9 ms·

All true. On the other hand, the current JWST is way less capable, and way, way more expensive, than what was initially planned. I think there's a very legitima

by lutorm 9y ago

All true. On the other hand, the current JWST is way less capable, and way, way more expensive, than what was initially planned. I think there's a very legitimate argument to be made that maybe, with hindsight, it would have been better not to put all that money into the very large bucket that it's ended up being. It seems the way this goes is "we don't have money for more than one mission, so we have to make it count." But now you only have one mission, so you have to make really sure it doesn't fail, and the cost starts running away. Also, after JWST started, NASA has pretty much completely changed their strategy away from grand missions into many smaller ones with the "faster, better, cheaper" motto.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
> It seems the way this goes is "we don't have money for more than one mission, so we have to make it count." But now you only have one mission, so you have to make really sure it doesn't fail, and the cost starts running away. This is recognized by NASA - in particular, I've recently seen one report[0] with a diagram explicitly mentioning this problem. It was called "The Tyranny of Space Transportation Costs", and depicts a spiral with nodes like "High Launch and Space Transport Costs" -> "Infrequent Launch" -> "Inability to Service" -> "Over Engineering" -> "Cost Growth" -> "Need for Extreme Reliability" -> "Higher Launch Costs" -> ... That's one of the reasons NASA is interested in in-orbit mining & manufacturing - to enable rapid iteration on future missions. That seems to also be the reason why they've outsourced LEO transportation to private companies. -- [0] - "Stepping Stones: Economic Analysis of Space Transportation Supplied From NEO Resources". Found it on HN some time ago. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/eso_final_report.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/eso_fin... (warning: 140-ish MB); the diagram in question is on page 9.
gammarator 9y ago
"Faster, better, cheaper" has not been NASA strategy since the 90's (i.e., pre-JWST). The resulting failures were judged by the public as intolerable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Goldin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Goldin There are indeed very successful missions at smaller scales than Hubble/Chandra/JWST, but they are by necessity less powerful and more specialized. There are regular calls for a "balanced program" of large and small programs, but those run into the astropolitical reality that large missions have more "constituents" in science, government, and industry.

by lutorm 9y ago

TeMPOraL 9y ago

> It seems the way this goes is "we don't have money for more than one mission, so we have to make it count." But now you only have one mission, so you have to make really sure it doesn't fail, and the cost starts running away. This is recognized by NASA - in particular, I've recently seen one report[0] with a diagram explicitly mentioning this problem. It was called "The Tyranny of Space Transportation Costs", and depicts a spiral with nodes like "High Launch and Space Transport Costs" -> "Infrequent Launch" -> "Inability to Service" -> "Over Engineering" -> "Cost Growth" -> "Need for Extreme Reliability" -> "Higher Launch Costs" -> ... That's one of the reasons NASA is interested in in-orbit mining & manufacturing - to enable rapid iteration on future missions. That seems to also be the reason why they've outsourced LEO transportation to private companies. -- [0] - "Stepping Stones: Economic Analysis of Space Transportation Supplied From NEO Resources". Found it on HN some time ago. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/eso_final_report.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/eso_fin... (warning: 140-ish MB); the diagram in question is on page 9.

gammarator 9y ago

"Faster, better, cheaper" has not been NASA strategy since the 90's (i.e., pre-JWST). The resulting failures were judged by the public as intolerable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Goldin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Goldin There are indeed very successful missions at smaller scales than Hubble/Chandra/JWST, but they are by necessity less powerful and more specialized. There are regular calls for a "balanced program" of large and small programs, but those run into the astropolitical reality that large missions have more "constituents" in science, government, and industry.