Keeping NASA’s Next Space Telescope Under Control: Q&A with Scott Willoughby, Space.com
“The $8.8 billion observatory has become synonymous with cost overruns, and last summer, House appropriators recommended scrapping the project entirely. But JWST survived, and in November, President Barack Obama granted NASA $17.8 billion for the 2012 fiscal year, which included full funding for the observatory. Still, the project remains a source of contention, and critics claim that JWST is tying up valuable funds from other worthy science missions. Obama’s proposed 2013 budget for NASA revealed earlier this week, for example, includes deep cuts to planetary science missions to help pay for JWST.”
NASA’s Webb telescope: Revolutionary design, runaway costs, LA Times
“The delays boosted the cost even more. By last year, the cost estimate to build the telescope hit $8 billion, not including about $940 million in contributions by international partners and about $800 million NASA will spend for five years of operation. The launch date slipped from 2014 to 2018, meaning an army of experts will have to keep working years more on the project. In the past, NASA could tap reserves in its larger budget to get through technical problems, but those funding pools have dried up, Howard said.”
Obama’s NASA budget: Mars takes a hit, but space science isn’t dead, Christian Science Monitor
“To be sure, in President Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget proposal, two major Mars missions for 2016 and 2018 lost a budgetary wrestling match with the replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Web Space Telescope. But Mr. Obama’s plan also includes money to begin preliminary studies on a mission to Saturn’s moon Enceladus, as well as an orbiter-probe mission to Uranus.”
“But Mr. Obama’s plan also includes money to begin preliminary studies
on a mission to Saturn’s moon Enceladus, as well as an orbiter-probe
mission to Uranus.”Gosh, I am so sick of this game played equally by republicans and democrats. Remember the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter? The one that said for 10 years we were going to get serious about planetary exploration and new technologies? The one that was constantly delayed right up until the time it was cancelled? The point is not that visiting Enceladus, Uranus, and JIMO are not good ideas. They are excellent ideas! Even if they fail we will learn something. The point is putting it off indefinitely into the future for others to deal with and refusing to cooperate with other space agencies such as ESA insures it won’t happen. NASA and our elected public officials from both parties has been playing this game since 1973.
The James Web Telescope is becoming another MSL money-wise. The administration is playing a “robbing Peter to pay Paul” game here and I’m afraid if the “sleeping” public fail to wake up and see this game being played, it’s going to get worse. JSL just might see the light and finally be launched but the taxpayers are paying a heavy price, economically.
Starting to become an MSL money-wise?
I disagree, JWST surpassed MSL in 2006 and never looked back. JWST is the white elephant in the room destroying, ripping apart, SMD and no one will acknowledge it.
But it is happening… Sadly, the politicians and NASA will only realize this in 2014 (maybe 2015?). By this time where will we as a nation be as it pertains to space science? Can we really trust any projections coming from this budget, this congress, this white house?
Nope.
Respectfully,Andrew GasserTEA Party in Space
I wonder if there’s anything to be inferred from a “we can look from here but we’re not planning to *go* there” kind of shift in funding? “We can do all of our space science from Low Earth Orbit”…
JWST won’t be in LEO. In fact, it’ll be outside of cis-lunar space.
But if we can look from “here” without “planning to go there”, and answer the questions we want to answer, then sure, why not? If you’re trying to establish whether boots leave footprints, then, well, maybe you just have to send people!
There is certainly no “shift in funding” going on of the kind you’re referring to. That’s just made up out of whole cloth. The FY13 budget for human space flight is essentially identical to the FY12 appropriation. The Science budget is actually a bit lower.
One thing that seems to have been neglected in the whole JWST fiasco is that a line has now been crossed that had never been crossed before. That is, money to continue the mission (an extra $300M this year alone) is, in large part, being taken out of other science divisions. NASA said last year it intended take half of this overrun out of Planetary, Astrophysics and Heliophysics, and in the final budget nothing came out of (what little is left of) Astrophysics or Heliophysics. So although you won’t see any arrows in the budget number rows, it’s pretty clear that the hit to Mars exploration came in no small measure because of JWST.
The aspect of all this that annoys me is that I don’t believe for a second that the decisions made and being made about JWST and its funding have anything to do with its scientific value (the telescope or the mission). As petty as my suggestions may seem, I think that those politicians who continue to support it do so only because they did so previously, and worse, they did so previously either as pork for their constituency or, worse again, because other politicians whom they “oppose” where calling for canceling JWST (a new kind of star wars). They can hardly make the right decisions if they’re acting for the wrong reasons.
The often asked question of whether JWST is worth the money it’s costing has becoming almost too difficult to answer because there is so much collateral BS hanging off of it.
Steve