NASA Again Delays Launch of Troubled Webb Telescope (nytimes.com) 108
In a blow to NASA's prestige and its budget, America's next great space telescope has been postponed again. From a report: NASA announced on Wednesday that the James Webb Space Telescope, once scheduled to be launched into orbit around the sun this fall, will take three more years and another billion dollars to complete. A report delivered to NASA by an independent review board estimated that the cost of the troubled Webb telescope would now be $9.66 billion, and that it would not be ready to launch until March 30, 2021.
3/2 of LHC (Score:2)
Re:Time for a special project (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the project just should be canned.
If not falling for the sunk cost fallacy, but completely disregarding how much we have already spent, will the now needed money (and realistically, multiply it by 3) buy us something that gives us more than if the money is spent on something else?
If the latter, axe the project.
And given how old and outdated this project already is, my inclination is to spend that money on new technology for new problems, not what was designed 15-11 years ago, and will still cost us more now than what was budgeted back then.
Re:Time for a special project (Score:4, Insightful)
Would you rather spend another 9 billion on a new one, or a billion finishing this one?
What makes you think we would be successful with some other technology if we can't be with this one?
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Would you rather spend another 9 billion on a new one, or a billion finishing this one?
This project has grown Too Big To Fail . . .
Yeah but wouldn't you rather find the aliens (Score:2)
before they find us????
You have to look at the big picture....:-)
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It's not old, it's not outdated, and the sunk cost fallacy is inappropriate in this case. If the project is scrapped, NASA has a ten billion dollar paperweight sitting in a warehouse because you don't want the government to spend the equivalent of pocket change on a space telescope.
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It's not old, it's not outdated, and the sunk cost fallacy is inappropriate in this case. If the project is scrapped, NASA has a ten billion dollar paperweight sitting in a warehouse because you don't want the government to spend the equivalent of pocket change on a space telescope.
Another billion dollar (and it's likely going to exceed that) is not pocket change. It's more than the original cost estimate for the entire mission.
For comparison, the New Horizons program cost around $700 million all in all. Dawn was around $500 million.
And new technologies not available at the time those missions were planned, and certainly not when JWT was planned, are available now, giving more bang for the buck.
This is a prime example of sunken cost fallacy, where people feel obliged to continue bec
Re: Time for a special project (Score:2)
The U.S. government wastes that on bridges to nowhere, Trump's golfing excursions and funding strip club excursions by the U.S. military.
So, yes, if they don't give a shit about those, then set billion is chump change.
Besides which, it's about the ROI . The military either offers no ROI, or a negative value depending on whether cleaning up the mess afterwards counts. The telescope has positive ROI, so the net cost is below the sticker price.
The U.S. subsidizes coal and oil to the tune of hundreds of billion
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The telescope has positive ROI
Please explain. What exactly is our investment returning? What is the value of what it returns?
Re:Time for a special project (Score:5, Informative)
I understand the sunk cost fallacy angle.
But why do you assume it's old and outdated? If we got it into the air, it'd be humanity's best telescope. Even 15 years after it's initial design.
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You clearly have no understanding of what this project is, what it actually means to "spend money" in a national economy, nor what the implications of what you are proposing are.
It's easy, isn't it, to make naive suggestions based on zero understanding of the actual project, issues involved, alternatives and budgetary projections?
Aside from easy, it's also very damaging to go around eroding trust in the amazing projects and opportunities that are being worked on so hard every day.
Re: Time for a special project (Score:2)
Go join a Gorean community if you can't handle a modern society.
Canned and replaced by what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Our atmosphere is opaque to infrared. So any infrared astronomy has to be done from space. Hubble can only do partial infrared (specifically near-infrared), not the rest of the infrared spectrum.
Infrared is needed because it can peer through dust clouds. See this image of Eagle Nebula in visible vs. near infrared [skyandtelescope.com] by Hubble to see the difference.
JWST works mainly in infrared, near and far. Moreover, it has much more aperture than Hubble (~ 2.4 meters vs 6.5 meters).
All this means that JWST can see back in time when the first stars that shined in the cosmos, and shed light on how the Big Bang progressed. Important stuff, and no instrument compares to its capabilities.
Re: Canned and replaced by what? (Score:2)
Agreed, but I'd like to see an interferometry array. Space telescopes are necessarily small, so we need multiple to get the resolution and sensitivity.
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> Our atmosphere is opaque to infrared
What? How can you possibly believe that? Have you ever looked at a solar spectrum? Gebus:
http://www.coseti.org/atmosphe.htm
Yes, there's some rather large holes, but there's also some rather larger areas that are even more transparent than visible. The key ~5 micron area is indeed blocked, but that doesn't stop all sorts of IR work here on the ground - you know, like the "NASA Infrared Telescope Facility"
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Yes, you are right, it is not totally opaque. But there are holes [wikipedia.org], like you said.
And still, water vapour in our atmosphere absorbs a lot of infrared. Water is a green house gas. So the best observation for IR is above the atmosphere.
So to get over the holes and water vapour, we have things like like SOFIA [wikipedia.org], which is not 6 meters, and then you have JWST with the sun shield.
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You can't export a commodity you don't have.
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A product of NASA's "faster, better, cheaper" phase. With this announcement, it is now $9.16B over initial budget ($500M) and 14 years late. On top of which, unanticipated (in 1996) improvement in the the capabilities of (cheaper) large Earth based telescopes purportedly will largely obviate the need for the visible spectrum capability.
Is it worth finishing and launching this thing, for the IR capabilities? I suppose so. But I won't be heartbroken if "they" finally get fed up and cancel the project. Ma
Re: Time for a special project (Score:2)
You can't do infrared from Earth. There is no Earth-based telescope that can do it, nor will there ever be. You know this, so why create complaints you know are bogus?
If it's costing too much, it's because people demanded the lowest bid rather than the best bid and then demanded NASA have a smaller budget AND THEN kept changing NASA's directives.
Give it the money needed to do the job, then get the hell out of the way.
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> There is no Earth-based telescope that can do it, nor will there ever be
That will be a great surprise to the many people with IR telescopes.
Use Google.
Re:Space Force (Score:5, Funny)
Duct-tape an AR-15 onto it, spray on a camo paint job, and call it a SPACE FORCE unmanned recon ship. Funding guaranteed!
(Of course that could have dire consequences, [wired.com] but doesn't everything these days?)
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Duct-tape an AR-15 onto it, spray on a camo paint job, and call it a SPACE FORCE unmanned recon ship. Funding guaranteed!
The good news would be that a military JWST would be up and running in no time. The bad news is that it would now cost $100 billion.
"In a blow to NASA's prestige and its budget" (Score:1)
LOL. In fact, LOLOLOLOLOLOL.
It was supposed to launch 11 years ago and cost less than $1Bn.
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A good rule of thumb for US (both federal and state) government projects it 3x the initial projected cost.
That's what happens when someone is spending other people's money. The power aspect is the only concern, money is power, they like power, so they spend like it's free.
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A good rule of thumb for US (both federal and state) government projects it 3x the initial projected cost.
The problem is that the JWST has gone WAY over the normal 3x threshold. Most internal budgeting goes by the 3x rule, so that is expected and planned for, since everybody knows how the "lowball-approve-jackup" game is played. But by grossly exceeding that threshold, JWST has become known as "the telescope that ate astronomy" since so much money has been diverted from other projects.
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That's what happens when someone is spending other people's money.
This is what happens with cost-plus contracting instead of fixed price contracting.
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This is what happens with cost-plus contracting instead of fixed price contracting.
This seems like a good idea but what you actually get is no company will sign such a big contract with so many risks. The threats to the company are simply too large. If something goes wrong -- something not always under the control of the contractor -- it can easily bankrupt the company when billions of dollars are on the line. Then NASA gets left with a half-completed project, a bankrupt company that can't finish it, and all the money spent up to that point was wasted.
What's really needed here is reali
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3x of original estimate? Are you kidding? The Hubble had original estimate of $400 million and it has costed $10 billion by 2010 and it is considered one of the most successful project based on cost benefit. It was supposed to be launched in 1983 but it was launched in 1990, however, the telescope had a fatal error which was fixed later in 1994.
JWST had estimate of $4.5 billion in 2005 and launch in 2011. Now estimate of $10 billion and launch in 2021. But this was expected. European Herschel telescope laun
Sticker shock (Score:3)
... the cost of the troubled Webb telescope would now be $9.66 billion.
Getting close to the $13 billion cost of the latest US aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) [marketwatch.com] and twice as much as the earlier Nimitz class [wikipedia.org] aircraft carriers at $4.5 billion each. AND I imagine the flight-deck on the Webb will be*much* shorter.
I know they're apples and nuclear-powered oranges, but damn. The Hubble Space Telescope [wikipedia.org] only cost $4.7 billion by the time it launched.
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I know they're apples and nuclear-powered oranges, but damn. The Hubble Space Telescope [wikipedia.org] only cost $4.7 billion by the time it launched.
If those are 1990 dollars then Hubble actually cost around $9 billion in today's dollars. Though to be fair, I'm not sure if all of those 9.66 billion JWST dollars are in 2018 dollars.
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Also, JWST is WAY more capable that Hubble. It is like comparing apples to watermelons.
Re: Sticker shock (Score:2)
The political problem with JWST's cost is that it might offer lots of things Hubble can't do, but unfortunately, JWST is more of a *complement* to Hubble than a literal *replacement* for it. When Hubble finally goes kaput, it'll be a loss for generations since there isn't even a true replacement on the table despite its official EOL approaching within a decade or so.
We can only cross our fingers & hope that when the time comes, SpaceX will be in a position to step up to the plate & drag NASA kicking
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Especially when it takes so long, technology is rapidly improving and they must have changed to newer camera's etc. since the first design.
Just look at the technical and price development of an iPhone over this same period and you realise this increase is nothing special.
Unless you want to launch 9 year old tech...
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Does that include the $1B or so it cost to fix Hubble? You have to remember when they launched Hubble, the mirror distorted a tiny amount causing it to produce blurry images (basically the mirror was distorted by less than the thickness of a sheet of paper).
Hubble was the great white elephant that threatened science in the early years until they fixed it.
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It didnâ(TM)t distort. The contractor building the mirror built it solid and polished it perfectly... to the wrong shape.
They saved money by not testing it.
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Yeah, but at least the JWST is useful.
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Is there any way to see a detailed expenditure report of the Webb? Because that really is a truckfull of money.
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PJ O'Rourke's favored paradigm would be a capitalist market in medicine. What we actually have is an interlocking cartel of medieval guilds which uses the force of law to operate healthcare as a monopoly.
My solution: work around the legal barriers by putting free-market healthcare for the general population on Indian reservations. Put medical buildings and dental centers right next to the casino, which everyone already knows how to find.
Re: Government doesn't scale (Score:2)
Or use a public controlled system like any European country with cost half of the US, but better service quality and access to almost everyone.
Re: Government doesn't scale (Score:2)
SpaceX uses technology which has already been developed elsewhere. Therefore, they know what to expect. The Webb is new. Many parts of it have never existed before. Therefore, it is impossible to use other projects as a baseline for cost estimation.
Again? (Score:2, Funny)
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..Or he's got a very dry sense of humor. Kind of hard to tell in print tho.
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..Or he's got a very dry sense of humor. Kind of hard to tell in print tho.
Judging by his other posts, I expect he is serious and the reason he hates Musk so much is because his space factory plans aren't being recognized for their genius and acted on by SpaceX.
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The cost of setting up a "space factory" would be orders of magnitude more than anything like this...
You're also forgetting that such an endeavor would make it difficult for a politician to channel funds to his/her home district, thus they have no incentive to even consider it even if the other challenges were removed.
Follow the money. Always follow the money. When billions of dollars are being flung about like they're pocket change you can bet decisions are driven by whose pockets are being lined instead of what actually makes sense for the project.
Another year (Score:4, Insightful)
It was only four months ago [slashdot.org] that they kicked JWST out to 2020. SLS got delayed to 2019 and is now being audited by the OIG; expect that report to be another shit show, followed by another delay to 2020.
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SpaceX was able to deliver the Falcon 9 and Heavy, the world's most advanced orbital rockets, in less time than NASA has spent on the SLS and with the chump change NASA paid them to develop them. NASA of course would be incapable of doing the same with that same money, the SLS proves it. They really should get out of the rocket building business. The should focus on exploration and buy seats on commercial flights. As for JWST, sadly there is no SpaceX equivalent in the probe market. I wonder if maybe they a
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Private business was happy to suck up NASA funding for decades. Elon Musk is obviously superior, a guy driven by a long term goal (Mars) rather than shareholder value.
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Just Kill SLS, fund BFR and save money. Keep the Atlas and Delta for high priority military projects (these are actually used by Air Force). Given the 30 year lead up to Webb, probably better launch that on a Delta IV for now. Use Space X, Blue Origin, Orbital/ATK etc for everything else. SLS is threatening to become another shuttle white elephant for NASA, sucking up the money leaving little left for actual science.
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JWST will be launching on Ariane 5 out of Kourou, French Guiana. The launch is part of the ESA's contribution to the project.
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If you kill the SLS, be ready for all state support for NASA to dry up soon after. It so happens NASA's congressional support is dependent upon it injecting a good deal of federal funding into local state economies nation-wide.
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Threatening? Look at the NASA budget breakdown -- the vast majority is tied up in boondoggles. The portion devoted to actual science and ongoing missions is pitiful.
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Ironically, James Webb was one of the non-nerd bureaucrats that ran NASA, coming from a background as heading the Bureau of Business for president Truman.
it's still worth to wait. (Score:2)
It's not good news, however considering potential science return it's still worth. This telescope will have capability of taking spectras from exoplanets - potentially finding signatures for habitability or even life.
With regard to the cost, treading into unknown is inherent to any discovery, thus the costs are hard to predict, "we do it not because it's easy, but because it's hard". In my opinion unlimited fund is not OK, however little bit over the current cost is acceptable (even though so much over-bud
Re:Remove all the private contractors (Score:4, Interesting)
Part of the problem with NASAs cost is congressional mandates as pork barell to districts with the plants. Shelby comes to mind. If NASA were more independent of congress perhaps their engineers could exert more discipline on their suppliers and select based on best value?
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I think SpaceX has got the reliability but why would they want that business? They seem to have a pretty full manifest and nobody's going to remember the JWST for the low launch cost. So worst case it blows up and SpaceX gets the blame for setting astronomy back a decade. Best case they get a few bucks and a passing grade. And it's trivial to spin as a "money is no object" launch where they just didn't care what was the most cost-effective option. I mean they got national security payloads and are in the pr
And the name (Score:2)
Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm old enough to remember the industrial revolution, but I don't remember the Hubble being an expensive boondoggle. It was delayed by the Challenger disaster and had to be powered up and kept in a clean room for three years which was costly, but that wasn't the fault of the project itself. When it was proposed Congress agreed to fully fund the program, but the Senate cut the budget by 50%, which was then made up by ESA.
If you have evidence that it was an expensive boondoggle, I'd like to see that. It co
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Don't forget to add the cost of the shuttle servicing missions to Hubble's total cost. And don't forget about the primary mirror being the wrong shape. Hubble is one of humanity's greatest accomplishments, but it has not been cheap.
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Only the first servicing mission (STS-61) was to correct the flawed lenses. The rest were upgrades. The entire shuttle mission was devoted to the fix at a cost of $450M adjusted for inflation. Total cost is still under $500M or 1/20th of the Webb.
Look, I'm not saying that the Webb is not worth it. I'm just saying that the Hubble wasn't a boondoggle. It was cool science on a low budget that may have needed some fixes and upgrades, but it wasn't a boondoggle.
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But after it was fixed, the real science started, and it was freaking amazing. It didn't take long for people to start to see the value of it. I expect the same to happen with the Webb once it's online and results start coming back.
So much for the No More Land Based Telescopes idea (Score:1)
Twenty years ago, the Green lobby tried to stop the development of astronomy in Arizona, first with a fake endangered species argument and then with a fake native claims argument:
https://link.springer.com/chap... [springer.com]
At the time, they claimed that Hawaii was a better location for ground-based telescopes than Arizona because the University of Hawaii owned an astronomy reserve on the summit of Mauna Kea, which was well supported by both the international science community and by the local economy. What happened, a
Um this isn't new.... (Score:1)
This behemoth is sitting in a high bay at Northrop Grumman in Huntington Beach at the well known Space Park. Other contractors that worked on it let you tour and take pictures as it's a public funded item. NG has it in a secured facility and no pictures allowed. Delayed over and over again, it's not so much a NASA problem as a NG engineering debockle. They punish their support groups by demanding overnight calibration services as downtime is the devils work, using "work stoppage" and "deadlines" as justif
Re: FRAUD WATSTE AND ABUSE (Score:1)
The latest delay has caused been purely by T***p's insistence that a high-resolution Mexican spotter be added to the telescope.
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Got any documentation for either of those claims? From what I can see, President Dingbat has roughly the same management skills as Hillary Rodham Clinton. Pretty much none whatsoever.
Six major bankruptcies in his projects plus the Trump Shuttle which defaulted on its debts in 1990 but was dismembered by his bankers and sold without declaring bankruptcy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]