Webb Launch Delayed 7 Months Due To COVID-19
James Webb Space Telescope to launch in October 2021, ESA
“The launch of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana is now planned for 31 October 2021. NASA has announced the decision, based on a recently completed schedule risk assessment of the remaining integration and test activities before launch, accounting for impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic and technical challenges. Previously, Webb was targeted to launch in March 2021.”
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Let me guess, it is another delay…
Bingo!
Well, it is “the most complex space telescope for astronomy ever built,” ya know….
Just imagine how many ground based observatories could have been built with this money for an instrument only a fortunate few astronomers will get to use – if it works.
Ground based observatories can’t do the same sorts of things JWST is intended to do. So I might rephrase the question, and ask how many smaller, orbital, IR observatories could have been built for the same money. Many, smaller orbital observatories also couldn’t do everything JWST is designed for. But it would be interesting for someone to look over the goals of JWST and see how many of them (50% possibly) could have been accomplished for a much lower cost by other sorts of observatories.
Roughly a billion dollar space telescope every two years…a series of 10 of them.
Which, for anyone with any project management experience, sounds like the ultimate red flag.
No offense, but that wasn’t exactly a difficult prediction. Something like saying that, tomorrow, the Sun will rise in an easterly direction.
You just cannot make this stuff up. Astrophysics has paid such a horrible price for this “project”.
Yep, what started in 1997 as a $500 million dollar space telescope scheduled to launch in 2007 became an $8.8 billion dollar space telescope that will launch someday…
If only it had been just astrophysics. It’s gutted all NASA space science programs for a decade.
I’m SHOCKED that this telescope might be over budget, or delayed again.
Is that a reference to Claude Rains’ line in the movie, Casablanca? “I am shocked—shocked—to find that gambling is going on in here!”
Here it is:
Shocked! From Casablanca – https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Hahaha. Oh man, this is good. Remember when this was going to launch, 7 years behind, in the unconscionably late date of 2018? Welp, here is to a launch in 2022, as the Cursed Space Telescope will find a way to magically miss 2021 again.
The Covid rationale for the delay is, of course, entirely sensible. But it just underscores how we shouldn’t even be here. This epochal disaster of a program should have launched years before Covid, but never did, and no company or person was really ever held accountable for that. One could anticipate another delay for the JWST as much as one could count on the sun coming up.
It’s honestly hard to even care about this telescope at this point. Nothing it possibly discovers will justify the cost, the delays and the countless programs that the Beast that Ate NASA Most Other Space Observatories denied funding to by virtue of its sheer existence. WFIRST is more interesting.
Part of me chuckles a little at the irony of it all. Back when Columbia happened, you had a bunch of scientists saying that manned space exploration should be cut in favor of unmanned probes and space telescopes that were hugely successful. And yet the twin pillars of NASA’s epochal program management failures of the past 20 years has been BOTH the Constellation/SLS program, and it’s neighbor, the JWST, not immune to being a disaster of a program after all it seems.
THey really should rename it to the “Just… Whatever…. Space Telescope” at this point. Because its gone from being the next big thing to the Zumwalt-class destroyer of space science.
WFIRST is doing a pretty good job of gobbling up anything that looks green.
WFIRST no longer exists. It is the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (NGRST) now.
I know, but I didn’t want to associate Dr. Roman’s name with the money pit.
The first launch date was in 2007, so it is about 15 years behind schedule now.
So 2022 it is (I never trust fourth quarter estimates). Although 2021 is still theoretically possible, they said COVID-19 only accounts for three months of the delay, two months were due to technical issues, then they added two months for schedule padding. So if whatever remaining problems they run into don’t extend things more than four months (two months of that being the padding) then they might squeak it in by the end of 2021. But any more than that and it’s into 2022.
I wonder if this is an indicator that if a project gets too complex it becomes not manageable? Or too much was assumed during definition? I’ve not managed projects anywhere near this size so I’m clueless. I have read previous programs i.e. Shuttle certain concepts were rejected because technological challenges were too much. Obviously what was flown had issues but it actually flew the first time and several times when many senior management were still living.
That’s the basic subject of risk management as practiced by NASA project and program management: know what all the risks are, determine how to deal with them, and if you can’t, descope.
JWST started out with some fairly major known risks and then discovered more along the way. It will become a case study for large project management….
Well, let’s hope it will become a case study on how not to run (or fund) a program. It wasn’t long ago that Congress was quite willing to cancel programs that were over budget, despite the “sunk costs” (reference the Superconducting super-collider, cancelled in 1993 after $2B invested). However, it seems that these days, nothing gets cancelled, including JWST and SLS (and I am sure there are others i am not aware of). Mind you, I would love to see both of these programs succeed, but at what cost? The longer the delays, the more chance of better and cheaper technology catching up with the original design.
I think it is probably past the point of making a reasonable argument for cancelling JWST (not that you are advocating it). Not just because of sunk cost but because of where it is in the process. I’m not sure when the last chance to cancel it was, maybe in 2018 when the previous delay was announced along with an estimate at that time of another 10% cost overrun. Or maybe somewhat earlier than that.
SLS meanwhile hasn’t even flown yet. Of course JWST hasn’t “flown” yet either, but that’s different it’s a one-time instrument. As much as we dread the thought, if JWST fails there will be no additional costs incurred beyond what was already spent up until the failure. In fact there would be cost savings since there won’t be any support needed. Although there would be some cost for shutting down the program, as well as whatever investigations take place. And also that is not taking into consideration the cost of future projects that might pick up some of the lost science, but that’s an intangible that I don’t think can be easily calculated.
But anyway back to SLS, unlike JWST if SLS fails on its test flight or any subsequent flights it will result in huge amounts of additional expenditures on top of what had already been spent. And that would be on top of other likely cost overruns that will occur between now and the first couple of launches. And of course plenty of cost overruns can be expected as later versions of SLS are built. And we can toss in uncertainly about the ultimate need for SLS, as well as alternatives on the horizon. So unlike JWST I don’t think it is too late to reasonably discuss cancelling SLS in spite of how much has been spent so far. Then again I probably shouldn’t include “reason” in the discussion since at this point it doesn’t seem to have much of a role to play.
So does this mean that decadal ‘Flagship’ projects aren’t financially feasible? In my opinion, projects that take 10 years or more run the risk that the primary design parameters that the project is based upon, become either obsolete or insufficient. And changing those parameters on the fly is a recipe for financial disaster
Move over Spruce Goose. We have a modern day Hanger Queen!