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How the Webb Space Telescope Got So Expensive

Posted by timothy on from the pity-we-can't-short-the-stock dept.

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.

18 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. I know, I know... by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 4, Funny

    How the Web space telescope became so expensive? Connectivity through Comcast, no doubt.

    Hmmm. And First Post?

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    1. Re:I know, I know... by flaming+error · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's the same as software. The first 90% of the code takes 90% of the budget, the final 10% takes the other 90%.

    2. Re:I know, I know... by hey! · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Wrong scenario. It's more like this one I actually was in where I was asked to estimate the cost of responding to an RFP and came up with 150K. Boss asked me whether it could be done for 100K, and I told him by cutting our profits to the bone and taking the narrowest possible interpretation of the RFP, it was possible, but the risk was unacceptably high. Two weeks later signed a contract to do it for 50K. When I asked him why, he said he could spread the cost by selling it to more customers. I told him that only diluted our focus on the project and that to productize it would cost us almost a quarter of a million.

      The upshot is that we couldn't afford to undertake the project except with slack resources. By the time we were done we had functional software, but it cost us the equivalent of 200K (which we couldn't charge). It took us so long to finish that we never got even the 50K from the customer, because management had turned over twice in the meantime and had no idea what the project was about. Then the boss sold the "product" to a second customer (over my objections) for 50K and that cost us another 200K, and we never saw that money either.

      Fiscal responsibility isn't just not spending money on things you don't need. It's also not committing yourself to projects you aren't willing to pay to do a proper job on. Spending less than what it would reasonably take to do a project is like flushing cash down the toilet.

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  2. It's a deal compared to other things. by Beelzebud · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The whole project, with budget over-runs, is still cheaper than 1 month in Iraq...

    1. Re:It's a deal compared to other things. by haruchai · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Funny you should mentioned that - it showed up on my YouTube page yesterday - first time I'd seen it. Carter was and is a good man but he didn't understand what the US had become and still is - a nation that looks to a cheerleader in the top job rather than an honest father figure.
      But, not to worry, that wish just might come true, so brace yourselves.

      http://www.rickperry.org/join-today/

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  3. Shipping and Handling by perpenso · · Score: 4, Funny

    How the Webb Space Telescope Got So Expensive?

    Obviously it was the shipping and handling charges.

  4. Corollary to Hofstader's law by shoppa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Corollary to Hofstader's law by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Another law from time immemorial:

      A poorly planned project takes three times as long to complete as planned.

      A carefully planned project only takes twice as long.

      --
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  5. Yeah, I've seen this by RogerWilco · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Yeah, I've seen this by bcrowell · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      It's an order of magnitude bigger than the Hubble, and they bid $0.8 billion initially, which is less than $2.5 billion the Hubble cost to build and launch. I wouldn't call that unforseen. It was simply massively underbid.

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    2. Re:Yeah, I've seen this by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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

      Which is why one hires good system engineers who have managed large projects before, and have a feel for how much to keep in reserve to deal with those things. Not to go totally Rumsfeldian, but there are known issues or unknowns, and you can generally budget for that. You want to make sure to understand the project well enough that you're not walking into things you don't even realize are problems.

      This is why you can't just hand control of a project to a team of scientists without putting someone in charge who can understand the issues and budget for them. Otherwise you're handing over a blank check.

      And I'm saying this as a scientist.

  6. Synopsis by Lexx+Greatrex · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Synopsis by JoshuaZ · · Score: 5, Informative

      That is by and large a fair summary but there's an important part of TFA that also comes up: A large part of the added cost could have been avoided if Congress had just given an additional 250 million for a launch date in 2015. If that had occurred this would be only a few hundred million dollars over budget.

    2. Re:Synopsis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you delivered an entirely new scientific instrument and only went over budget by 4%, I'd call you a fucking hero.

      Based on your comment, I'm going with dipshit.

  7. Re:it's a government project by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you reward lying, you will get more lies. The original budget was intentionally low-balled (i.e. it was a lie), and now the truth is coming out. But no one will be fired, no one will be punished, there will be no negative consequences for the liars. There will also be no consequences for the people that accepted the lies. No incumbent will fail to be reelected over just a few billion in overruns. Expect more massive overruns on future projects. There is no reason to expect anything else.

  8. Nobody has an incentive to finish it by petes_PoV · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
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    1. Re:Nobody has an incentive to finish it by O('_')O_Bush · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, the policy described has changed a lot in recent years. I work for a large defense contractor (not going to throw names), and while I don't work in contract procurement, I do have an understanding of how things have been changing.

      At one time, it was common practice to underbid by a lot, then charge a lot to get stuff done right because the gov't contract selection process was abusive, and so contractors had to abuse the system back to level the playing field and turn a profit.

      The gov't then started putting a stop to this by forcing contractors to deliver on the original budgets, or otherwise risk lose contracts in the future. Contractors responded to this by abusing employees and benefits to pick up the difference (for example, at one time it was an unspoken rule or so that one had to work up to the overtime kick-in of 46 hours per week (6 hours/week of free work), or otherwise be first on the chopping block when budget cuts came out). However, the gov't saw what was going on (contracts across the board weren't increasing in price as expected) and put a stop to that as well (forcing all hours to be billed to the gov't, regardless of whether the company pays for it in overtime).

      Now contracts are more expensive, and budgets are more tightly and carefully managed, teams are run leaner (that is, fewer people have jobs), but fewer contracts are going way over budget at the same time. At the same time, any scope creep is now added to the project's budget, instead of being absorbed and then rebounded as a cost overrun.

      It really has been quite a paradigm shift in the past 3 years or so.

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  9. Re:it's a government project by IICV · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The original budget was intentionally low-balled (i.e. it was a lie), and now the truth is coming out.

    Since I submitted this story, I've actually RTFA'd and that's exactly what didn't happen.

    Here's a timeline of events:

    1. NASA says "we could make the JWST for $5.1 billion, and launch in 2014". Not "make and run for five years", the $5.1 billion only covers making the thing and putting it into space.
    2. NASA's management fucks up, and an independent review panel finds that the actual price tag will be $6.5 billion, with a launch in 2015. This is NASA's fault.
    3. However, the $6.5 billion number is contingent on NASA having $250 million to spend in 2011 and 2012 on important things like not laying off critical workers, and funding the fabrication of vital parts.
    4. Congress does not provide that money, so the $6.5 billion number was never actually achievable anyway.
    5. Now that NASA's fucked, climbing back out of the hole will cost an extra 1 - 1.5 billion dollars, because Congress didn't want to approve a total of 0.5 billion dollars over the next two years.
    6. To add insult to injury, the number they're bandying about right now to show how much the project has gone over includes the cost of running it for five years, which the initial estimates did not. This adds nearly an extra billion on to the number.

    At no point did NASA intentionally lowball the budget; if NASA's management hadn't fucked up, they could have made it. The initial cost overrun from $5.1 to $6.5 billion is NASA's fault, because NASA's been administrated by idiots for the last couple of decades.