re: #108 freetoken

But here is the thing: the claim of “badly over budget” is applied to a program which isn’t necessarily performing badly but whose initial costs were under estimated due to the fact because such a device (space borne active cooling infra-red telescope) is a new thing.

Yes, infrared imaging has been done in space before, but never on this scale or at this extreme.

The whole point of research is that one intentionally goes down paths one has not gone down before.

In this case the original costing of the project is now seen, in hindsight, to have been too simplistic. It is not as if the people constructing the telescope are doing a poor job.

According to the NASA report that isn’t accurate. The problem isn’t the technology, it’s the management.

pcmag.com

JWST will study the history of the universe and document the far corners of space; it’s managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Previously slated to launch in 2014, the telescope is now delayed until at least September 2015. It’s $1.5 billion over its $5 billion budget.

But it’s not the design or build of the telescope that is causing the problems. JWST is in “very good technical shape,” according to a Friday letter John Casani from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab wrote to NASA chief Charles Bolden. Instead, the root causes of the cost and scheduling issues are due to a “badly flawed” budget and the inability of those involved to adequately assess what is needed, Casani wrote.

The report (pdf):

oh, and the final nail came in April:

flightglobal.com

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden has declared the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will not launch until at least 2018.

Bolden made the remarks on 11 April before a Congressional panel in Washington, DC.

The revised launch date is the latest in a series of blows to the troubled telescope programme, which is at least $1.5 billion over budget and four years behind the initially projected launch date.

When it launched, if it ever did, it would have been a decade late and billions of dollars over budget. This should have been cut 2 years ago.