Webb Has a Launch Vehicle But Cost Risks Still An Issue
James Webb Space Telescope Project on Track but May Benefit from Improved Contractor Data to Better Understand Costs, GAO
“JWST continues to meet its cost commitments, but unreliable contractor performance data may pose a risk to project management. To help manage the project and account for new risks, project officials conducted a cost risk analysis of the prime contract. … GAO found that while NASA’s cost risk analysis substantially met best practices for cost estimating, officials do not plan to periodically update it. … Further, the project does not have an independent surveillance mechanism, such as the Defense Contract Management Agency, to help ensure data anomalies are corrected by the contractor before being incorporated into larger cost analyses, as GAO recommended in 2012. As a result, the project is relying partially on unreliable information to inform its decision making and overall cost status.”
ESA and Arianespace Sign James Webb Space Telescope Launch Contract
“The JWST is a joint project of NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency. Europe’s contribution includes the Ariane 5 launch, along with two of the four state-of-the-art science instruments optimized for infrared observation of the Universe, and support for scientific operations.”
It’d better make it into space. Imagine if the damn thing blew up seconds after leaving the launch pad.
Just going to say the same exact thing…after all the time and all the budget overruns….I shudder to think
I wish the Webb could have been built in space. Having all our eggs in one basket makes me really nervous.
We don’t have the technology to built in space. Anyways, than wouldn’t make it any more less risky. A launch with critical components like the mirrors could go wrong.
So true. Some of us have been beating the drum for development of in situ materials acquisition and fabrication/construction as a precursor to other activities for a long time.
The mentality that everything must be built at the bottom of a gravity well and then heaved into space at enormous expense is the chief drag on space exploration. The search for ‘cheap’ access to space is a fool’s errand.
Even a liberal arts major can master enough physics to know that ain’t gonna happen.
Just tilting at windmills.
It’s not the “blowing up” part that is scary, it’s the sheer number of moving components in this beast that must be precisely and accurately deployed in order for it to work. If it had been built in space, for example at the space station, it could have been assembled and boosted to L2 in a deployed state. With the design being used, it had better work because there’s no way to fix it.