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Congress

Hearing on Webb Space Telescope

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 24, 2015
Filed under ,
Hearing on Webb Space Telescope

Statement by John Grunsfeld, NASA
“The project has done an excellent job of managing its budget reserves, and this ability to efficiently address problems as they come up has enabled Webb to remain on schedule for its 2018 launch.”
Statement by Cristina Chaplain, GAO
“The proximity of all the elements and major subsystem schedules to the critical path means that a delay on any of the elements or major subsystems may reduce the overall project schedule reserve further, which could put the overall project schedule at risk. As a result, the project has less flexibility to choose which issues to mitigate. While the project has been able to reorganize work when necessary to mitigate schedule slips thus far, with further progression into subsequent integration and testing periods, flexibility will be diminished because work during integration and testing tends to be more serial, as the initiation of work is often dependent on the successful and timely completion of the prior work. This is particularly the case with JWST given its complexity.”
Hearing Charter
– Statements: Rep. Lamar Smith, Rep. Steven Palazzo, John Mather, Jeffrey Grant, John Grunsfeld, and Cristina Chaplain

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

12 responses to “Hearing on Webb Space Telescope”

  1. Gonzo_Skeptic says:
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    Do you think anyone will ask the question of why so many of the managers who were responsible for this budget fiasco are still running the program?

    • Rich_Palermo says:
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      “Well, I, uh, don’t think it’s quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.” — Gen. Buck Turgidson

  2. Michael Spencer says:
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    Excellent job? On schedule?
    I don’t know where to even start.

    • objose says:
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      Well if you use “not in this life time” as a measure of schedule, then it is easy to say on schedule!

  3. Yale S says:
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    It will be really stressful for the company launching this thing on the Ariane 5 after it cost 20 years of effort and 9 billion dollars. :-0

    If that is one of those days when the bear eats you, it will not be good publicity for your product.

    • hikingmike says:
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      Don’t even talk about that, lol

    • Gonzo_Skeptic says:
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      It will be really stressful for the company launching this thing on the
      Ariane 5 after it cost 20 years of effort and 9 billion dollars.

      Arianespace is treating it like any other Ariane 5 launch. Rack it, stack it, shoot it.

      • Yale S says:
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        I am not so sure that I could be blase about something like this. I imagine I would throw up about 10 times in the hours leading to the launch.

    • DTARS says:
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      9 billion? Why you can design a capsule for that much!

  4. John Adley says:
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    It is never easy to to hard things. At least this one can produce some really exciting science, much better than the white elephants SLS and ISS.