of the projects run from them so facilities aren't maintained unless they're actually producing something.
To be fair, it should be possible to build it for less. NASA has never been considered a model of efficiency (politics contributes largely to this). The fact of the matter is that they decided they needed this and no one else has offered a better price. If someone else seriously believes they can build it for $500 million and can convince NASA of that, they should do it. Heck, they should bid for $1 billion and walk away with a killer profit while saving the taxpayers $3.5 billion.
Not working on JWST or even a NASA project right now, I can't delineate costs for you personally, but I would have modded you down as well. Maybe not for being a troll, but for being uninformed. People on projects don't cost their salary alone. And we're not even talking about just some small overhead. These people all work at institutions (NASA centers, universities, etc.) that are funded by projects like this. You forgot to pay for their benefits, retirement, health care, etc. You forgot to give them a place to work, which may exist right now, but you still have to effectively pay for them to work there, which is not limited to the use of that place's equipment, computers, electricity, water, heat (well, for us right now), and toilets. You're talking about factors of 2-3x their salary, not just 1x. And yes, there certainly are more than 1,000 people contributing to JWST if you counted the secretaries and janitors.
All that's pretty good to do the R&D with little serious equipment purchases. Now as they're getting close to actually building space-worthy components, the equipment costs and contracting associated with that part goes up dramatically. A building, even the world's tallest, has parts you can replace and repair at will, pretty much. Although there's serious engineering and lots of clever bits that must go into it, there is still a difference. Plus, the techniques for making buildings are by-and-large not being developed from scratch like what is typically done for most space-based astronomy projects today.
The mirror isn't 8-feet in diameter (that's HST), it's 6.5 meters. And it's not one piece (which would be too large to launch), it's 18 pieces. It's not made of glass, it's made of beryllium. For it to work as promised, it's surface has to be accurate to incredible tolerances, and you have to ensure that the 18 segments together form an effective surface to those same levels of tolerance. And it has to be highly efficient at reflecting infrared light, which in this case is being done with a layer of gold.
After that you have a telescope, but nothing to do with it. We don't use eyepieces or even just a CCD camera these days, you know. Last time I looked, JWST had 3 instruments being built for it. Each one typically has its own set of complicated optics, detectors, hardware, and software. Although I don't know the exact numbers, these days instruments are typically a significant cost of telescope projects. I would not be surprised if each one costs a least 1/2 the cost of an operating JWST mirror.
As it's being built, you're also paying people to make sure it's going to be useful after it's launched. There's all the software and ground hardware that goes into the setting up an infrastructure for the community to propose their science, the planning and taking of observations, data reduction tools, etc. You don't start that bit the day after it's been completed. And those costs are ongoing, like they are with HST right now.
Now do you want to do some science with it? That costs money too. And unlike your buildings, we astronomers don't (er, can't) pay rent. JWST doesn't make money like your building, and it's cost is not subsided by anyone like your buildings likely are. Every dollar, euro, sweat, and tear is launched up to space with a wish and a prayer. And all we get out is some random new facts about the universe. Hope you like our work.
Now, I can't speak for high-level government officials or contract companies, but I can pretty confidently say that 99% of us in the field who drive the science for these machines are not in it for the money. There are very few personal perks aside from the coolness factor of working on something that a lot of people find fascinating. To a good approximation, this is the c
On this page, check out the smart tag on "hubble telescope" on the caption for the picture of Ceres
Wonder what the reserve is like. And what about the shipping?
These scientist are taking the billions of dollars, and doing nothing except browsing the internet and modding you down.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
You are not taking into account of overhead.
Right now I think there are about 2,000 scientists, engineers and administrators (plus civil servants) working all over the nation. Some get paid more (senior engineers and civil/administrators), while others get paid less (scientists and secretaries). So 100k per person isn't a bad guess (e.g., a senior engineer would get paid over 200K, for civil, around 140K, for admin...geez).In each institution, there is an overhead charge that goes into the bill (to cover benefits, etc). The overhead rate varies from institution to institution...but about 100% overhead (or for spending $1, it costs $2) is quite a decent figure.
Now this mission has been around for a while (at least five years).
Let's add that up:
5 yrs * $100K * 2.00 * 2000 ppl = $2 billion
So it's not that off from the estimate of $4.5Bn, really. They were supposed to cost $2B at this point. They ended up spending twice more...