Stargazing House Appropriations Committee Kills James Webb Telescope

[Hells]

5.2B is already sunk, does it really make sense to axe it at this point?

 

[edpell]

5.2B is already sunk, does it really make sense to axe it at this point?

If the management is funding things unrelated to the project that is important to know and fix for future projects. If the loaded cost of NASA personnel is so bloated that no project can be done at reasonable cost that is important to know and fix for future projects.

 

[D H]

The first two pages of the portion of the committee report (http://appropriations.house.gov/UploadedFiles/CJS_REPORT.pdf; NASA starts on page 68) scolds NASA for failing to control costs. The committee is making an example of NASA's failure to control costs with JWST and is serving a severe warning to NASA to get its act in line.

 

[edpell]

The first two pages of the portion of the committee report (http://appropriations.house.gov/UploadedFiles/CJS_REPORT.pdf

They are pretty harsh. Basically NASA has no idea what level of development projects are at, when projects will finish, how much projects will cost.

I still would love to see how many people's salaries were paid out of this project.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I still would love to see how many people's salaries were paid out of this project.

About 5000, counting NASA, contractors and the supply chain. The budget is $500M a year, and it costs about $100,000 a year in salary, wages, fringes and taxes to hire a "typical" worker.

 

[ParticleGrl]

About 5000, counting NASA, contractors and the supply chain. The budget is $500M a year, and it costs about $100,000 a year in salary, wages, fringes and taxes to hire a "typical" worker.

That salary seems high, I know postdocs who worked on the project who made substantially less money. If its like most scientific projects, there are probably many more postdocs and graduate students attached than full time people.

 

[D H]

That salary seems high, I know postdocs who worked on the project who made substantially less money. If its like most scientific projects, there are probably many more postdocs and graduate students attached than full time people.

That number seems incredibly low. Even grad students get benefits, have an office or a cubicle, have computer on which they can work, get paid, are managed, and so on. There are costs associated with each. Vanadium 50 was presumably talking about the fully loaded cost: salary plus benefits plus overhead plus general and administrative plus other fees plus profit.

This is not a scientific project. It is a development project. There should not be all that many grad students and postdocs working on a development project. If there were, that is yet another sign of mismanagement.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I am also counting the supply chain - if you buy a widget, someone has to be hired to make the widget (and the subwidgets, etc.)

Anyway, the $100,000 is a rule of thumb, averaged over everything. Scientists are more expensive, temporary laborers, less.

 

[Vanadium 50]

JWST's cost overuns alone would allow one to launch two more Hubbles (with good mirrors this time) and three more Spitzers. And $6.8B is optimistic - assuming a 2018 launch. Make it 2020 or 2021 and it will be $8B or 8.5B.

Gosh, V50, you're a genius. The Senate just capped JWST at $8B to launch, $700M to operate.

Put another way, the JWST overruns have already cost the space program MAX-C and LISA, and put the final nail in the coffin of the Terrestrial Planet Finder. It is about to cost us the Jupiter Europa Orbiter and quite possibly a Uranus orbiter. It is putting WFIRST (the last surviving top priority project) in a very precarious position, in part because the WFIRST proposed cost is exactly that of the JWST proposed cost.

A genius again. The money for JWST in 2012 came out of WFIRST, who was told "try again next year". That's not enough, so some other mission or missions will be cancelled.