> For what the JWST actually accomplishes, it's an engineering marvel Sure, but so are the Event Horizon Telescope (which cost less than $100 MM) and LIGO (co

> For what the JWST actually accomplishes, it's an engineering marvel Sure, but so are the Event Horizon Telescope (which cost less than $100 MM) and LIGO (cost about $1 BN). And those were truly revolutionary, and they hold a lot of promise for more scientific results down the road. At any given moment the scientific world has lots of ideas, some are truly ingenious, and some are just bigger-is-better iterations of older ideas. The really ingenious ones tend to be cheaper, if for no other reason than they can't get huge amounts of funding given they are not proven yet. The bigger-is-better ideas get eye popping dollars, and the public opinion is always positive. Just like it happens with Hollywood sequels.