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  • Cancel Webb Space Telescope?

    NOT a surprise - the program is way over budget and projected to be more than a decade late - 2022 at the earliest. That and a recent progress report showed a program headed over the cliff.

    Brian Berger, Deputy Editor at Space News, has Tweeted:

    "House CJS mark also terminates funding for [JWST] , which is billions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management"

    UPDATE:



    NASA Budget Bill Would Cancel Webb Telescope

    WASHINGTON — The House appropriations panel that oversees NASA unveiled a 2012 spending bill July 6 that would pull the plug on the budget-busting James Webb Space Telescope as part of a broader $1.6 billion cut that would roll back spending on the nation’s civil space program to pre-2008 levels.

    The $16.8 billion top-line figure, released July 6 in draft legislation from the House Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee, is nearly $2 billion less than U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2012 budget request for NASA.

    The draft appropriations bill, which the subcommittee is scheduled to vote on July 7, also includes $1.95 billion for the Space Launch System — the heavy-lift rocket Congress ordered NASA to build for deep space exploration. The proposed 2012 funding level is $150 million more than the heavy lifter got for 2011, but some $700 million below the amount recommended in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, which became law in October.

    The bill also would provide $812 million for the Joint Polar Satellite System, or JPSS, being developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

    That amount would be an increase of $430 million from the amount appropriated for the program in 2011 but $258 million less than the agency requested. In total, NOAA would receive $4.49 billion next year, $103 million less than was appropriated for 2011 and $1 billion less than the administration’s request for 2012.
    Dr. Mordrid
    ----------------------------
    An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

    I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

  • #2
    Admittedly it's a huge project to accomplish. Have we ever even put anything in L2 before?
    “Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out”
    –The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett

    Comment


    • #3
      Yes.

      ESA: Planck Space Observatory (Cosmic Microwave Background); Herschel Space Observatory (IR and submillimeter); Gaia Observatory (2013 - stellar & galactic cartography, planet hunting, asteroid hunting etc.)

      NASA: Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe - WMAP (another CMB observatory); and a ton more in the next few years.

      Abd there are several at other Lagrange points, one of the best known being the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) at L1.
      Last edited by Dr Mordrid; 7 July 2011, 19:39.
      Dr. Mordrid
      ----------------------------
      An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

      I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

      Comment


      • #4
        Darn right.

        So sell/give it to a private consortium to complete and launch and get NASA out of the business. NASA seems to be pretty good at manufacturing astronauts and PR, so let them do that.

        Comment


        • #5
          Those in the space community who are less generous with how NASA management has been handling large projects have come up with a new term for 'em -

          Vampire Programs

          Constellation (moon program 2), Space Launch System (the current big f'ing rocket program), ISS, Shuttle, JWST etc, because they suck the life, and funding, completely out of smaller, cheaper & more efficient programs.
          Dr. Mordrid
          ----------------------------
          An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

          I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

          Comment


          • #6
            yep. Grew up in the heyday of the Gemini and Apollo programs. Several relatives and many friends in the programs, including the infamous LEM control computer.
            Last edited by degrub; 8 July 2011, 09:32.

            Comment


            • #7
              Not looking good kiddies, the scientists are near giving up....

              MSNBC Cosmic Log....

              Scientists balk at telescope bailout

              The troubles surrounding NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which is often seen as Hubble's successor, are now drawing grumbles from astronomers as well as lawmakers.

              Keeping JWST alive has been a cause celebre for the past couple of months, ever since a House panel proposed cutting off funding for the telescope. Over the years, the project's price tag has repeatedly gotten bigger while the launch timetable has faced repeated delays. At one time, the next-generation telescope was slated for launch this year with a mission cost of $3.5 billion. In contrast, the latest estimates suggest that the telescope won't lift off until 2018 at the earliest, with costs rising as high as $8.7 billion.

              In July, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told the House Science, Space and Technology Committee that the JWST would open "new horizons far greater than we got from Hubble." But since then, the space agency has signaled that other areas of space science and exploration might have to face cuts to make up for JWST's cost overruns — which has sparked the protests from scientists.

              On Thursday, a newsletter published by the Arizona-based Planetary Science Institute published a signed editorial complaining that the game plan for planetary science in the next decade "is under threat from cost overruns by the NASA James Webb Space Telescope." If NASA is not given more funding to cover the costs, "JWST should not be restored unless and until an open science community assessment is made of the value of what will be gained and what will be lost across the entire NASA science portfolio," the editorial read.

              Among the 17 signers of the editorial were the the institute's CEO (Mark Sykes), the CEO of the SETI Institute (Tom Pierson), the principal investigator for NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto (Alan Stern) and the principal investigator for NASA's Deep Impact / EPOXI mission (Michael A'Hearn).

              The independent online publication NASA Watch, meanwhile, published letters from Rice University solar physicist David Alexander, the head of the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division, complaining that "the cost of the JWST threatens to swamp us all." He voiced concern that the space agency's proposed strategy for dealing with the JWST program's problems would reduce the ability of other divisions within the NASA Science Mission Directorate to "accomplish their own nationally sanctioned scientific programs."

              Alexander's letters were addressed to the leadership of the AAS and the American Geophysical Union's Heliophysics Section and obtained by NASA Watch.

              All this led Nature News' Eric Hand to observe today that "the internecine warfare among NASA scientists over the fate of the James Webb Space Telescope has begun," with planetary scientists and solar physicists pitted against astrophysicists.

              NASA says the James Webb Space Telescope would be powerful enough to see the first stars and galaxies form on the edge of the observable universe. It could also study the mechanics of planet formation in unprecedented detail, and investigate the potential for life in alien planetary systems. But the debate is starting to turn from those lofty scientific goals to issues of dollars and cents.
              >
              Dr. Mordrid
              ----------------------------
              An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

              I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

              Comment


              • #8
                Rectification

                I was searching to see if there was anything new on the Matrox Seti@home group and this thread came up in the results...

                I felt like rectifying the new.

                Every one involved understand that the JWST is too big to let go.
                Only the Religious Cast want it killed...

                Here is the latest on a fun site :

                The 2012 fiscal year appropriation bill, marked up today by the Senate, allows for continued funding of the James Webb Space Telescope and support up to a launch in 2018! Yes, it looks like this bird is going to fly.
                From : http://www.universetoday.com/88928/s...ace-telescope/

                Further more from a serious site :
                The James Webb Space Telescope will probe the most distant reaches of the universe with sensitive infrared instruments, but the project has been mired with budgetary woes. Scott Willoughby, program manager at Northrop Grumman, discusses the telescope's pr

                NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will be able to stare uninterrupted at stars with its sensitive infrared instruments. The observatory's powerful tools could also let astronomers "sniff" the atmospheres of alien planets and analyze their molecular compos



                Can't wait for those pics...
                --
                Gilles Lalonde
                SysAdmin (.RPM)
                Linkedin

                Comment


                • #9
                  They should hand over management of the project to SpaceX Glad to see that it will fly though.
                  “Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out”
                  –The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    JWST just got a new program manager - may God have mercy on his sorry soul because this thing is going to try his faith
                    Dr. Mordrid
                    ----------------------------
                    An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

                    I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

                    Comment

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