Slashdot Mirror
James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's Next Hubble, Delayed Again (cnet.com)
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."
Having worked at NASA surely you would have known that the space shuttle problems began long before Obama. Sure he did little to save the program, but the space shuttle was far more expensive than originally planned and was at the end of its life. While NASA worked on the replacement, no proposals met the criteria needed so the whole thing was scrapped.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
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.
See http://www.thespacereview.com/... and https://www.forbes.com/sites/q... for background. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board in 2003 said the shuttle program should be recertified (its safety to fly re-evaluated) if flights were to extend past 2010. Bush announced the retirement in a speech at the beginning of his second term on January 14 2004.
Because NASA didn't have enough money (remember when congressional Republicans were deficit hawks?) to continue to operate the shuttles and develop a successor, they had to end the shuttle to free up funds for a successor launch vehicle.
By the time Obama arrived four years later, the decision would have been a nightmare to reverse, so he didn't try.
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?
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!
If you want to know what's wrong with NASA, consider this:
Edwin Hubble was a scientist.
James Webb was a lawyer and administrator.