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Here is my take on the confluence of factors at play: ** 1. The telescope and instruments are designed for a one-time special use, shared by no one else (pret

Here is my take on the confluence of factors at play: ** 1. The telescope and instruments are designed for a one-time special use, shared by no one else (pretty much). That means many if not all the requirements are being discovered as they go, and it is not a very predictable process in terms of the risks and unknowns. Many delays happen/happened because people believed the requirements were set, and started building things, only to have them change later, leading to wasted time and resources. But that's how something in research phase goes. 2. The size, materials, instruments, etc were pretty much unprecedented, aside from some very low level legacy components. Everything had to be designed for the first time. This often leads to many unexpected cost overruns. 3. It was a huge project, which is always in tension with something that is R&D / being discovered as you go. It takes a long time for many different and scattered teams to be able to communicate their requirements and capabilities and schedules to each other when they are so distributed. There really is something to the idea that 6 people in one room can do things that 100 people in multiple rooms cannot, but by the sheer size required, and the fragmentation of expertise to do the job, it had accompanying schedule and risk problems. 4. Because the telescope is a one-off and so valuable as a project, it had to be risk-free or risk-minimal. When something costs so much, it has to cost even more to protect it against mistakes. That means that you can't cheap out and risk certain things, leading to it taking more time and resources to get it right. It is the opposite of the Mars program "fast and cheap and fail quickly". It has advantages and disadvantages. 5. Also a sort of less tangible factor is that these projects, even when delayed, have to keep a certain group of people employed to maintain continuity of knowledge and technical expertise. If you get delayed, you cannot just cut people from the program, you will lose them to other projects and further delay progress. So every year of delay incurs you a very high cost. ** The costs were not the cost of launch. That was a relatively small part of the project. Ariane, etc. are known factors at this point. It was the fact that everything about the telescope was new, will never be reproduced again, and had to be gotten right the first time. I am probably oversimplifying some things that happened during the process, and other related factors, but that's my opinion.

readthenotes1 4y ago
"Many delays happen/happened because people believed the requirements were set, and started building things, only to have them change later." The second part, 'changing requirements' has been the reality of many NASA and DoD projects for decades. The "delays" happen because the vendors make gobs of money working this way.
- supernova87a 4y ago
  That is also true to some extent. I would also say that it is a product of the federal government in recent decades gradually losing its ability to keep people on staff (or pay them enough) to build the knowledge about how to run/build such projects themselves. And cost-effectively. If you recall the earlier days of aerospace, aircraft, etc., technical experts in the military would basically tell Lockheed, whoever, exactly what they wanted to design, or would be equally qualified to set out the specs and be deep in the design. Over the last decades, that capability (I believe) has largely left the government/public institutions. We have essentially outsourced the design and building of aircraft, spacecraft to private contractors, and when that happens it naturally costs more to do, to pay them to do that job (and take on the risk of doing it). After all, they are profit-seeking enterprises, while if that expertise had been kept in government, it would not be. If you take it by examples, the era of WW2/shortly-post-WW2 military aircraft was when Air Force/Navy/Army aircraft engineers helped design planes that contractors would get marching orders to go build (of course with their input). Nowadays, we're in the era when Pentagon procurement office tells LM / Boeing to go design us a plane to these outcomes, which are cobbled together from 4 different branches of the military and uncoordinated generals' wish lists. And we're surprised that a fighter program ends up costing $2T.

readthenotes1 4y ago

"Many delays happen/happened because people believed the requirements were set, and started building things, only to have them change later." The second part, 'changing requirements' has been the reality of many NASA and DoD projects for decades. The "delays" happen because the vendors make gobs of money working this way.

supernova87a 4y ago
That is also true to some extent. I would also say that it is a product of the federal government in recent decades gradually losing its ability to keep people on staff (or pay them enough) to build the knowledge about how to run/build such projects themselves. And cost-effectively. If you recall the earlier days of aerospace, aircraft, etc., technical experts in the military would basically tell Lockheed, whoever, exactly what they wanted to design, or would be equally qualified to set out the specs and be deep in the design. Over the last decades, that capability (I believe) has largely left the government/public institutions. We have essentially outsourced the design and building of aircraft, spacecraft to private contractors, and when that happens it naturally costs more to do, to pay them to do that job (and take on the risk of doing it). After all, they are profit-seeking enterprises, while if that expertise had been kept in government, it would not be. If you take it by examples, the era of WW2/shortly-post-WW2 military aircraft was when Air Force/Navy/Army aircraft engineers helped design planes that contractors would get marching orders to go build (of course with their input). Nowadays, we're in the era when Pentagon procurement office tells LM / Boeing to go design us a plane to these outcomes, which are cobbled together from 4 different branches of the military and uncoordinated generals' wish lists. And we're surprised that a fighter program ends up costing $2T.