NASA Money Sponge Update

Editorial: Identify JWST’s Bill Payers, editorial, Space News
“… the Space Launch System, which per the House and Senate spending bills is slated to receive nearly $2 billion next year, is an appropriate bill payer for JWST. Given that NASA has no established exploration destination requiring the heavy-lift rocket on the schedule mandated by Congress, stretching out its development to help fund an observatory of undeniable scientific merit — its substantial problems notwithstanding — is a fair trade.”
JWST and SLS: Dueling Giant Money Sponges, earlier post
“So, we have one giant money sponge (JWST) already sucking up dollars with yet another money sponge (SLS) on the drawing board. Since the money simply is not there to do either project to begin with, trying to do both of them together will devour funds from smaller NASA programs. It will also pit these money sponges’ ever-growing chronic need for dollars against the other’s similar insatiable appetite. And all of this will happen while the Federal budget is almost certainly going to be constrained – regardless of who wins the 2012 election. So, will someone explain to me how NASA is going to build and launch both JWST and SLS and have money left over to do all of the other things that it is both chartered to do – and directed to do – by Congress?”