The root problem with JWST was not being able to get the money in the first place. That led to budgeting shenanigans responsible for much of the project delay.

The root problem with JWST was not being able to get the money in the first place. That led to budgeting shenanigans responsible for much of the project delay. The single telescope came within a whisker of being scrapped by Congress. If you gave projects like Webb the kind of budget that now gets eaten by human space flight, you could have telescopes filling half the sky. But NASA has to work within the really severe funding constraints imposed by the white elephant that is ISS.