James Webb Space Telescope Closer To the Axe

astroengine writes "This could be considered 'strike two' for the deeply troubled James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Last week, the House Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Subcommittee made the recommendation that the advanced infrared space telescope be cancelled. On Wednesday, the full House Science, Space and Technology Committee has approved the subcommittee's plan. The project may not be dead yet — the 2012 budget still has to be voted on my the House and Senate — but it sure is looking grim for 'Hubble's replacement.'"

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

Mismanagment at NASA is shocking. I do IT work for several NASA funded earth science programs. They'll award you a 1 year grant and then it takes 13-14 months for the money to show up. Then they bitch about how you didn't spend the money in time. They are swining the budget axe across the board becuase they are re-routing all that money into the new manned space flight program. Whatever they call it now that Constellation is canceled, even though it uses the same vehicles as Constellation. Manned space flight is just a corporate welfare program for Boeing and Lockheed. It's also pork for the districts where the components are built. If you want proof, just look at the requirements: Make it cheaper and safer than the Shuttle, but use the same expensive dangerous components (SSME, SRB, ET) as the shuttle built by the same people. The fact that congress is making this high level engineering decisions for NASA is insane. It's fundamentally broken.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[flaming error]

> Is mismanagement really that bad at NASA?
From everybody I know who's ever worked with them.... yes.

One of my friends had a five man company that made some esoteric part. NASA liked it, thought they could use it on the ISS. They made a deal. Which included NASA sending two guys to observe those five guys, full time, for eight months. The widgeteers had an aggressive development schedule they had to meet, and they had to do it while being continuously audited by two empty-headed challengeatrons.

Another friend ran a machine shop, and he got a NASA deal and they paid for him to build a second story to house a huge water tank and pressure chamber for testing, then NASA walked away.

Except for a couple pockets of competence like JPL, I think NASA serves mainly as a pork barrel.

Read the writing on the wall

[elrous0]

No one will openly say it, but the U.S. doesn't have the money for space projects anymore. No politician wants to be the first to say it (because Americans don't like to hear anything besides "We're Number One!!!!"), so they're just quietly defunding everything.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[the gnat]

The NIH seems to function slightly better than NASA. Are there significant differences in the way Congress handles the two? Is the existence of private partners like Big Pharma enough to make the NIH work even with Congress' failings?

The other reply mentioned the main reason - the final funding decisions are largely in the hands of peer reviewers rather than Congressmen. But I'd also add that the NIH sponsors competing projects, which provides added motivation for the grant recipients to get something done as quickly as possible without wasting too much money. (It's basically applying the logic of free-market economics to public sector research.) The influence of Big Pharma is actually pretty minimal, although it can't hurt politically (nearly every PhD scientist working in biotech or pharma was funded by the NIH at some point). It's certainly nothing like the aerospace industry that depends on NASA for a large part of its business.

Re:So Painfully Frustrating

[SecurityGuy]

They're not, actually. A frightening amount of the nonsense that got us into this mess is precisely what they teach you NOT to do in business school. Unfortunately, organizations are often run by people with huge egos who are motivated solely by power and wealth. These qualities serve you well in getting to the top of an organization. They don't predispose you to listen to people who actually know things, whether those people have MBAs or PhDs, or whatever degree in a technical discipline you happen to favor.

Honestly, most of the nutty things I see done in business are done by people in leadership positions who don't have MBAs.