SpacePod: The James Webb Problem

Here we go again. The telescope that ate the budget is getting even hungrier and its dinner is going to last a lot longer than we were expecting. Should we cancel it? Should we continue? Should we be surprised that this is happening? Well, this is your SpacePod for April 12, 2018. It's the biggest mission NASA is currently working on, the James Webb Space Telescope. It's one of the single most expensive instruments we've ever created, and it's far, far behind its original schedule, and it's starting to make us a lot more nervous than we already were. If you haven't heard by now, some bad things have happened to the James Webb Space Telescope recently. Valves didn't work as planned due to an improper cleaning regimen, several tears developed in its sun shield that required repairs, and slower than expected retraction of that shield occurred in testing. And a lot of these mistakes, it turns out that they were avoidable. And they've now pushed the already delayed 2019 launch to the second quarter of 2020, a delay that will most certainly cost hundreds of millions of dollars and come right up to Congress's 2011 cost cap of $8.8 billion. If any more funds are needed, congressional approval will be needed, which could be troubling considering that the James Webb's biggest congressional champion, Senator Barbara Mikulski, has retired. It's troubling that this program has bloated so much in cost, and it's slipped in schedule. I mean, have we forgotten how to make telescopes? Have we forgotten how math works? Or have we forgotten what the cutting edge actually looks like? You see, the James Webb Space Telescope is a massive undertaking, both in terms of physical size, scientific scope, and technological development. There are a multitude of things that have never been done before, in places that have never had this done before, at scales and sizes this has never been performed with. It's a program beyond the bleeding edge, and it all has to work correctly the first time. This marvel of engineering, it's going to be stationed 1.6 million kilometers away from Earth. And although there is a slight push to include things on the telescope itself, that will allow some level of serviceability, we currently don't have any program on the books to make this happen, either robotic or crewed. There's no easy way to say this either. If anything fails at any point on the James Webb Space Telescope, be it the Ariane 5 launch vehicle, the deployment of the sun shields, the optical assembly, or anything that can inhibit its use, its budgetary expenditure would yield an absolute nightmare for NASA. No telescopes the size of James Webb are planned until the 2030s. We would likely remember the beginning of the 2020s as a period of astronomical darkness, if something bad were to happen with the James Webb Space Telescope. But the problems, they're being found here on Earth, and they're being handled here on Earth, which is much better than those problems being found on the way to James Webb's eventual destination. But the costs of this delay and repair are, at the present time of the making of the space pod, relatively unknown. NASA has said that if this telescope does need a slight amount of extra money, it could be done by shifting some of those funds for operation of the telescope to begin slightly later than expected. But if it's going to require a large increase to make it happen, it could impact other NASA science missions directly, continuing its tradition of eating into NASA's astrophysics budget. In addition, the next decadal survey, a once a decade grouping of the world's best and brightest scientists, who help pursue what the next focused steps in space sciences should be, well, they'll be contending with the overhanging cloud of a project that they insisted must go on during the last survey in 2010, only to have it unexpectedly sitting in their laps once again. The technological push to make James Webb even possible is incredible. It's a testament to the engineering know-how of those working on this program. You have to keep a 6.5 meter optical assembly large, even for use here on the ground, and keeping that at a temperature of just 50 Kelvin for years at a time, this is an unbelievable achievement. And the science that will be gleaned in just about every conceivable type of space science, it's going to be like Hubble, it's going to change everything that we knew once again. Commercial space is incredible, but at the present, it really has no reason to be building and operating these flagship space telescopes on the behalf of space agencies here on the Earth. James Webb, to me, represents what NASA actually really should be doing, the things that others aren't, and the things that push science, technology, and engineering beyond the boundaries of what's currently known. But the next time we do this, let's not end up bloating the budget so much that it becomes a project that's simply too big to fail. Let's try to keep it a little down next time. Now, make sure to check out tomorrow's Space 11.14. Patty Newman, we were talking with him during that episode about a new possible type of electric thruster that spacecraft could use in the future. And of course, you can always support us here tomorrow by subscribing, watching, and visiting us at patreon.com or makersupport.com. So, until the next Space Pod, keep exploring!