NASA Holds Teleconference About Space Telescope Review Report, NASA
“NASA will hold a media teleconference at 5 p.m. EST today to discuss an independent review panel’s report on the status of the James Webb Space Telescope project.
NASA established the James Webb Space Telescope Independent Comprehensive Review Panel at the request of Sen. Barbara Mikulski, chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Science and Related Agencies. The review panel was chaired by John Casani of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.”
Marc’s note: : Here’s the report: James Webb Space Telescope Independent Comprehensive Review Panel: Final Report (1 MB PDF) — Nov. 10, 2010
“The problems causing cost growth and schedule delays on the JWST Project are associated with budgeting and program management, not technical performance. The technical performance on the Project has been commendable and often excellent. However, the budget baseline accepted at the Confirmation Review did not reflect the most probable cost with adequate reserves in each year of project execution. This resulted in a project that was simply not executable within the budgeted resources.”

“Minimum Cost-to-Launch
The earliest launch date possible–and hence the minimum cost to complete–is September 2015 and would require an additional ~$250 million above the current FY 2011 President’s Budget profile in both 2011 and 2012. In addition, the critical management change noted above, along with the restructuring of the JWST Project office, supplemented by additional changes outlined in the report, must go “hand-in-hand” with additional funding.
In the time available, it was not possible to do an independent estimate of the cost-to-complete. As such, the Panel approached the question from several different points of view as described later in this report, leading to a judgment that the total LCC will be in the range of $6.2 billion to $6.8 billion. The Panel adopted an LCC of $6.5 billion on which to base its profile. Going forward, a bottoms-up estimate validated by an independent analysis and at least two independent cost estimates (ICEs) is required. Although not explicitly accounted for in the Panel numbers, there may be a number of low probability threats whose occurrence could cause an additional year delay in launch and a correspondingly higher cost. “