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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.
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.