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Astronomy

How Much Will the Free NRO Space Telescopes Cost?

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
October 9, 2012
Filed under , ,

The telescopes that came in from the cold, Nature
“Some astronomers, however, are questioning whether the value of the free hardware– each NRO telescope is worth at least US$250 million– can compensate for the extra costs entailed in going from a 1.3-metre mission to a 2.4-metre mission, which will require a larger rocket and a larger camera. Although the WFIRST mission was expected to cost $1.5billion, one NASA estimate puts the NRO option at $1.75billion.”
NRO Gives NASA Two Hubble-Class Telescopes (Shh!), earier post
Are NASA’s New Telescopes NRO Future Imagery Architecture Leftovers?, earier post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

7 responses to “How Much Will the Free NRO Space Telescopes Cost?”

  1. hikingmike says:
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    Oh darn! The telescope has a mirror 1 meter larger than what we were planning.

  2. Helen Simpson says:
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    Having been given these optical systems presents a remarkable opportunity to NASA and the science community, but such gifts can carry with them major costs. For example, if these systems don’t come with very complete specs, NASA will have to spend a load of money recharacterizing them. You can’t make an error budget responsibly if you don’t know much about your piece parts except what they look like from the outside. For these reasons and the others noted, the skepticism about cost burden is somewhat justified here.

    I’m dismayed to hear astronomers (and not even instrumentation-type astronomers, I believe) express confidence about mission costs in the Nature article. I’d want to hear that confidence from independent costing experts, with engineering and technical qualification in space hardware and operations, and not instrumentation- or costing-clueless people who would end up scientifically profiting from the facility. That lesson should have been abundantly learned from the early days of JWST (formerly NGST), when the astronomy community was delighted to believe in the illusion (largely planted by industry business development people) that the observatory could be procured for $0.5B. I’m happy to hear their scientific enthusiasm for it, but spare me their cost confidence!

    NASA, and especially the space astronomy community, simply can’t afford another cost debacle like JWST. The first step in avoiding that is to admit what you know and what you don’t know about responsible costing. Just go out, do it right, and tell us the answer when you know it. It may be that quick independent costing gives some confidence here in mission affordability, but that confidence should lead to investing in a more detailed design study that would do that costing better.

    • no one of consequence says:
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      That lesson should have been abundantly learned from the early days of
      JWST (formerly NGST), when the astronomy community was delighted to
      believe in the illusion (largely planted by industry business
      development people) that the observatory could be procured for $0.5B.

      Classic “bait and switch”.

      The moment one attempted to “shoe horn” a 6.5M mirror into a sat that fits into a 5M shroud (through segments), you knew it would be a multibillion project. Look how long segmented mirror designs on earth have taken to get right – decades.

      Hubble consumed $1.2B before launch … and various portions weren’t completely finished or adequately tested. In fact, to save money a critical test wasn’t done that ment we flew bad optics when we had a backup spare of good optics, because we didn’t know the difference …

      • Helen Simpson says:
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        “Classic ‘bait and switch’.”

        It’s worse than that. Bait and switch is where you entice with some product, and then sell a more expensive (maybe better) one. The NASA space astronomy community was enticed with a product, and they were sold exactly the same product, but for a vastly higher price.

        “Look how long segmented mirror designs on earth have taken to get right – decades.”

        Not the best comparison. Precision deployment had been proven in space applications, by both NASA and DOD. Segmentable optics on the Earth are actually quite a lot harder to do, because they’re done in 1g, and the gravity vector changes as you use them. Especially in a stable location like ES L2, once you get it right, it pretty much stays that way.

        But yes, the idea that a 6.5m deployable cryogenic telescope could be bought for $0.5B should have set off shrieking alarms. Perhaps it did, but the shrieks were suppressed in the hope that Congress would just keep shoveling money at a cost-plus effort. One can’t help but wonder if there is some of that going on here.

  3. no one of consequence says:
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    Simple way to correctly use this “gift”.

    You go back to the original, exact designers, architects, and builders of these as entire systems not optics.

    You ask them to scope, budget, and plan from a set WFIRST definition that preexisted the “gift” … allowing no mission creep and with the initial budget of 80% of WFIRST to begin with as the target.

    If they say “no, it can’t be done” it can’t. If they come back within WFIRST budget,  you have the NRO itself force certain specifics of the above scope, budget, plan – these are “hard stops” with no appeal, even to congress (this is the hard part). Oh, and they select the contractors/vendors solely.

    Then  NSF or NASA (or both) chose to fund/manage with a requirement to abandon on departure from scope/budget with the above stops.

    That would work.

    What this “gift” is good for – finding desired … “things”. What it is not good for … quantizing what the “thing” is … as far as a scientific observation needs to be. If you can accept the “error bars” that fall out of the above named process, it could be a successful win. But if you want to eek out the last little bits of science from it, then you’ll need to change X, which means Y comes unstuck, then that causes Z to go sideways … oops, need another billion.

    You could have had a cheaper Webb. But not capable of the same science product.

    An extreme example – the SSC verses the LHC and the hunt for the Higgs. Many standard model theorists predicted roughly the energy that was found. However the SUSY idiots, launching their trendy new direction back in the 80’s, talked up the energies and created a race for the bigger better hardware (not unlike HLV). In short, they made it too big, and it became a major porker that had to be killed because it was all graft and nothing else.

    There was a simple upgrade based on the Tevatron, a fraction of the budget of SSC, done in a fraction of the time/budget. Would have found the Higgs in less time.

    Now in planning for where to go after Higgs, it may be you don’t do a bigger version of the LHC but different direction.

    Scope matters. Especially to a space telescope.

  4. Jackalope3000 says:
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    The reason this will cost so much is they are trying to shoehorn these telescopes into an existing mission plan.  Write a new mission that does meaningful science and takes full advantage of the special attributes these telescopes possess.  Do that and something great will be accomplished for a lot less money.