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Congress Dumps James Webb Space Telescope
Teancum writes "On the list of items on the upcoming federal budget for 2012, the U.S. House of Representatives has announced they are going to cancel the continued development of the James Webb Space Telescope. While this debate is certainly still very much a preliminary draft, the road ahead for this project is now very much uncertain. In this time of budget cuts, it seems unlikely that this project is going to survive at this time. It certainly will be an uphill battle for fans of this telescope if they want to keep it alive."
War and Destruction... untouchable
Knowledge and Progress... Short list for cuts
Not surprised the least
This was a way cool project that could have led us towards life in the distant cosmos! Maybe its because were in for a much bigger revelation... (FINGERS CROSSED, and by revelation I don't mean that in a religious sense)... More than likely though their probably just rerouting the funding to war crime projects....
From Wikipedia:
"In June 2011, it was reported that the Webb telescope will cost at least four times more than originally proposed, and launch at least seven years late. Initial budget estimates were that the observatory would cost $1.6 billion and launch in 2011. NASA has now scheduled the telescope for a 2018 launch, though outside analysts suggest the flight could slip past 2020. The latest estimated price tag for the telescope is now $6.8 billion."
Although a loss for science, this would seem to be more accurately blamed on poor management and budgeting. Perhaps a smaller, better managed project will rise from the ashes.
Seriously, I wonder how much money we can get donated to keep this going. in retrospect, I'd gladly have paid what i could for the Hubble, and the repair/upgrade missions, out of my own pocket.
Cutting this project will do basically nothing to help the deficit situation. Until they start seriously talking about slashing defense spending, drastically reforming Medicare and Social Security, AND raising taxes, it's obvious they're just playing politics with no intention of doing anything to fix the problem. They could cut this and everything else in the discretionary non-defense budget and still run a huge deficit.
In the future, when people look back at our age, they will see things as Hubble, and (hopefully) the James Webb telescope as some of the true wonders of our time. INNA (I am not American), but where has the USA's sense of wonder gone?. Truely, the USA needs to invest in things like this great telescope. They can afford not to build another (half a?) stealth fighter, surely.
As someone who works on several NASA science mission directorate missions, I have to say I have mixed feelings about this. James Webb was going to be an amazing successor to Hubble, and would have been very popular with the general public as well as with scientists. However, it is way way over budget, and eating the budgets of other worthy science missions, and maybe there is something to be said for cutting missions who can't keep on budget. I was really looking forward to James Webb though, even if it was the 800lb gorilla of the science mission directorate.
What do we need with a space telescope or space exploration program anyway? Our children are being groomed to be the poorly fed, poorly housed, poorly educated drones of the likes of of the Koch Brothers--or worse, cannon fodder in the next forever war undertaken to line the pockets of the defense contractors. Other countries will gladly assume the exploration of frontiers and the advancement of knowledge while our kids get to learn about creation science.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
This This Astronomy Cast podcast episode does a great job of explaining why infrared astronomy is important, and the role that the JWST will (would have?) played in discovery.
...because we're (indirectly) building this instead:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Gerald_R._Ford_(CVN-78)
Military Industrial Complex FTW!
You mean the long-timers that developed Hubble, the Shuttle program, ISS, and (mostly) successful Mars rovers?
If anything, NASA gets worse with each new generation. As I saw on reddit once, "If you watch NASA backwards, it's about a space agency that has no spaceflight capability, then does low-orbit flights, then lands on moon"
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
to the WalMart-Exxon-Verizon Space Telescope. That way it'll have all the funding it needs.
How about cutting things from the budget that will ACTUALLY HELP SOLVE THE PROBLEM.
Cutting the space telescope (with its tiny budget) wont make any difference.
If you want to fix the US economy and the US debt problem, cut where it will help. Cut the billions and billions of dollars spent on subsidies to the airlines, the big agribusiness companies, the coal industry, the oil industry, the media companies, the defence industry etc.
People fixate on the human space program too much. NASA has had an almost constant string of fantastic science missions since Apollo.
No one wants to pay to put people into LEO, hell people were bored of the Moon landings after a couple of missions.
Look, I really REALLY love NASA's unmanned science programs and would think it would be a crying shame if they cut the JWST at this point but what is wrong with the budgeting process if they get it off by a factor of four? (so I've heard). Should they first launch a small prototype test mission to evaluate the technologies or something? Or were they putting the wrong people in charge of budgeting? Are they scientists who may be brilliant in their fields but not skilled at project forecasting or bureaucrats who might be looking to please their political masters? I never did like the idea that the telescope was named after a NASA administrator rather than a famous DEAD astronomer, it seemed a bit too self-serving. Maybe this is expensive poetic justice; instead I guess they could've named it the Carl Sagan Space Telescope to look at "billions and billions" of stars.
Anyway, it would be a shame to see this cancelled after they've spent so much and even finished the mirrors. (I know, sunk-costs fallacy). Of course if they taxed the rich (top execs got 23% more in the last YEAR while average income has stayed flat for the last DECADE) appropriately we would be more likely to afford things like the JWST cost overruns or not.