Posted on 08/29/2011 6:11:34 AM PDT by IbJensen
The next generation space telescope is several hundred percent over budget and is stealing cash from other worthy science projects at NASA.
The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, named for the Apollo-era NASA administrator, has been eagerly anticipated by astronomers for years. It would allow scientists to view events and objects much further from earth and much further back in time than even the spectacular but aging Hubble. In fact, it is designed to see all the way back to the beginning of time.
Sadly, they may be disappointed. A couple months ago, Florida Today ran an exposé on the program, which is far behind schedule, with costs ballooning several hundred percent over the original estimates:
Decision-makers initially were told the observatory would cost $1.6 billion and launch this year on a mission to look deeper into space and further back in time than the Hubble Space Telescope, in a quest for new clues about the formation of our universe and origins of life.
NASA now says the telescope can’t launch until at least 2018, though outside analysts suggest the flight could slip past 2020. The latest estimated price tag: up to $6.8 billion. NASA admits the launch delay will push the bill even higher.
Sadly, as the paper points out in a follow-up editorial, this isn’t anomalous behavior at the space agency — it’s typical:
…the shuttle fleet and International Space Station both came in far behind schedule, weighed down by 45 percent increases from their original price estimates, according to the Government Accountability Office, the financial watchdog arm of Congress.
Ditto NASA’s Constellation moon program, which a presidential blue ribbon panel said was on a fiscally “unsustainable trajectory” that doomed it.
And, just recently, NASA said the new heavy-lift rocket [the Space Launch System, aka the Senate Launch System] it wants to send astronauts on future deep-space missions from Kennedy Space Center would cost $9 billion and come in two years behind its mandated 2016 completion date.
Now, the telescope problem has gotten even worse. Last week, Aviation Week reported that the latest cost estimates for the new telescope are now up to $8.7B, and it has kicked off an intra-agency fight for funds, pitting space science against human spaceflight:
The flagship observatory is currently funded entirely through NASA’s science division; now NASA is requesting that more than US$1 billion in extra costs be shared 50:50 with the rest of the agency. The request reflects administrator Charles Bolden’s view, expressed earlier this month, that the telescope is a priority not only for the science programme, but for the entire agency.
Unfortunately, there’s not enough money to spread around, particularly since the latest cost estimates for the Senate Launch System and new crew capsule have ballooned to almost forty billion (and that’s likely low).
The problem goes right to the top — the fish rots from the head down. Last fall, NASA Watch reported on the management mess that caused this:
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) project started under NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Associate Administrator Ed Weiler. Virtually all of its chronic and unabated cost increases and schedule slips have occurred under Weiler’s watch either at NASA HQ or at NASA [Goddard Space Flight Center]. When former SMD [Associate Administrator] Alan Stern tried to bring the escalating costs of programs such as JWST and Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) under control, in 2008, multiple NASA sources note that [then-Deputy Administrator] Chris Scolese and Ed Weiler maneuvered to force Stern’s resignation, in a classic NASA “shoot the messenger” move, with Weiler taking Stern’s place within barely a week.
And of course it will help the PRIVATE COMPANY SPACE X succeed using public funds you so skillfully write are NOT required for the success of Space X. And this is just the beginning: Florida vows $7 Million expansion budget for Space X. Another $2.3 million from the economic development agency Space Florida. another $5 million for “construction” purposes for Space X. $75 million and counting from NASA contracts. Funding from the Department of Transportation of $16 million for spaceport infrastructure. Funding from NASA for at least twenty launches.
“That Musk CEO of SpaceX seems to feel entitled to tax-payer-funded subsidies and even uses free enterprise rhetoric to defend it is bizarre to the point of being surreal.” from SpaceX’s Elon Mush Goes to Washington.associated content.com
I guess it’s not pork if your the pig.
It is a longstanding NASA policy (with total complicity of certain members of congress) to sell a program based on minimal estimates, and then to get incremental approvals as the program becomes “too big” to kill. The 45% growth cited for the programs above does not begin to tell the story.
The jealousy of the space programs’ unmanned elements and arrogance of the manned elements(with the resulting back-biting and outright opposition to funding for the other element by both NASA and congressional supporters) has done more to kill the space program than even the massive erosion of management and technical skills due to focus on multi-culturism.
Absolutely disgusting.
“The US no longer knows how to build anything of substance on time or anywhere near its budget.”
Industry and government collude to turn $1 billion into $10 billion. The contracts are written so this is possible. Companies under bid and then make it up when the customer constantly changes the contract’s scope. A fighter that starts as a fighter must suddenly be a bomber, a fuel hauler, an electronic warfare center and a 10 furrow Mach 2.5 corn plow. The cost which would really have been only 2 times the bid price is now 10 times the bid price. The officers and government officials get paid off with jobs or political support. Many times, I’ve seen maps showing that sub-contracts are in virtually every Congressional district. I’ve seen companies relocate to a new Congressman’s district just to get one more vote.
Inability to produce high quality goods on time has nothing to do companies, talent or capabilities. It has to do with the political process by which the United States buys these things.
Ping.
While I don’t disagree with what you’ve said I feel that a couple points were left out:
1) Refusal to allow for any chance of error/failure - impacts every program I’ve been a part of in business over the past 10 years as well as most govt related projects
and
2) Refusal to delegate any decisions of import which imposes central planned decision making resulting in multiple repeated second guessing events and a resulting slow down in decision making and efficiency
The fundamental paradigm has shifted. It's no longer the destination, it's the journey. If you consider NASA, Metro extention, etc, not as projects that have a use, but as ongoing pipelines that take money from the taxpayers pockets and move it to the bank accounts of the politically well connected and to overpaid government bureaucrats, then everything is working EXACTLY as intended.
There are rail heads, space heads, etc. even on this supposedly conservative forum who laud government spending as long as it is on THEIR pet project whether it be high speed rail (a solution for which there is no problem) or manned space flight (fabulously expensive boondoggle) or whatever, but then with selective clarity of vision see welfare as the destructive force that it is. Kill it all and go back to what the constitution says we should spend and nothing else.
The only possible exception that I can understand is SS because millions have paid trillions into it with the expectation that they'd get back their contributions (of course the lying politicians and their corrupt bureaucrats spent the money as soon as. sooner than it hit their greedy sh!thooks, but that is another matter)
If there was an emergency at KSC and NASA had to build itself an emergency outhouse, I’d pity the grounds crew.
Remember that if the US(or any) Government were in charge of the Sahara Desert w/in a year there would be a shortage of sand.
If you drill down in that PJM article and read the Aviation Leak article, they are talking about parking this telescope at LaGrange Point #2 (a million miles or so from Earth) and operating it there for only five years.
We have absolutely no way to retrieve it from L2, (even if the shuttles were still flying, they cannot go beyond low earth orbit) or send a repair/service crew out that far to fix it when it breaks.
Using government funds to name a government funded project after an ex employee paid for with government funds.
“If there was an emergency at KSC and NASA had to build itself an emergency outhouse, I’d pity the grounds crew.”
It would start out at six square feet with one hole. Ten years later, it would be 40,000 square feet and have constant coded communications world-wide. There would be no place to take a sh*t.
Or, like the Hubble, when it starts out broken.
Spirit and Opportunity.
The ouster of Barack Obama from the presidency in 2012 !!!
It wouldn't be the first time we came from behind to take the lead (i.e. Sputnik)... Let's find the resources and the people, people.
Exactly. This much money being spend on a one shot deal that absolutely has to have every single component work perfectly and completely free from any possible intervention once the booster lights off on the launch pad.
It might make more sense to assemble it in orbit, say at the ISS, then launch it into place from there. But the ISS is no more useful for a mission like that than it is for any other defined purpose I can think of other than to give the Russians a place to hang out in low earth orbit and break their own endurance records.
For as much money as they are spending on a one shot, highly risky mission like Webb, I would expect to see a full time manned observatory at L2, but that is such a fantasy it doesn’t merit serious discussion here....
Wow. No Webb/Hubble jokes? What has become of FreeRepublic?
“So what position in the “Space Race” does America find herself now?”
Having worked with NASA, I can attest that NASA is a gigantic drogue chute. They are entirely risk averse and will never, never made a decision because the consequences then might be laid at their feet. NASA needs replacement; down to the paint on the walls. Nothing there can be salvaged. “Space” needs to go commercial with an entrepreneurial profit motive. Science projects, like space telescopes are nice, but let’s wait until a (for example) semiconductor manufacturer has made getting there and back dirt cheap.
At a Langrange point the telescope will find itself in the company of dust and rocks. Not ideal.
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