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NASA
The Webb Space Telescope, shown in this artwork, would survey the universe in infrared wavelengths.
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.
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What should be done about JWST?
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. Is this the beginning of the end for the JWST bailout, or will NASA stick to its view that Hubble's heir is too big to fail? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.
Update for 4:50 p.m. ET Sept. 12: Still more scientists are weighing in on "what to do about Webb":
- Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, is urging scientists to "step back for a moment and reflect on why we want to build such an audacious telescope" in the latest issue of the institute's newsletter. "In the end, someone has to provide 'the next Hubble' to the next generation. If not us, then who?" he writes.
- Presenters from NASA, the Space Telescope Science Institute and the astronomical community will describe the current state of the JWST project and "address recent media coverage surrounding the mission's cost and status" during a webinar for scientists scheduled at 2 p.m. ET Sept. 19.
- The American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences has issued a statement saying that it's following the discussion over the JWST and future science funding "with close attention." The DPS statement urges that "the clear priorities of the planetary sciences community be kept in mind."
- The AAS' leadership has sent out a memo recognizing the rise of JWST rumors "which have led to speculation, fear and distrust." The memo says that the AAS "does not support any one Division or astronomical discipline above others, to the detriment of others," and will refrain from selecting between priorities proposed by the various disciplines. "As we face the new economic climate, it might be worth recalling Abraham Lincoln's words: 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.'"
More on telescopes and budget woes:
- Researchers face budget bind
- Plan to scrap telescope riles up scientists
- What tomorrow's space telescopes will see
- Gallery: The coolest next-generation telescopes
Hat tip to Keith Cowing at NASA Watch for keeping on top of the JWST debate.
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
Leave a Comment:
As CERN's Large Hadron Collider is beginning to demonstrate, more expensive science is not necessarily better science. Kill the out of control expense of the JWST.
We all have to prioritize our expenditures, and NASA should be no different.
Cost/Benefit analysis is the rule for spending scarce resources.
If they kill the JWST, what would replace it? Hubble won't last forever. Is there an alternative to the 8.5 billion JWST? If it is about dollars and cents, would it really be cheaper to kill JWST and start over with something else from scratch or just see the JWST through to completion?
Let one of the private space companies take charge of the mission, they have a great track record of doing things on a (comparatively) small budget.
substitute Super carrier or New Jet fighter and it would be funded in a heart beat with no questions asked.
Justin wrote:
There's another choice, namely to kill it and not attempt to replace it. This project seems so out of control that I have to say "kill it". We gotta look hard at anything with a $4-5 billion overrun these days. It sounds to me like a choice between JWST and everything else. I don't like the choice but we've got to make it. Regards....
Brokinarrow
I'm not sure that's correct. Thre are many many bloated defense projects that have gone way way over budget and we get little for the money.
Once again, too many managers writing mission statements, not enough engineers solving problems.
Why is this even a question? With all the money that's been thrown away for jobs that have never been created, this is a drop in the bucket. The president just gave a speech for $450 billion worth of stimulus. I say "speech" because there still is no "plan." Plus, there is still "plenty" of unspent money from the original stimulus. Use that to fund this. It's clear that "space" is the one thing that can only be done through government, as we are still waiting for private industry to reinvent the wheel of getting man into space. The money is much better spent on projects like this than political pork.
It costs $8.5 billion. $4.5 billion has already been spent. It is three quarters built. $4 billion over 7 years to finish the thing is less than $600 million per year. Cancelling it is not going to go very far to fix any budgetary problems. Space is often a political pork source. This is not one of them. Nobody is demanding that it be built based on "shuttle components" that happen to be built in certain districts of powerful senators/house members, engineering feasibility be damned. This is something that will advance actual science. We've already ceded too much lead in science. If we don't keep up, the Chinese will catch up and then make us eat our lunch. They have the desire, the natural resources, the education, and cash to do so. And they will.
"There's another choice, namely to kill it and not attempt to replace it. This project seems so out of control that I have to say "kill it". We gotta look hard at anything with a $4-5 billion overrun these days. It sounds to me like a choice between JWST and everything else. I don't like the choice but we've got to make it. Regards...."
I don't know the reason for the cost overruns, but if this was a defense project, it wouldn't even be an issue. I find it alarming that we place so little value on our space and science programs in this country. It is no different than paying teachers so little.
How do you get that CERN's discoveries aren't important? If they indeed prove that there is no "god particle", it would be as significant as if they had.
They should build a time machine
(Not to be taken seriously)
It's rather ironic that all three of the scientists mentioned head projects that could significantly benefit from a better telescope.
Ferrosynthesis-3490482 - See Space X, Bigelow Aerospace, etc. Private space companies, not defense contractors.
Let's keep JWST alive. And I am sorry to hear that other science projects are getting squeezed because of this. So this is what I want to do - donate $100/year to keep this telescope running. And many other like-minded people will if they knew where to contribute.
Wanna bet?
I would donate that amount in a heartbeat.
Yall go ahead and pony up then. Go ahead, set an example.
Yup, if they had a website set up I'd bet they could draw in a decent amount of cash from people.
(regarding public contribution to JWST). If images and data were available on-line to paying subscribers and/or donators then this could be a realistic plan. I would subscribe. This could be a good way of financing such projects. I am sick of American technology corporations that 'bleed' the taxpayer with projects such as JWST and defense programs (ie F-22 and on and on). These companies employ too many senior management and executive level personnel who take home salaries in the hundreds of thousands per year. This is out of control. Major housecleaning at American technology companies must be done as obviously program setbacks and delays are aimed specifically for more money from us the taxpayer. These companies put profit over national security/interests and this is un-patriotic but it is the American way.
If these tech giants cannot deliver as promised to the American people then it is time to fire them. Go ahead and finish the JWST but the next contract, I hope, will not go to the primary and lead secondary contractors of JWST as they deserve to be locked out.
It is time that these companies seek national interest in their projects and not a source of milking the cow as the cow is running out of milk. Im sick of it. China, India, Japan or another country can deliver the same for less as they (the companies involved in the development) are in it for national pride vs. American companies who only seek major profit.
A public donation to save the project - a good idea. I assume there are no legal roadblocks. Get donations both large and small. Why not at least ask the world public? Is this a task for the Planetary Society etc.?
You don't know humans very well, do you?
If they started a way to donate all the monies collected would go to run the web site and pay the top people that looked after it, we have enough of that in gov already.
If they had a way, I'd donate to them. Sure, we can donate to congress, in hopes it gets forwarded, but they'd probably keep it.
Didn't expect to find this... looks like NASA is not permitted to solicit them, but they actually can accept donations:
http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/npg_img/N_PD_1210_001G_/N_PD_1210_001G__main.pdf
I too would gladly contribute ... if we ever get a credible project cost. I must ask the question at the root of the problem - how did this project get authority to proceed in the first place? The estimates (there have been multiple replans) have been atrocious - whoever has been responsible for generating them and approving them must have surely known they were fiction; no one in the community is that incompetent. And what assurance do we have that the most recent figures we're looking at are accurate? At some point, people need to be held accountable for lying --- which is what has happened here.
Completely agree Node. Need to have some third party verification for these budget plans. Some of the private space company's officials would be able to do it I'm sure.
I'm afraid the private space companies would make decisions that would help their bottom line, not the science. Academics might be a better source. There may be some bias towards their own projects, but the incentive woulod not be money.
Ferro, true. Let's put it this way - the Hubble would not be still chugging along today if it was made by private companies. The Mars rover would have died as soon as the 'warranty' ran out - instead of still working years after its forecasted 'death'.
Well, with the Shuttle program terminated, NASA has to be creative on where it get's its money for little unapproved side projects, kinda like paying $30k for a hammer and $40k for a toilet seat that certain intelligence agencies are guilty of :)
I would put it in suspended animation until a cure is found
I think maybe doug is on to something, we seem to be in a mothballing mode in this country....the heck with that, it is an imperative, launch the darned thing, I never liked the idea that it was not designed for maintenance anyways, but the hubble is on a schedule and with no shuttles to fix it, the james webb scope has a purpose and a mission to do...we got some real eggiots in power today, they gotta go...from here on out, if ya can't name 12 elements and their atomic numbers, called out at random from the crowd, you can't be a politician, if you can't explain why gasoline has more btu's than water when burned, then you cannot be a politician, if you can't tell which telescope reverses which image which direction, you can't be a politician, If you can't change the root password of a zilog router, you can't be a politician, if think any operating system is more or less secure than any other, than you cannot be a politician, if you can't explain what the o is in oled, then you can't be a politician, I think u'uns get the point. the hell with degrees, legal beagles got us into this mess as it is.....oh, and if your a cheerleader for a harvard or yale team, no, no, no...you can't be a politician....in fact, if your not sure what an apogee is, no. period.
"in fact, if your not sure what an apogee is, no. period."
how about if you don't know the difference between your and you're (a comment classic)?
just teasing you a bit, my good mr. smith. nice post!
ray - obviously you don't have a degree from the University of Life, or have a good idea of how real world economics works. The arrogance you display is consistent with the stereotype of the geek elite who think they know it all and everyone else is an idiot. Who do you think is paying for the extra billions in cost over-runs? Why would you ignore a cost-benefit analysis? If you fail to put time and monetary endpoints on projects the bureaucrats and know-it-alls like you will run out of both in no time.
good points, both of ya. Never thought I would of ignored a cost benefit analysis, Not after successfully running a small biz for thirty+ years, launch the damn thing anyways. An X-ray telescope is a good telescope, then we can get ready to make a telescope based on magnemonics (the nuetron spin variety I hope, that is if you don't object to the notion of a nuetrons' electron magnetic moment, oh? not taught at U of L? then try the school of hard knocks, they teach a class on lemonade stand sales, great prof, Mzzz DOE, just don't fall asleep in the english class like I did).
The reason it is so expesnive is not that it isn't good science, and it's not the working scientists that have killed it, it's, as always management. NASA is also not free to do what it needs to do. I was at NASA for about a year before I left, frustrated at the way things are done. The menagement are not good scientists, but they are accomplished politicians with only their own position in mind. The scientists who thrive are those who can navigate thsat system. I remember that there were never any meetings about results, only budgets. If your project was funded you were given a pat on the back, but results didn't mean anything, nobody cared. So, after a year I left.
There was still a lot of good work going on, but it could have been done with 1/10 the number of people.
If we kill the Webb telescope, we are relegating the USA to second class status as a scientific source. China is accelerating and Europe doesn't have science phobia as a campaign point in their electoral process.
However, I find it very telling that the telescope is not named after a scientist, but after a bureaucrat! Shame on us.
Sounds like NASA is in serious need of restructuring then.
In my town, we have a bridge that spans about 12 feet of a little brook. Eventually this bridge needed to be replaced. Various proposals were floated, but ultimately the cheapest option was selected. It was to cost 1 million dollars and take 2 weeks to construct. 4 and a half years later, 10s of millions of dollars over budget, the bridge is still not finished. How is this like the JWT? Because if we had tried to build the JWT for what it actually cost, it would have never been built. My little town refused to build a bridge for what it cost. The government will fight kicking and screaming to do things on the cheap and it winds up costing much more than it should. No, NASA doesn't need serious restructuring. NASA needs politicians to allow it to do its job for what things actually cost. Project Constellation was killed by pork. The Shuttle was stupidly expensive because of the design requirements by paranoid politicians. NASA does what it does best when the politicos stand aside. COTS may be the best thing to happen to NASA since the start of the space race because of this.
We figured this out years ago at the (large) company I worked at. If you tell your management how much the project that you MUST do to survive will cost, they'll fool around forever looking for an alternative until it's too late. Whereas if you simply lie and tell them it will cost a lot, but below their threshold of pain, you get the go-ahead and some time to either teach them the realities of the situation, or to think of something better to do instead. Bureaucracy Management 101.
Not that I necessarily think that's what happened in this case -- it's *really* hard to plan a big, multi-year project and think of everything ahead of time, especially the things that go wrong. When we used to do gov't contracting at a company I worked at, we did the very best job we could of planning out every task, every deliverable, every meeting, every chunk of software, and then we doubled it. We generally hit our schedules pretty well, but not with much breathing room. If we'd have turned in the "best guess" estimates, we'd have never been able to hit a date. Big projects are *complicated*.
The problem here is the implied political/budgetary blackmail, and unfortunately, it is all too likely: if the JWST is resurrected, the rest of the space science will be starved to death, and it may take decades to recover (if ever, at least in this country).
It is true that the JWST has been mismanaged badly, and there is more than one guilty party involved. It is also true that multi-billion dollar "science" projects are primarily about politics, and science is a distant second, at best. It is all about transferring money to some congressional district, say, in MD, just to pick a state at random...
Yes, of course it would be great to have the JWST fly, *if* it did not kill everything else in the predictable future in the US space science; but what if it did? Is the JWST really more valuable than everything else in the pipeline (plus all the good ideas to come over the next decade or two and remain unfunded)? Not at all clear. The promoters of the JWST say that even if it is cancelled, that money is not going back to space science, and that, too, is probably true. But I'd say that on the whole, the chances of having a healthy, reasonable (or any!) space science program are lower with the JWST resurrected, than with the JWST in a hibernation (these big projects seldom die outright, they tend to come back from the grave, somewhat slimmer).
Ideally, the fate of the JWST should be really, completely decoupled from the fate of the rest of the space science (either or both of which may suffer some dire fate), each considered on their own merits. Hah. Good luck with that.
I think our entire focus should be a permanent base on the moon. With the solar energy at the poles, we could manufacture everything we need to establish a thriving community and then build our spacecraft for the exploration of the rest of space. The far side would be the perfect environment for a super size radio telescope and anywhere would work for most other instruments and they could be maintained and improved. Orbiting individual micro-environments is a waste.
Actually, I believe we would do better with robots. They are so much easier and cheaper to maintain than humans and much better at getting data. Humans on earth can still do the data analysis.
The best arguments for human space program is tourism.
The International Space Station cost a lot more-- could someone tell me what it's for?
Most of the money for the JWST has already been spent; it would be a great waste to scrap it now. It will inspire us with its images and the knowledge it gains as the Hubble has done.
It's a shame to even see this debate. See, this is why we need to raise taxes...for this reason alone. We need the money to do GREAT things again. No one else but a consolidated national government can do these things. You want to leave them for China?
In a country that hardly manufactures anything anymore I think it's important to go ahead with this telescope. It'll provide valuable information and the images might start the spark of interest in enough teens to seek out education and careers in physics. Those careers could lead us to great energy discoveries, technological advances, and give the US something to be proud of again. We went to the moon . . . nearly 40 years ago and now when we think of it we only complain how expensive it would be to go back. There are probably untold valuable minerals and fuels there . . . must stop now before I make a long rant.
Just more Bureaucratic Baloney to sukk-up TRIPLE the money for some more under-the-table pay-offs, would be my guess. Either that or the damned FOOLS at the Helm did not, or do NOT, know what they are doing. Truth be known, it is probably a LOT of each too.
Sigh..... I sooo tired our true potential as nation being stifled by disorganization and bad leadership....
Saddened, I am.
Under Barack Hussein Obama the Space shuttle is dead. Now, we can't even get to the space station on our own. In fact Bolden has even had the nerve to say it will be 15 years before we have another heavy lift Rocket - Why? He even has put in writing that we may not be about to get backl to the moon for 50 years - Why? The answer is obvious! BHO, from day one of his presidency has been out to make us a 2nd rate Space Faring Nation. Thus the reason the attacks on WJST as well. Capping costs is one thing, destroying every effort for America to exploring space is another.
Funding cut for NASA and retirement of the space shuttle was voted for and passed in 2004. Obama wasn't president then.
TIME4 has a political agenda. Typical troll.
Unfortunately, it's not really possible to have a reasonable conversation about much of anything any more without this sort of BS, trying to hijack the conversation. Why? Reasonable people aren't going to listen. Fools already know what they think, and no mere facts will change that. What do these trolls hope to do? Hear themselves talk, is all I can figure out - nobody else is listening.
Why not turn this into an international telescope and solicit funding from other countries; if it's as good as they claim, it should be valuable to scientists all over the world.
It's too bad this scientifically intriguing telescope isn't a big bank that made some bad bets. Then it would be bailed out no questions asked, and maybe even be allowed to gobble up some smaller telescopes to make it bigger than ever.
So when has a NASA project in its entire history NOT gone way over budget?
Nasa, declare it a spy telescope for the military industrial complex, I promise you, you will get all the money you need.
Yeah, because the scientific industrial university complex has shown so much more fiscal responsibility.
Science and learning who we are and where we came from goes beyond dollars and cents. With the end of the shuttle, we transition to unmanned exploration. This project is important. By all means, hold the spenders to account, but do not kill the project.