Slashdot Mirror
How the Webb Space Telescope Got So Expensive
First time accepted submitter IICV writes "Ethan Siegel of Starts with a Bang has done some research on how and why the James Webb Space Telescope's price tag ballooned. Quoting: 'Something wasn't adding up. How could the telescope be more than three-quarters complete after $3.5 billion, but require more than double that amount to finish it? Also, how did the launch date get bumped by three years, to 2018? And how did 6.5 billion become a disastrous $8.7 billion so quickly? So I did a little digging around, and perhaps a little investigative reporting as well, and got ahold of a Webb Project Scientist who's also a member of the Webb Science Working Group.'" Whether or not you buy the argument that the money's well-spent (at $5 billion or $8 billion, or either side of these), even the work in progress is beautiful.
How the Web space telescope became so expensive? Connectivity through Comcast, no doubt.
Hmmm. And First Post?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The whole project, with budget over-runs, is still cheaper than 1 month in Iraq...
eom
How the Webb Space Telescope Got So Expensive?
Obviously it was the shipping and handling charges.
1st Corollary to Hofstadter's Law: It always costs more than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
Hofstadter's original law actually only applies to time (not money). Typical usage: A couple years ago the NYC MTA Canarsie line "next train" countdown signs, originally a two year project, were running a couple years behind, and projected to take 5 years to complete.
Real inflation not accurately reported with the current CPI is about 9% a year, so sounds about right.
You're doing something nobody has done before, inventing it as you go, and people expect you to know in advance how much it's going to cost. There are always unforeseen things that crop up.
And then there is the whole complexity of getting it funded in the first place. And the smoke and mirrors that come with that. The most fun we had was getting funding for the hardware but not the software. The project is one year over schedule, the hardware is done, but the software...
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Thank you for a very nice piece of investigative journalism. I summarize my understanding of it as follows:
The JWST budget did not include provision for technical and other problems that are expected to happen on large speculative projects such as this.
Oversight failed to act on warnings that budgets were being exceeded and schedules were drifting.
When oversight finally pulled the plug, parts of the project were near completion (implying that a 2014 launch date may have been possible).
Attempts to salvage any of the billions invested will incur significant additional costs due to loss of staff and the dissipation of knowledge, pushing any possible launch date close to 2020 and a budget four times the size of the original estimate.
Congress is shifting the blame entirely to NASA; seemingly avoiding responsibility for its part in appropriating public money without either due diligence or proper oversight.
Sound like business as usual.
When has a large government project been under budget or ahead of schedule?
F35
FBI's Sentinel project
FAA's En Route Automation Modernization
The dollar is being systematically debased.
These things seem inexplicable to me. Surely people are capable of factoring inflation into their calculations? Here in the UK, we signed off for two aircraft carriers (Queen Elizabeth class) for £3.1bn. Now we're laying down two, will only have enough aircraft to put one in service, and the total cost has ballooned to nearer £6bn. Why? I'm guessing the people who commission these things are being screwed by the contractors, or are really genuinely incompetent.
There are two commpeting forces at play here. Three if you include the people responsible for the budget.
The first and most obvious group is the scientists who first proposed the telescope and want to use it.
The second group are the people contracted to build it. These are the ones with all the power and the most to lose. Once the JWST is finished and launched they are (mostly) out of as job. As a consequence they have a selfish interest in making the design,development, testing and integration take as long as possible - simply to preserve their jobs and income. Now that's a fairly extreme description. I'm (almost) sure that nobody actually goes out of their way to sabotage it, or malinger. It's just that as with any project, there's always the possibility to improve things: tweak the spec. here, add another 0.05dB to a noise margin there ... and so it goes on; With no hard and fast deadline in the offing, there's nobody to say "it's absolutely got to be finished by <date>". Military projects in peacetime suffer exactly the same project creep and delays, for exactly the same reason.
The deadline is the key - that's why the moon landings happened on time. That's why wartime projects (when people are dying for lack of a solution) turbo-charge innovation. The JFDI attitude is paramount and without a launch date to work towards (or at least without a credible one, that absolutely MUST be met) the contractors are always going to be suggesting improvements, not overcoming delays and problems and finding more expensive options for problems.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
And what if the rocket goes BOOM on the way up?
Conservative, mod down for violating
I'm wondering how the Webb scope mirrors are protected from micrometeorites and space junk. They seem so exposed in the pictures. The Hubble mirror, in contrast, is burried deep inside a tube with a hinged cover. I'm sure the question has been considered and solved for the Webb telescope. Does anyone know what protects the mirrors?
John P. (my first grad school adviser) is that you?
Sure sounds like him.
He was ecstatic when the SSC was cancelled in the 90s. I don't think he really let himself understand that none of the money would go to things he wanted funded.
The fallacy that if the money wasn't spent on JWST it would get spent on something more worthwhile is just that. A fallacy.
And before you get too bent out of shape at some astro type tossing cold water one you, my background is solid state too. (Curse you Murray Gell Mann and your Squalid State comments. :)
stfu you moron
you sound like a lil bitch
Particle Physics: Benefits to Society
Some budget creep can be expected, particularly on R&D projects. However an order of magnitude? That means you were either incompetent, or lying. I've certainly had projects at work that cost more than initially projected. Things go wrong or there are unexpected other needs. However 10 times the price? Hell no. If something hit double the price I'd have to think it would indicate a large fuckup on my part (or a massive change in scope).
So one way or another, something went massively wrong. Either a complete lack of competency or a criminal level of lying.
Hubble gave us a lot of very nice pictures, but let's be realistic: in terms of science per dollar we've got much more from combination of WMAP and SDSS I and II. JWST just killed a whole lot of more interesting projets in the same way LSST is now threathening to kill amazing and cheap projects like BigBOSS.
They should still fly JWST, after all this money spend it would be stupid to kill it and interesting things will come out of it. But let's be fair about science: pretty pictures that excite public are useful for PR, but for real science you need better than that.
I was working on a project using a relatively new technology that barely anyone in the company hadn't used before. They pulled a due date out of their ass and I blew past the date. I'm skipping over a lot of details, but let's just say Comcast handed me my head.
They tend to do that when things go wrong technically. Nice lovely employer that they are.
Quoted from the movie... How did they get funding for all of this? You don't think a hammer costs 200 dollars and a toilet seat costs 500 dollars do you? That, and it was a GOVERNMENT operation...they pretty much think they have an unlimited budget, which is why the USA is in such debt. OVERSPENDING. Had this been a private venture, where stockholders (investors) were watching, it would have been built under budget, or it would never had been built, as it would have been deemed too expensive, for the return on the investment. Until you get the lobbyist, and the CAREER politicians out of DC, forget about every cleaning up this mess.
I work at Goddard Space Flight Center and have direct contact with other engineers working on JWST. I doubt that it will fly or, if it does, that it will be successful. There are too many "defective by design" problems with its systems.
Consider, for example, the microshutters. In order to have a chance of resolving something like a planet orbiting a star, there is a design requirement to be able to block the optical path on a pixel by pixel basis. This is done in an LCD projector with an array of mirrors, each of which can be individually pivoted to deflect a small portion of the beam. Someone determined that this method would not provide adequate contrast ratio so a shutter system was proposed. The problem with shutters is that the individual elements must pivot farther. A mirror has only to move the beam off target; a shutter must open wide. Since the shutters are MEMS devices, the wide bending requires the use of very fragile material--stuff that breaks when subjected to shock and vibration testing at levels well below mission requirements. (Imagine the shock when the pryo charges go off and the mirrors start unfolding into place.) The project management solution thus far appears to be stop testing and ship the microshutter assembly on to the next level of integration. When it breaks there, it will be a handling issue and "not our problem."
This isn't the only problem subsystem.
JWST is the 800 lb gorilla at Goddard. The program routinely takes resources and personnel assigned to other projects. The suggestion that Congress might kill it was a real morale booster. We could fly about a dozen Explorer class mission for what would be saved by ending JWST at this point. The first such missions would provide real, useful science sooner than JWST, and the later missions could be designed based on the knowledge derived from the earlier.
JWST would be wonderful if it could work, but as the program has been and is being run, it will simply produce a big piece of space junk out at L2. And L2 is a place where we do not have the ability to send a servicing mission. It's time to stop throwing good money after bad!
Eight billion for a telescope, and the Congress is willing to let a constitutional entity, the United States Postal Service, go bankrupt and disappear for lack of a few billion dollars to tide it over until the economy and the mail volume recover. I'm beginning to doubt the very structure of our government. Is it obsolete?
E Proelio Veritas.
Lets be thankful we got this far and hope it gets finished. When we are faced with initially underbidding (or better, partially bidding) these important programs, or not starting them at all, what plays out is the truth which is quite different from waste and mismanagement. The later most often occurs when I give you a welfare check and you spend it on drugs. And don't forget that there is no room for money on the way to space. Remind yourself that big space projects put the dirt in space and leave the money in our pockets (absolutely all of it, I might add and for the most part, very well distributed). Heaven forbid, you get motivated and get off your butt to earn an education in order to earn some of it (in a drug free work place).
The government doesn't get insurance (it's illegal). If it goes boom, you go to Congress and ask for more money to try again.
I'm sure there is no no doubt the increased cost is justified and accounted for. I can't blame NASA for any of it. But like many government entities there is an attitude (probably not shared at the top levels). There is a NASA facility not far from where I work and it has been winding down, probably due to the aforementioned budget lay-offs.
In any case the word I hear in my lunchroom, the first thing a NASA employee learns: "Is to take a sh*t on company time." That is probably an indicator of why government projects cost so much and it probably goes downhill from there.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Makes me want to play TradeWars.
I will build NASA a device that concentrates gravity at a fixed point. I have the tools and technology to build everything but only theory to build the gravity concentrator. They will have to "trust me" on that part of the project. Giving the O.K. for the project without having the technology to build the heat shield is just plain stupid.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
... there I just saved you from having to waste your time reading the article. The government can do nothing efficiently or well - it is that simple. Having spent more than a few years working for and with them, the lack of funding when you need it, and useless bureaucracy is the problem. There will never be a fix to this as long as the government is able to do more than simply supply dollars, and stamp the final result. When we (my company) bids a contract, it is based on how long it will take us to do the job, but then the government comes back and says, that they will purchase the equipment needed, the time has just doubled or tripled, and the cost goes up by 4-6x since an item that should be purchased at the corner store takes months to get through purchasing, and requires hour upon hour of paperwork. We have taken to adding to every contract that the cost estimate is based upon our acquiring the materials needed and purchasing the items when we need them since government ineptitude knows no boundaries....
If I had mod points I'd mod this interesting. I don't understand why the history of the submitter is relevant at all, and if it is why their profile isn't linked in the summary.