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NASA's Big Telescope Avoids Death-by-Budget-Cut
coondoggie writes "NASA's most ambitious and highly over-budget space projects, the James Webb Space Telescope has apparently been spared the budgetary axe. The US Senate Committee on Appropriations has approved about $530 million of NASA's $17.9 billion budget to 'enable a 2018 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.'"
The original cost estimate was $5.1 billion, and included the first five elements only. The 2013 launch date was never settled upon, and the optimistic estimate associated with the $5.1 billion figure was 2014. When the cost went up to $6.5 billion and the launch date got pushed to 2015, that was really NASA's fault. I don't want you to come away with the impression that NASA is blameless in this; there really was budget mismanagement. This happened last year.
How did it happen? As my source tells it,
During 2010 the project held its next major review: the Critical Design Review. By this time the 2014 launch date had started to appear not credible. Therefore, Senator B. Mikulski, chair of the appropriation subcommittee responsible for NASA, called for an independent review of the project in the Summer 2010. The Independent Comprehensive Review Panel found that the project had not been properly managed, primarily due to the lack of near term reserves which for a project of this complexity are needed to make sure that things stay on track when issues are discovered.
In other words, the mismanagement was primarily not keeping enough cash-on-hand to deal with unexpected issues when they came up. This resulted in a new figure of $6.5 billion and a new launch date of 2015.
BUT!
This is important. The Independent Comprehensive Review Panel, when it came up with the $6.5 billion / 2015 figure, said that it was contingent. Upon what?
The ICRP conclusion was that the earliest JWST could be launched was late 2015 for a total cost of $6.5B of which $250M extra had to be provided in each of 2011 and 2012. They stated clearly that this was the earliest and cheapest way to launch JWST and any delay would result in a more expensive mission.
The 1B figure seems to be a gross underbid, according to other sources which
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Folks, I work at Goddard. I don't work on JWST, but I have many colleagues who do. JWST is a "defective by design" project that probably will never fly, or, if it does, will simply create a large piece of space junk out at L2--where we don't have the ability to send a servicing mission.
It's been over budget since day zero, and the program management has chronically misestimated funding and development time requirements. For example, there is a subsystem called the microshutters that supposed to be used to block light in the optical path on a pixel-by-pixel basis. The program management assumed that it would develop the technology and reduce it to practice for around $100,000,000. TI spent more than 10X that amount developing a similar but simpler system that does not have to stand up the shock and vibration requirement of a space launch. That subsystem is perhaps 4X over budget, years late, and still not working successfully--and it is far from the only problem system on the satellite.
With the money saved by killing JWST we could fly a dozen or so Explorer class missions that would provide real astrophysics and astronomy data sooner than JWST. JWST has sucked the assets and staffing out of too many good project already. Please, Congress, kill the damn thing.