How the Webb Space Telescope Got So Expensive 133
First time accepted submitter IICV writes "Ethan Siegel of Starts with a Bang has done some research on how and why the James Webb Space Telescope's price tag ballooned. Quoting: 'Something wasn't adding up. How could the telescope be more than three-quarters complete after $3.5 billion, but require more than double that amount to finish it? Also, how did the launch date get bumped by three years, to 2018? And how did 6.5 billion become a disastrous $8.7 billion so quickly? So I did a little digging around, and perhaps a little investigative reporting as well, and got ahold of a Webb Project Scientist who's also a member of the Webb Science Working Group.'" Whether or not you buy the argument that the money's well-spent (at $5 billion or $8 billion, or either side of these), even the work in progress is beautiful.
I know, I know... (Score:5, Funny)
How the Web space telescope became so expensive? Connectivity through Comcast, no doubt.
Hmmm. And First Post?
Re:I know, I know... (Score:5, Funny)
It's the same as software. The first 90% of the code takes 90% of the budget, the final 10% takes the other 90%.
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And it's due to those pesky beancounters. You know that there are 3 types of people in this world? Those who can count, and those who can't.
Re:I know, I know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong scenario. It's more like this one I actually was in where I was asked to estimate the cost of responding to an RFP and came up with 150K. Boss asked me whether it could be done for 100K, and I told him by cutting our profits to the bone and taking the narrowest possible interpretation of the RFP, it was possible, but the risk was unacceptably high. Two weeks later signed a contract to do it for 50K. When I asked him why, he said he could spread the cost by selling it to more customers. I told him that only diluted our focus on the project and that to productize it would cost us almost a quarter of a million.
The upshot is that we couldn't afford to undertake the project except with slack resources. By the time we were done we had functional software, but it cost us the equivalent of 200K (which we couldn't charge). It took us so long to finish that we never got even the 50K from the customer, because management had turned over twice in the meantime and had no idea what the project was about. Then the boss sold the "product" to a second customer (over my objections) for 50K and that cost us another 200K, and we never saw that money either.
Fiscal responsibility isn't just not spending money on things you don't need. It's also not committing yourself to projects you aren't willing to pay to do a proper job on. Spending less than what it would reasonably take to do a project is like flushing cash down the toilet.
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Ah, yes ... sell at a loss and make it up on volume.
I've seen that one before. It didn't work out any better. :-P
It's a deal compared to other things. (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, they weren't in the budget during the Bush years; during the Obama term they have been budgeted. Of course, that bit of honesty has helped the GOP scream about the huge deficit and claim Obama grew it more than he actually did. Just goes to show you what honesty gets you in politics, lol.
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The last time a President was honest with us, it was Jimmy Carter giving his "crisis of confidence" speech. Look where that got him.
Re:It's a deal compared to other things. (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny you should mentioned that - it showed up on my YouTube page yesterday - first time I'd seen it. Carter was and is a good man but he didn't understand what the US had become and still is - a nation that looks to a cheerleader in the top job rather than an honest father figure.
But, not to worry, that wish just might come true, so brace yourselves.
http://www.rickperry.org/join-today/ [rickperry.org]
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What you have now is a center-right compromiser who's a terrible negotiator and doesn't listen to his base. Rick Perry is much, much worse - he's a dumber, more self-assured George Bush and if the Teapublicans get control of the Senate and keep their hold on the House, then the US will quickly become a high-tech Haiti - albeit with an armed citizenry.
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The whole project, with budget over-runs, is still cheaper than 1 month in Iraq...
Even better, the whole project, with cost overruns, is still cheaper than a week of medicare!
Are we done with the pointless comparisons, now?
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If you reward lying, you will get more lies. The original budget was intentionally low-balled (i.e. it was a lie), and now the truth is coming out. But no one will be fired, no one will be punished, there will be no negative consequences for the liars. There will also be no consequences for the people that accepted the lies. No incumbent will fail to be reelected over just a few billion in overruns. Expect more massive overruns on future projects. There is no reason to expect anything else.
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Just like the F-22, F-35, B1, B2, any naval contract in the last two decades and on and on.
I think the last military contract that came in on budget was for a bunch of shower stalls during the Korean war.
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Since slashdot is a sufficiently large collection of people, it is obviously both.
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I forget, is slashdot left or right leaning?
In some cases, neither. "Left" and "right" are overly simplified ways of summing up someone's political persuasion. It hides the fact that there are philosophies that are neither "left" nor "right" such as libertarianism.
The libertarian would argue that taxpayers shouldn't have been forced to pay for this telescope at all.
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The libertarian would argue that taxpayers shouldn't have been forced to pay for this telescope at all.
Depends on which Libertarians you're talking to. You should check out Penn and Tellers "Bullshit" - the episode where they talk about NASA. Their take would be far different than your typical Ayn Rand fanatic.
Of course, it also depends on what you mean by "forced to pay". If you buy into a type of libertarianism where paying taxes is voluntary, but getting to vote is dependent on paying taxes, then you can have a government sponsored space program without forcing anyone to pay for it.
Suffice it to say th
Re:it's a government project (Score:4, Insightful)
Since I submitted this story, I've actually RTFA'd and that's exactly what didn't happen.
Here's a timeline of events:
1. NASA says "we could make the JWST for $5.1 billion, and launch in 2014". Not "make and run for five years", the $5.1 billion only covers making the thing and putting it into space.
2. NASA's management fucks up, and an independent review panel finds that the actual price tag will be $6.5 billion, with a launch in 2015. This is NASA's fault.
3. However, the $6.5 billion number is contingent on NASA having $250 million to spend in 2011 and 2012 on important things like not laying off critical workers, and funding the fabrication of vital parts.
4. Congress does not provide that money, so the $6.5 billion number was never actually achievable anyway.
5. Now that NASA's fucked, climbing back out of the hole will cost an extra 1 - 1.5 billion dollars, because Congress didn't want to approve a total of 0.5 billion dollars over the next two years.
6. To add insult to injury, the number they're bandying about right now to show how much the project has gone over includes the cost of running it for five years, which the initial estimates did not. This adds nearly an extra billion on to the number.
At no point did NASA intentionally lowball the budget; if NASA's management hadn't fucked up, they could have made it. The initial cost overrun from $5.1 to $6.5 billion is NASA's fault, because NASA's been administrated by idiots for the last couple of decades.
Shipping and Handling (Score:5, Funny)
How the Webb Space Telescope Got So Expensive?
Obviously it was the shipping and handling charges.
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That's it -- a space launch is ALL shipping and handling. No wonder NASA failed to keep the shuttle program going. They should have given it to someone who knows how to transport stuff inexpensively, the US Postal Service. While FedEx charges me $30.00 to send an envelope door-to-door across country, USPS does it for $0.44. The only large cost would be converting the shuttle fleet to right-hand drive. Then we'll have those costs down in no time.
PS - there's one diaper-wearing astronaut who would be per
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How the Webb Space Telescope Got So Expensive?
Obviously it was the shipping and handling charges.
Act now and a second for free! Just pay the additional shipping and handling.
Corollary to Hofstader's law (Score:4, Insightful)
Hofstadter's original law actually only applies to time (not money). Typical usage: A couple years ago the NYC MTA Canarsie line "next train" countdown signs, originally a two year project, were running a couple years behind, and projected to take 5 years to complete.
Re:Corollary to Hofstader's law (Score:5, Insightful)
Another law from time immemorial:
A poorly planned project takes three times as long to complete as planned.
A carefully planned project only takes twice as long.
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1st Corollary to Hofstadter's Law: It always costs more than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
Sounds like a recursive algorithm. Meaning everything costs $infinity.
Which size infinity I don't know. Comparing infinities in Uni maths class just made my brain hurt.
Inflation (Score:1)
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11+%, last time I looked at Shadowstats.
Yeah, I've seen this (Score:5, Insightful)
You're doing something nobody has done before, inventing it as you go, and people expect you to know in advance how much it's going to cost. There are always unforeseen things that crop up.
And then there is the whole complexity of getting it funded in the first place. And the smoke and mirrors that come with that. The most fun we had was getting funding for the hardware but not the software. The project is one year over schedule, the hardware is done, but the software...
Re:Yeah, I've seen this (Score:4, Insightful)
You're doing something nobody has done before, inventing it as you go, and people expect you to know in advance how much it's going to cost. There are always unforeseen things that crop up.
It's an order of magnitude bigger than the Hubble, and they bid $0.8 billion initially, which is less than $2.5 billion the Hubble cost to build and launch. I wouldn't call that unforseen. It was simply massively underbid.
No kidding (Score:3)
Some budget creep can be expected, particularly on R&D projects. However an order of magnitude? That means you were either incompetent, or lying. I've certainly had projects at work that cost more than initially projected. Things go wrong or there are unexpected other needs. However 10 times the price? Hell no. If something hit double the price I'd have to think it would indicate a large fuckup on my part (or a massive change in scope).
So one way or another, something went massively wrong. Either a comp
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I believe he is talking about the size and scope (capabilities, no pun intended) of the physical telescope, not the money for the project.
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Hubble's cost was a good bit of funny math, though ... remember, its basically a Keyhole spy satellite turned around, with their development costs shared with it.
Re:Yeah, I've seen this (Score:4, Insightful)
You're doing something nobody has done before, inventing it as you go, and people expect you to know in advance how much it's going to cost. There are always unforeseen things that crop up
Which is why one hires good system engineers who have managed large projects before, and have a feel for how much to keep in reserve to deal with those things. Not to go totally Rumsfeldian, but there are known issues or unknowns, and you can generally budget for that. You want to make sure to understand the project well enough that you're not walking into things you don't even realize are problems.
This is why you can't just hand control of a project to a team of scientists without putting someone in charge who can understand the issues and budget for them. Otherwise you're handing over a blank check.
And I'm saying this as a scientist.
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This sort of thing is an unknown unknown. You can't budget for every possibility.
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I can assure you that there were layerS of project management professionals between the scientists and the budget that got delivered to congress. Obviously, that didn't help. Quite possibly it hurt, as there were people who were motivated to lowball estimates in order to secure funding, and then cross their fingers hoping that additional funding would come through once the project was deep into spending.
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You're doing something nobody has done before, inventing it as you go, and people expect you to know in advance how much it's going to cost. There are always unforeseen things that crop up.
There are three things to note here. First, the various technologies of the James Webb Space Telescope have been done before. We've had space telescopes before. We've put things in Lagrange orbits before. Same goes for cryogenic cooling and large, wide objects. The various features of this instrument have been done at some scale in space. It's not a true "nobody has done before" thing.
Second, the instrument was made by people who should be very good at giving cost estimates for things like this. Grab a p
Synopsis (Score:5, Informative)
Thank you for a very nice piece of investigative journalism. I summarize my understanding of it as follows:
The JWST budget did not include provision for technical and other problems that are expected to happen on large speculative projects such as this.
Oversight failed to act on warnings that budgets were being exceeded and schedules were drifting.
When oversight finally pulled the plug, parts of the project were near completion (implying that a 2014 launch date may have been possible).
Attempts to salvage any of the billions invested will incur significant additional costs due to loss of staff and the dissipation of knowledge, pushing any possible launch date close to 2020 and a budget four times the size of the original estimate.
Congress is shifting the blame entirely to NASA; seemingly avoiding responsibility for its part in appropriating public money without either due diligence or proper oversight.
Sound like business as usual.
Re:Synopsis (Score:5, Informative)
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A large part of the added cost could have been avoided if Congress had just given an additional 250 million for a launch date in 2015.
I find it hard to believe that a lack of $250 million ballooned into several billions of dollars. The article cites a supposedly independent review, but doesn't go into any detail about the math. It just sounds like activist propaganda. Sorry, I like science too, but let's be honest.
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It says: "The reason for the huge, $1-1.5 billion and three year differences is because NASA has had to lay off workers and stop work on many components due to a lack of funds. "
So taking the article at face value, that's at most $1.5 billion in cost overrun.
The article is deceitful when it says, "what was originally slated to be a $5.1 Billion project, to launch in 2013"
No, it was originally expected to cost $500 million and to launch in 2007. The numbers have been steadily ballooning upwards ever since.
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If you delivered an entirely new scientific instrument and only went over budget by 4%, I'd call you a fucking hero.
Based on your comment, I'm going with dipshit.
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In other words, business as usual...
No surprise (Score:1)
When has a large government project been under budget or ahead of schedule?
F35
FBI's Sentinel project
FAA's En Route Automation Modernization
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See the previous Slashdot story. GRAIL is an example of a program that should be rewarded while JWST is an example of program that should be cancelled. But in the bazarro world of NASA, programs that come in under budget on development get cut in operations to pay for the programs that are struggling in development. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.
Indicative of poor US economy (Score:3, Insightful)
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Technically, the dollar is baseless.
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I don't understand your comment. If the dollar is being devalued, then shouldn't the project end up becoming cheaper for us?
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While I have some reservations about pure unbridled capitalism, I don't think you can blame capitalism for inflation.
Inflation is a phenomenon of fiat currency (paper with no intrinsic value) and fractional reserve banking (banks loaning out money they conjure out of thin air).
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Google "dollar value chart" and you'll see that this was a well-established fact long before this article was written. The dollar has been approaching zero for a long time.
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Similar to our aircraft carriers. (Score:1)
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It rather seems that your military procurement folks are worse off than hours. Which is a truly scary concept.
The Register (I know, not the most neutral or sane of journalism outlets, but still) has run a series of articles on the Nimrod sub hunter [theregister.co.uk]. This was a 1940's era jet refitted as a submarine hunter (ala the Lockeed P3) but at a cost that rivaled the shuttle or a B2.
Truly outstanding.
But you do draw an unnecessary inference - the British military procurement office can be incompetent AND the contrac
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In your case, wouldn't that be 'civilisation'?
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In your case, wouldn't that be 'civilisation'?
Pino Grigio is British, ColdWetDog is American; (as well I could infer from the contents of their respective posts).
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Two main reasons:
1. British Aerospace have almost as access to the PM as Murdoch.
2. The PM and defense minister were Scottish ministers ordering jobs for Scotland. They were also Labour ministers, spending money like no tomorrow 6 months before Bear Stearns needed a massive bailout.
Nobody has an incentive to finish it (Score:5, Interesting)
There are two commpeting forces at play here. Three if you include the people responsible for the budget.
The first and most obvious group is the scientists who first proposed the telescope and want to use it.
The second group are the people contracted to build it. These are the ones with all the power and the most to lose. Once the JWST is finished and launched they are (mostly) out of as job. As a consequence they have a selfish interest in making the design,development, testing and integration take as long as possible - simply to preserve their jobs and income. Now that's a fairly extreme description. I'm (almost) sure that nobody actually goes out of their way to sabotage it, or malinger. It's just that as with any project, there's always the possibility to improve things: tweak the spec. here, add another 0.05dB to a noise margin there ... and so it goes on; With no hard and fast deadline in the offing, there's nobody to say "it's absolutely got to be finished by <date>". Military projects in peacetime suffer exactly the same project creep and delays, for exactly the same reason.
The deadline is the key - that's why the moon landings happened on time. That's why wartime projects (when people are dying for lack of a solution) turbo-charge innovation. The JFDI attitude is paramount and without a launch date to work towards (or at least without a credible one, that absolutely MUST be met) the contractors are always going to be suggesting improvements, not overcoming delays and problems and finding more expensive options for problems.
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I think it also has to do with deliberate underestimation of costs and time. If 2 contractors bid on a project, and one gives a $3.5 billion 3 year estimate, while the other gives, say, a $5 billion and 4 year estimate, government managers will go for the first. After 3 years, the first contractor (who bid low) can of course not finish with just $3.5 billion, so he asks for more money and time, which the government is forced to pay unless they want to have wasted money. Had they gone with the realistic cont
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Actually, when you bid on a government contract, you have to provide past performance data which is taken into account when they decide who is going to get the contract. The problem with aerospace stuff is there are only like 3 companies to go with on these bids so you've probably worked with them before. When only presented with 3 bad choices, you have to pick the "least least worst".
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That is part of the reason. I've worked all sides of contracts. I've worked in contracts between private companies and between government and private companies on both sides of the contract. Here is my reasoning.
When I worked in private industry on engineering contracts we tended to want to do a good job and get it done on time and budget. It didn't always happen. But the idea was if you did a good job you would earn their trust and could get more work in the future. If there was something in the design tha
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I have no understanding of the big contractor working on a government project world, so maybe someone could explain to me why when a contractor bids for a project like this and doesn't meet the budget or deadline they don't just have to eat their losses and get fined for not completing on time.
I know there is no real comparison, but I'm working on a video project for someone that's taking up more of my time than I anticipated and is generally not really worth the effort but once we've decided on a price it'
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Often enough the contract comes with the requirements that are to be met, but funny enough the requirements are never quite right the first time. Every time the client comes back to change the contract gives the contractor another opportunity to raise the rate. Contractors can intentionally lowball bids because they know it will be renegotiated umpteen times.
Re:Nobody has an incentive to finish it (Score:5, Interesting)
At one time, it was common practice to underbid by a lot, then charge a lot to get stuff done right because the gov't contract selection process was abusive, and so contractors had to abuse the system back to level the playing field and turn a profit.
The gov't then started putting a stop to this by forcing contractors to deliver on the original budgets, or otherwise risk lose contracts in the future. Contractors responded to this by abusing employees and benefits to pick up the difference (for example, at one time it was an unspoken rule or so that one had to work up to the overtime kick-in of 46 hours per week (6 hours/week of free work), or otherwise be first on the chopping block when budget cuts came out). However, the gov't saw what was going on (contracts across the board weren't increasing in price as expected) and put a stop to that as well (forcing all hours to be billed to the gov't, regardless of whether the company pays for it in overtime).
Now contracts are more expensive, and budgets are more tightly and carefully managed, teams are run leaner (that is, fewer people have jobs), but fewer contracts are going way over budget at the same time. At the same time, any scope creep is now added to the project's budget, instead of being absorbed and then rebounded as a cost overrun.
It really has been quite a paradigm shift in the past 3 years or so.
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The "Liberty ships" were a very well documented example of it instead being an excuse to take what was well known at the time as dangerous shortcuts while profiting as if the shortcuts were never taken at the expense of taxpayers, purchases of war bonds and ultimately the lives of sailors. Never underestimate the greed, stupidity and disinterest of unsupervised private management that suddenly has their snouts
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Also the fact that the Soviets were getting close to a launch (or at least made it appear that way). The enemy breathing down your back is grand incentive. Plus, with Apollo, budget was secondary to the deadline.
As they say: soon, good, cheap. Pick any TWO.
Boom (Score:2)
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And what if the rocket goes BOOM on the way up?
As much as I want the JWST to succeed, I'm sure this precise concern will cause many sleepless nights for the space scientists and engineers involved. It's an excellent argument against mortgaging the future of an entire field on one, single, monolithic project.
Fortunately, the JWST is going on an Arianne 5 provided by ESA, which has a 95% success rate (2 failures in 36 launches). As a bonus, if it blows up we can point fingers at the Europeans, always a popular pastime on this side of the pond.
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Fortunately, the JWST is going on an Arianne 5 provided by ESA, which has a 95% success rate (2 failures in 36 launches).
That's interesting, because there were 2 failures in 135 launches of the space shuttle and people say it was completely unsafe.
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Insurance .. these things are insured .. besides the experience building the telescope probably generated a lot of useful knowledge so all is not lost .. all is never lost in science.
Mirror question (Score:1)
I'm wondering how the Webb scope mirrors are protected from micrometeorites and space junk. They seem so exposed in the pictures. The Hubble mirror, in contrast, is burried deep inside a tube with a hinged cover. I'm sure the question has been considered and solved for the Webb telescope. Does anyone know what protects the mirrors?
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"Does anyone know what protects the mirrors?"
It's not in earth orbit. It's roughtly a million miles from the earth, so space junk isn't really a factor.
http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/orbit.html [nasa.gov]
If you get something of any size hitting you out there, it's likely going so fast a shield wouldn't make much difference anyway. But, there isn't a big debris attracting mass like the earth out there either.
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It's not in earth orbit. It's roughtly a million miles from the earth, so space junk isn't really a factor.
Thanks. Interesting. L2 being a popular place, I suppose there will be an L2 junk problem at some point. Also, I think I get your point about a shield not doing much good. I guess any defects caused by meteors too small to destroy the mirror will only reduce its light gathering power slightly if there's even enough debris to make a collision likely.
Hubble wasn't that amazing (Score:3)
Hubble gave us a lot of very nice pictures, but let's be realistic: in terms of science per dollar we've got much more from combination of WMAP and SDSS I and II. JWST just killed a whole lot of more interesting projets in the same way LSST is now threathening to kill amazing and cheap projects like BigBOSS.
They should still fly JWST, after all this money spend it would be stupid to kill it and interesting things will come out of it. But let's be fair about science: pretty pictures that excite public are useful for PR, but for real science you need better than that.
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Since neither the WMAP or the SDSS can replace the science performed by Hubble - you're comparing apples to sea anemones.
You're operating under the mistaken notion that since what you see are 'pretty pictures
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Hubble gave us a lot of very nice pictures, but let's be realistic: in terms of science per dollar we've got much more from combination of WMAP and SDSS I and II.
How do you quantify science per dollar exactly? Are you even aware of the discoveries that are directly attributable to Hubble...like accelerating Universe?
Movie Independence Day (Score:1)
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Which part is the quote and which part is your words?
I believe a quotation is supposed to be enclosed in quotation marks.
A Monetary Black Hole (Score:2, Interesting)
I work at Goddard Space Flight Center and have direct contact with other engineers working on JWST. I doubt that it will fly or, if it does, that it will be successful. There are too many "defective by design" problems with its systems.
Consider, for example, the microshutters. In order to have a chance of resolving something like a planet orbiting a star, there is a design requirement to be able to block the optical path on a pixel by pixel basis. This is done in an LCD projector with an array of mirror
Ludicrous (and I don't mean the rapper) (Score:1)
First Thing a NASA Employee Learns (Score:1)
I'm sure there is no no doubt the increased cost is justified and accounted for. I can't blame NASA for any of it. But like many government entities there is an attitude (probably not shared at the top levels). There is a NASA facility not far from where I work and it has been winding down, probably due to the aforementioned budget lay-offs.
In any case the word I hear in my lunchroom, the first thing a NASA employee learns: "Is to take a sh*t on company time." That is probably an indicator of why gover
That .001 is a bitch (Score:2)
I will build NASA a device that concentrates gravity at a fixed point. I have the tools and technology to build everything but only theory to build the gravity concentrator. They will have to "trust me" on that part of the project. Giving the O.K. for the project without having the technology to build the heat shield is just plain stupid.
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John P. (my first grad school adviser) is that you?
Sure sounds like him.
He was ecstatic when the SSC was cancelled in the 90s. I don't think he really let himself understand that none of the money would go to things he wanted funded.
The fallacy that if the money wasn't spent on JWST it would get spent on something more worthwhile is just that. A fallacy.
And before you get too bent out of shape at some astro type tossing cold water one you, my background is solid state too. (Curse you Murray Gell Mann and yo
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Particle Physics: Benefits to Society [fnal.gov]
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If I had mod points I'd mod this interesting. I don't understand why the history of the submitter is relevant at all, and if it is why their profile isn't linked in the summary.