A science blog with Eric Berger

Should we put human spaceflight on hold a year to save astronomy?





A view of the Webb telescope aimed away from the sun. (Wikimedia)




The Webb's primary mirror. (Wikimedia)










Bottom line: This spaceflight program is dreadfully vulnerable.

Eric Berger

38 Responses

  1. Lou says:

    Sunset worthless programs…

    Problem solved.

    • Larry says:

      Excellent idea! If we do that, we can double NASA’s budget. Time to Sunset taxpayer welfare for major oil companies, Welfare for the wealthy, infrastructure funding that permits suburban wasteful single family dwelling homebuilding and polluting, unnecessary transportation, etc.

    • gary says:

      Larry, don’t forget timber developement subsidies, farm production subsidies,BLM grazing land pricing structures,etc.

    • Meiczyslaw says:

      And ethanol subsidies.

      And “green energy” loans.

      And the Department of Education.

    • Bill in Houston says:

      Not to forget the Department of Energy…

  2. Justin Kugler says:

    I would note that putting SLS on hold for a year is not the same thing as putting “human spaceflight” on hold for a year. The ISS Program will continue to operate.

    Considering that the 2012 study of HSF priorities mandated in the 2010 Authorization Act hasn’t yet begun, I think it behooves us not to rush into SLS because of that lack of clarity of purpose.

    • JohnD says:

      And saving the JWST is hardly the same thing as saving astronomy. Remember that with the amount that has been wasted thus far on the JWST we could have funded SETI for a thousand years, operated SpaceGuard for a century, or built 33 Keck telescopes. Will the JWST really give us as good a return on the money as any of those other ventures?

      Though it would give my probe driven heart a measure of glee to see manned space flight treated the same way that it has treated planetary science over the years, I am not sure that doing so would address the root cause of the problem: NASA (and government-funded science in general) can’t do budget math.

      They keep promising us projects that will cost only $1 billion – but then need another $7 billion to complete and run them. The JWST (433% over budget), the Space Shuttle (50% over budget), the Ocean Research Interactive Observatory Networks (killed after going 100% over budget), the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (killed after years of lawsuits over where to put it caused the tab to go 200% over budget). We scientists need to learn to under-promise and over-deliver on budgets. If we say that something will cost $100 million, then it needs to cost less than $100 million not more.

    • Justin Kugler says:

      All good points to consider, JohnD.

  3. I hope the good people at JSC realize just how bad biog projects like JW ans SLS are for NASA right now. We need to focus on things we can do within two to three years utilizing the tools we have now.

    Things like Orion and EELV, COTS, Commercial Crew, and smaller science missions that don’t take decades. Just so you know, people outside of space states and districts see things like SLS and JW and cringe.

    Blame who ever you want to blame. Bush, Obama, or Santa Claus; it all is moot. What are we going to do now? We now have open suggestions of postponing SLS for JW. That never would have happened just one year ago.

    In this time of fiscal duress, we need to look for solutions that not only make sense to NASA, but also make sense to the American taxpayer. Neither JW or SLS does so.

    Andrew Gasser
    TEA Party in Space

    • JohnD says:


      While NASA owns the debacle that is the JWST, it is Congress that mandated the SLS. Congress decided the payload capacity and the design (which is not truly within their purview) and punted on the funding and the mission (which truly is).

  4. Karma says:

    It’s time we start paying by the project, not by the hour. If the project isn’t done on time and within budget, the money has to be returned. Multiplying the cost of the (now partially-complete) project after the initial money is spent is just holding the American public hostage for more money. This needs to stop in ALL sectors of government spending!

  5. Dave says:

    Of course we all love our beloved astronauts, but aside from the human experiment, we should be pushing advanced robotics and remote operations technology. I am all for the JWST.

  6. .
    WHICH “human spaceflight” do you want to put “on hold”?
    the KSC will NOT see ANY new “human spacefligth” for, at least, the next SIX years!
    only a new shuttle may cut a bit this huge gap:

  7. saved says:

    We should put all space exploration on hold, no exceptions. We are now 15 trillion in debt and we can not longer afford to pay for things that are not necessary. We are nearing a meltdown and if we do not do what it takes we all will be lose just about everything we have and become like a third worlds nation.

    • fiftyohm says:

      “We should put all space exploration on hold, no exceptions.” -saved

      You mean like a “third world nation”? You keep saying this over and over, but never seem to reply to the objections raised to your simplistic thesis. Just do us all a favor and look at the federal budget. See where the money is going and how much goes where – including NASA. After you do that, get back to us with an iota of justification for taking the US to technological third-world status in space exploration for the next generation. Deal?

    • sluggy says:

      Ah, ssaved, you are so predictable. Like a mindless little parrot you can be counted on to babble and screech the exact same thing on every space related story: “Kill NASA, we can’t afford it, SQUAWK!”… you want to kill NASA, but those precious illegal military occupations of yours are somehow more valuable?
      Without fail, you choose Death over human potential and the dreams that NASA represents;
      to say nothing of getting leap-frogged by the Russians, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, etc. Nice set of values you
      have there.

      Your technophobic ‘solution’ is a guarantee that we become a Third-World Country, technology-wise, and is hardly a ‘solution’ at all.

  8. gjh says:

    How do you guess something’s going to cost $2.1B when it’ll really be $8.7B? Yet we hear of cost overruns like this all the time, it seems. Projects would have a better time staying off the chopping block if they could fix this problem.

  9. BJ says:

    There has been a fortune wasted sending astronauts into space when insturment packages on unmanned rockets would have been better and cheaper. Some of the past Shuttle missions had too much “make work” for humans just becasue we could send them there. There came to be a flavor of left wing Green politics because there were so many “environmental” missions; fly into space and “look down” doing “Earth science”. Closet Globalwarmniks like James Hanson (NASA -Goddard) infiltrated the Shuttle program. Shuttle science was not exploring space, it was seeking proof of AGW theory at the direction of left wing scientists. And there were the cutting edge science missions of the Politicians in Space Program and the Teachers in Space Program. I thnk we can delay this sort of politically correct socialist science to put up a real space exploration mission like the JWST.

    • shockwave says:

      It is our space program that serves all mankind, as opposed to political groups which only serve their own members.

      The Earth has warmed and cooled long before man got here. It will do so long after the last daisy on the last human grave has faded. The warming is not contestable — only the amount of influence man has had upon it is in question. And while I’m not a doomsayer (please…) I do agree that it’s wise to stretch out our resources, if for no other reason than to keep our civilization going for as long as possible. Because in 100, 200 years, when the last drop of oil is gone, how are you going to have your plastics, your fertilizers for crops, and your transportation to move food to consumers?

      And it IS the space program and the tech they develop which leads the way into a dangerous, hostile future. Principally hostile due to people like you who think managing resources wisely is evil for some strange reason.

  10. shockwave says:

    And if beancounters way back when had actually built and launched it when they originally said they would, we’d not be spending money for a decade without working hardware to show for it. And now, when we are cutting metal and building the thing, now the charlatan managers want to cancel it?

    Only in accounting school is flushing billions down a hole instead of spending the little bit left to complete it the same as “saving money”. Tell the contractors that X is what you will pay to get it built and if they want more, they’d better have an extremely good excuse, or there are plenty of other companies eager to do the job. Some cost overruns are expected when you build something never built before. But only an accounting idiot thinks he can start a job in 1999, and it’ll cost the same 10+ years later together with the decade of development costs. And the reason it’s taken this long is because some OTHER accountant said that we could save money if we pushed out construction by a year, and another year, and another year, and another…

    You can’t put a talking Elmo doll on layaway and expect it to still be there at the same price ten plus years later, either.

  11. me says:

    As has pointed out, trying to budget scientific/engineering projects is a process antithetical to science and engineering. Therein lies the problem…old methods accounted for this inherent uncertainty. It is not really the scientists and engineers that are failing, rather it is the consensus reality of the purse string holders.

    • fiftyohm says:

      I am not at all certain this is true. I’ve been doing science and engineering all of my life – *always* on a budget. Doing science and engineering within financial constraints is, and has always been, an essential part of the process. There is inherent uncertainty in all development as you rightly point out, but far from being “antithetical” to the process, time and budgetary constraints bound the area within which the work must take place. No one *ever* has a blank check to pursue any goal, nor should they. Good scientists, engineers, and project managers set realistic goals in terms of time and dollars, *as well as technical ones*, and meet them.

      How this speaks to the outrageous cost overruns we’ve seen with programs like JWST is up to you to judge. About all I can observe from this distance is that if I had run programs that blew the budget and schedule like that one, I would have had to find another line of work.

  12. Jason says:

    This is what you get when you spend less than 1% on your space budget. Who complains that we spend $650BILLION in one year on the military – and our soldiers see practically none of this – yet our space program can barely survive? Thank goodness we have leaders in this world who know the value of technology and exploration (tongue in cheek)!/2011/10/chinese-sky.html

  13. [...] …is not “putting human spaceflight on hold.” [...]

  14. Jesse says:

    While true scientific advances can be made faster and more efficiently with probes and orbiters, the American people have stopped caring about space. When NASA was racing to send a man to the moon, it was exciting! Patriotic! Sexy! Then… We won, and got distracted. The American people dont care about the scientific contributions Webb could provide (if it ever launches). They want to see cool pictures. We need to get the American people to buy back into the space program, make them pay attention to what is going on.

    To do this, manned spaceflight must take priority. We can argue about the merits of SLS, will it ever get made, is it a waste of money, but when it comes down to it only the act of get people to new places will get people paying attention. When people pay attention, NASA will have the leverage and credibility (political capital) it needs to spend on pure science.

  15. How about this for an outside the box idea. If we want space exploration and space astronomy, how about paying for both of them and not, as seems to be the suggestion, raid the funding for one to pay for the other?

  16. David Knowles says:

    Delay the SLS for a year, which not only provides enough funds for the JW but also give Space X time to prove whether there Falcon Heavy will work.

    If Falcon Heavy works as advertise scrap the SLS. Invest the money save in developing Falcon 10 design to carry 150 to 200 tons into orbit, but Space X will do it for a couple of billion not the NASA cost estimates of 65 Billion for the SLS.

    The other money save from the SLS use to developed a space worth nuclear reactor and speed up the development of VASMIR drive and habitat, life support modules for a space craft to carry people to Mars and the Moon and the Asteroids.

  17. Bill in Houston says:

    I have to keep looking it up to see whether this scope was named after the Senator from Virginia (former SecNav)… arrrrgh.

    I’m curious: are we going to deorbit Hubble anytime soon? If not, leave it there and use it. Delay JWST and develop SLS and other launch systems. Yes, I know one is in Earth orbit and the other is in the Earth-Sun L2 point, but you work with what you have on hand. You’re NOT setting astrophysics back 30 years if you delay something, only if you cancel it.

    • JohnD says:

      They will de-orbit Hubble, but will do it quietly to avoid the fracas that happened the last time they suggested shutting down the program.

      The HST and the JWST look at different parts of the spectrum and so are not interchangeable. You would spend more refitting the HST than it would cost to finish the JWST.

  18. Bill in Houston says:

    Addendum, if this is a joint collaboration, let the Euros and the Canadians pay for it

  19. drstock says:

    Humans need to learn the difference between what we would like to know and what we need to know. In the space field we only need to know how to protect earth from asteroids.

  20. 3sigma says:

    Was the Webb designed to be serviced or upgraded like the Hubble ? If not, this seems to me to be more serious than a cost overrun.

  21. Not my uncle says:

    While saving Webb is important, losing it is hardly a calamity since Hubble has produced enough images to keep every astro physicist in the world busy for the next 50 years.

  22. Mike Franklin says:

    The killing of the JWST would be the final cut; the ultimate insult upon a nation that once led the world into the cosmos, landed humans on the moon and built the single most complex machine ever devised by the human mind. The bean counters and pinheads that cannot see beyond the dollar sign, have no concept of the true value of the JWST mission. They cannot be trusted to represent our country, much less the species, when it comes to anything more important than a rubber stamp.

    This project must be defended.

  23. xxx says:

    Any time budgets are increased, regardless of the justification given and given I am not intimate with details, I am naturally drawn to conclude the guys are “incompetent”. Next year it will increase again, and again, and again which does little but make the “vendors” rich, which reminds me:

    Did any of the purchasing managers or big guys controlling the project go to work for any of the vendors? That is the way it works for anyregulator “professionals” (tax especially) except in Louisiana, and “accountants”.

    Air Force procurement (60 Minutes)