1. catdynamics
  2. JWST hanging out there

JWST hanging out there

By catdynamics on March 26, 2011.

Savage article on JWST history and funding from Ron Cowen at Science News.

""It's a game of you lie and I'll swear to it," says Michael Griffin, NASA's administrator from April 2005 to January 2009. "The whole community talks itself into unrealistic cost estimates.... Everyone knows it's wrong. Every engineer knows it's utterly without foundation, but engineers aren't making the decisions.""

If only an experienced engineer had headed NASA at the critical time, ensuring realistic cost estimates and funding profiles with guidance from HQ...

This is going back to the Casani report on JWST - read it and weep if you haven't already.

NASA really has hung JWST out there, on its own, dummy funding profile, waiting for either line item funding from Congress, or a push from the White House - inviting it to be cut as a trophy project.
'course having been hung out there, there is no guarantee the funding wedge comes back to Astrophysics if it is cut.

Not good.

Tags
astro
Politics

More like this

Jinxed Wishful Space Telescope
As everybody knows, there is one thing you must never do before launch, and that is name it. Total jinx. Not of course that we are superstitious, that'd be silly. Some of us just cringed when the Next Generation Space Telescope was given a proper name by an over keen administrator while still in…
NASA proposed budget
President's proposed 2008 NASA budget all glorious 623 pages, in full colour PDF. So, where to begin: Here is the slide version for lite readin' NASAwatch has a good summary of links, including Griffin's spin Science opines The bottom line is roughly as Science notes - the story is in the out year…
NASA: wiping the slate clean
IXO and LISA are dead and disbanded as NASA missions. We are looking at a very thin pipeline and few new missions for a while, unless there is drastic new direction from above and strong guidance on funding. NASA is a mission oriented agency. This is especially true of Astrophysics. At any given…
NASA cuts
So, got confirmation of initial round of cuts. NASA HQ is preparing for budget problems by starting to pull back funds already allocated, in anticipation of fiscal year 2010-11 cuts. Between possible government shutdown, and the uncertainty over the Senate response to the House cuts, and a…

How much of this is simply a combination of musical chairs and ass-covering? As far as I can tell, effectively Congress originally asked NASA to build a $1B telescope on the condition that it be built for $500M, NASA said "sure, we estimate that JWST will cost (scratches head) exactly $500M," and this unreality has been built in from the beginning. (Substitute $4B and $2B for extra realism.)

Now everyone from Griffin on down is pointing fingers and saying "It's your fault for conspiring with me to underestimate the cost." And Congress is shocked, shocked that there is bad budgeting going on here. Of course I recognize that you don't get anywhere by pointing out Congressional creation-of-own-reality to Congress.