$4.5 billion for NASA Science programs, which is $431 million
below last year’s level. The bill also terminates funding for
the James Webb Space Telescope, which is billions of dollars
over budget and plagued by poor management.
People should know that there's a lot of turmoil in the astrophysics community about JWST. In current plans, JWST overruns have resulted in elimination or long-term postponement of all other NASA astrophysics missions in the next decade. Even non-flight-project research is being cut significantly.
I am utterly incapable of intelligently commenting on the cost effectiveness of this telescope, but I will note that all of NASA's current money problems could be solved by allocating it just a tiny fraction of what we instead wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I'm sorry to keep talking about these fucking wars, but it really does make me want to cry.
Expanding NASA's budget by 2x or even 10x would not solve its problems. Parkinson's Law is as applicable to NASA as to any other organization. JWST and the other missions will overrun any amount of time and budget allocated to them.
I had that thought as I was writing the comment, which is why I added the word "current". But you're probably right to a large degree, and my only answer is that, to the extent that larger budgets don't decrease NASA'a fiscal discipline, the investment is better made there.
Yep, especially shitty since the project is so far along.
It needs to be said that JWST isn't primarily over-budget because of technical problems, but because they didn't do realistic cost and time estimates in the first place. Overall, the project has suffered very few technical surprises.
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