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Most Americans think NASA’s $10B space telescope is a good investment My god The Verge has an atrocious standard of reporting. The headline is clearly written
by causi 4y ago
Most Americans think NASA’s $10B space telescope is a good investment
My god The Verge has an atrocious standard of reporting. The headline is clearly written to communicate that most Americans believe the JWST was worth its 2,000% budget overrun. That was not the survey question at all. The survey question was "How good an investment do you think the James Webb Space Telescope has been?"
- agloeregrets 4y agoIs that actually materially different? Foundationally, if it was supposed to cost $10B and it was worth it and if it ended up costing 10B when it wasn't supposed to and was worth it, is that actually different? It's still a $10B project. Yes it overran it but, worth it.
- causi 4y agoThe survey participants were not informed of the cost at all. The JWST is absolutely worth ten billion dollars, but I'm not naive enough to think most Americans would agree with me, and I think that NASA contractors extracting twenty times their original grant from the taxpayers with no consequences is a major problem.
- daveslash 4y agoAgreed. I think a better headline would be "Most Americans still think Space is Cool as Fuck, still embody some childlike wonder about the universe, and are excited about JWST" But I bet that if you asked Americans "Was the $10bn cost of JWST worth it?" and then asked them to describe what the "it" was and re-iterated the first question after they qualified the it.... I doubt you'd get a "yes" twice in a row.