[ThisIsTheWay]

The cost and schedule overruns on JWST are a good argument against the statements you have made. The program is ~$4B over budget, and 3 years behind schedule.

NASA does some things well, and is absolutely terrible at others.

[powowowow]

We need to stop pretending that these missed estimates are a catastrophe. They're inventing new things, and there's uncertainty.

We'd be a lot better served, as a nation and a society, if we accepted these realities in the same way that our best businesses do. Instead, we're stuck with a Day 2 mentality, where the risks associated with grand endeavors are unacceptable because a bunch of whiners will complain.

The same assholes who whinge about the JWST being $4b over budget will happily cheer for hundreds of billions to be spent on wars or whatever. They're not arguing honestly, and we need to learn to ignore them.

[ThisIsTheWay]

> We need to stop pretending that these missed estimates are a catastrophe. They're inventing new things, and there's uncertainty.

Uncertainty is certain! We also need to accept the fact that sometimes we go down paths, make discoveries, and need to reverse course, or hold people accountable so the wrong people don't pay for the mistakes of others. None of that is happening with JWST, while Northrop gets to pull in billions. That's in addition to ~$30B/year Northrop is pulling in building weapons.

> The same assholes who whinge about the JWST being $4b over budget will happily cheer for hundreds of billions to be spent on wars or whatever.

That's just not true, and the criticism of the F35 program is a fine example.

Beyond that, Webb going over budget is stifling progress on dozens of other pursuits that could probably use the funds more constructively.

[powowowow]

> We also need to accept the fact that sometimes we go down paths, make discoveries, and need to reverse course,

All of which are made harder by people who share your preference for exceedingly inefficient but low-error processes.

> or hold people accountable so the wrong people don't pay for the mistakes of others.

This part of your sentence isn't compatible with the first part of your sentence. This is at the core of the problem. The prevalence of this attitude leads to a culture of ass-covering rather than ambition and risk-taking. That ass-covering creates gross inefficiencies, leading to every step costing 10x too much, and taking 5x too long.

[nickik]

Whle that is true, to some extend this can be pushed into the absurd and people still make excuses for it.

The JWST yes is new and great and better and technically difficult. But a serious discussion must be had about how NASA spends its money. Many of the things they do are not that innovative and the big companies basically have no accountability and essentially know that delays to JWST will keep them in business. That money could simply have been spent a better way.

Now with the JWST at least you are pushing the possible and I agree you have to be willing to keep pushing those things beyond the initial budget.

However other things, like SLS, Orion and a number of other programs are just charity for big companies. They do not push the possible in terms of technology, but rather are mostly old technologies that they can incrementally work on.

So overall I do agree you have to go over budget and accept that as a reality. However you need to be careful and not just give a free pass not unlimited spending, when that money could be used to improve a dynamic space infrastructure and industry rather then having 50% of your budget in the 3 huge programs that have little accountability.

[themagician]

The cost overruns are an example for my argument, not against it. They make economically non-viable decisions. Instead of, you know scrapping the project or cutting corners and launching garbage like 99% of all crowdfunding disasters.