Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's Next Hubble, Delayed Again (cnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the work-in-progress dept.

NASA has been planning to launch a powerful new telescope that can see across the universe and perhaps to the beginning of time for many years now. But the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) appears likely to have to wait at least two more. From a report: On Tuesday, NASA said it needs more time to test the $8 billion space observatory, pushing back the scheduled launch date to approximately May 2020 from the earlier plans of next year. "Webb is the highest priority project for the agency's Science Mission Directorate, and the largest international space science project in US history," Robert Lightfoot, NASA's acting administrator, said in a release. "All the observatory's flight hardware is now complete, however, the issues brought to light with the spacecraft element are prompting us to take the necessary steps to refocus our efforts on the completion of this ambitious and complex observatory."

6 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Obama sold NASA out to the Russians by TomR+teh+Pirate · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You must also recognize that each president that comes in sets a different agenda for NASA. NASA programs take more than a decade to launch (ha!), but their bosses last 4 or 8 years. It's a schizophrenic situation.

  2. Evidence please by sjbe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    NASA has been gutted since the Obama administration when the Shuttle program was cancelled and manned space flight was handed over to the Russians.

    NASA "gutted"? How do you figure? Their budget hasn't been slashed. They finally got rid of the boondoggle that was the Shuttle program. New rocket systems (public and private) are coming online. Robotic missions and science exploration has continued more or less as before. I'm puzzled how you think the Obama administration in any way "gutted" NASA.

    Who cares that we are using the Russians for a few years to get people into orbit? That's a temporary situation and a far better one than the ludicrously expensive unreliable and wasteful shuttle. We wasted decades on the shuttle program when we could have been doing so much more. Any problems from that are frankly our own damn fault and happened WAY before any of the recent presidents. You have to go back to the Nixon/Ford/Carter/Reagan administrations for the bad planning there.

  3. Re:I miss old NASA by necro81 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you're going to spend just... all the money... on something, and that something can't be things like education or infrastructure, then it might as well be on something cool like putting people on the moon.

    During the Apollo program, NASA was something like 3-5% of the entire federal budget. These days, it's more like 0.5%. NASA has spent about as much on the Ares/Constellation pork boondogle as the JWST, and that just might someday go to the Moon.

    For comparison: Department of Education is around 2% of the federal budget. Highway spending is about 1%. Defense spending, depending on the year and what gets counted, is 15-20%.

    So when you are talking about "all the money", just what are you pointing to other than your own ignorance?

  4. JWST is beyond NASA by Tailhook · · Score: 3, Insightful

    JWST is really just too much to expect of today's NASA. Too complex, too long a time frame, all spinning out of control in the leadership vacuum that has been misgoverning NASA for at least 10 years. Expect to see another NASA announcement to delay SLS as well; the current 'estimated' launch date is Nov 2018. They won't make that and it will get pushed into 2019 or later. Same reasons. NASA doesn't even have a confirmed chairman and the previous chairman was an indifferent caretaker; Bolden oversaw delay after delay of a project he inherited and then handed down.

    --
    Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
    1. Re:JWST is beyond NASA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's too much for a NASA funded at ~0.5% of GDP (for comparison it was >5% during Apollo). If we'd agree to cut the military by about 3% of it's budget, we could double NASA's budget, and build a JWST every year. NASA's struggles are due to the constant decline in it's resources while we dump those onto the military to buy weapons we no longer need.

  5. What's wrong with NASA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you want to know what's wrong with NASA, consider this:

    Edwin Hubble was a scientist.

    James Webb was a lawyer and administrator.