"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:/

"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.