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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.'"
If only they renamed it to the "enduring freedom" telescope it would be much easier to get budget approval.
I would say its a win for the management, they haven't produced anything and got even more money to do it ... for everyone else though?
While I agree with you in terms of budgets going over, delays and the like - the James Webb telescope is a disaster, I do also agree with MightyMartian in the sense that it is good to see the damned thing actually going to go up.
Program Management on the JW is terrible.
James Webb telescope itself is a good thing.
James Webb telescope on budget and on time would have been a better thing.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
It might be more accurate to just say they are going to throw away another $530 million before they get around to killing it.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
That list is crap. May of the tems are misleading, or simple not true.
Others arn't waste at all.
Looka t this one:
The Congressional Budget Office published a "Budget Options" book identifying $140 billion in potential spending cuts.
How is potential spending cuts 'waste'? it's not. Its a report indcating areas that shuold be looked at for spending cuts. Not 'here are cuts yyou can make'.
or this one:
The Advanced Technology Program spends $150 million annually subsidizing private businesses, and 40% of this goes to Fortune 500 companies.
Yeha, they pay companies that ahve the tools to do so to work on experimental stuff they woudn't otherwise looka t. .. and it's 150 million. That's money well spent, not waste.
"The Department of Agriculture spends $12 billion to $30 billion annually on farm subsidies, the vast majority of which go to agribusinesses and farmers averaging $135,000 in annual income."
AND? annual income? so the fuck what. How much is profit? Farm subsidies maint a stable food cost. Personally, I like ahve a stable and reliable food source. Lok at the countries that don't ahve that. Food Riots every few years, and starvation. Fuck that noise.
The whole list is twisted, and the few that seem to be actual legit complaint are a small, tiny, insignificant amount of money. Not that they should be stopped, but it's hardly an example of waste. If that list is the best someone can do, that are government is pretty damn good.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
I know it's bad form to do so, but consider the source. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation
Reading NASA's website, it sounds like the microshutters have already been developed and shipped
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/microshutters.html
and
http://spiedigitallibrary.org/proceedings/resource/2/psisdg/7594/1/75940N_1?isAuthorized=no
"The assemblies have passed a series of critical reviews, which include programmable 2-D addressing, life tests, optical contrast tests, and environmental tests, required by the design specifications of JWST."
I work on the science side and have collaborators and friends who are up on all of this. According to them, essentially all of the technical aspects of the mission that were originally viewed as "possibly not feasable" have been solved.
And as mojo-raisin pointed out, the telescope very recently passed CDR (Critical Design Review) meaning all of the major technical issues have been solved and what remains is essentially putting it all together. That's still not a walk in the park, but it means we should have more confidence this will actually work. As far as the microshutters go, my understanding is that it's all pretty much working up to spec now (although, as you say, over-budget).
And keep in mind that in fact, for astrophysics, zeroing JWST means that money probably disappears from astrophysics. Some of it is reassigned elsewhere in NASA, but it essentially means we (the US) are completely abandoning our lead in astrophysics, because we made the decision a while back to push our space-based lead to the detriment of ground-based astronomy. We're still good in ground-based, but not the dominant player we once were. Perhaps some of that money will make its way to other science, but abandoning JWST abandons billions of dollars of engineering and science that was done planning for and building JWST. If you ask people on the science side, at this point they're mostly willing to take the risk.
If you don't understand how subsidies provides a stable food supply you really should shut your fucking cakehole about anything involving government spending.
Fortunately, I do understand how subsidies affect the food supply. They kill farmers in the Third World who can't compete with subsidies First World food. They allow the creation of oligopolies by those who hold the right to the subsidy (not just anyone can grow peanuts, sugar, or honey and collect the subsidy!). They encourage monoculture crops. They eliminated cane sugar from sodas and many sweets. There's interesting speculation that agricultural subsidies are a good portion of the cause of obesity in the US.
But the dumbest part of all? Subsidies don't actually address a need. We don't need stability in food crops because the market is already very stable. People aren't going to stop buying food, so farmers aren't going to stop growing food.
I swear to god... Slashtards become more and more dense by the day. WTF people??!?!!?
Look who's talking. You provided a very retarded argument about federal spending by going through a list and discounting every single item. Then when someone disagrees with an especially weak argument of yours, you blow up in some sort of kindergarten-style temper tantrum. If "Slashtards" are really causing you so much heartburn, then go away.
WADR, they said the same about killing the SSC, that it would set particle physics back $yada decades. LHC appears to have made that argument moot.
20 years later!
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!