If you think you’re having problems maintaining your budget in the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, just think about the multi-billion dollar budget NASA has to keep. It seems impossible. Maybe it is. Reports came in on Wednesday that somewhere along the line, something went wrong in the financial sphere of things for NASA and a project has run significantly over budget and behind schedule. The culprit: The James Webb Space Telescope, estimated to be “running about one-third over its $5 billion budget and more than a year behind schedule…costing $6.2 billion to $6.8 billion.”
Kenneth Chang writes a succinct and unexpectedly interesting piece here. He does this by including a lot of great quotes from tons of scientists and administrators at NASA. Some quotes include: “The telescope, [Alan P. Boss said], ‘will leave nothing but devastation in the astrophysics division budget,’” and “’This is NASA’s Hurricane Katrina.’” Chang also includes details on the telescope itself, how this mistake happened, and what the plans for the future are. But it doesn’t seem like much can be done. The extent to which NASA will solve the problem, as Chang’s article suggests, is limited: “the project would need increases of more than $200 million in both 2011 and 2012, and that panel was not able to come up with suggestions for reducing the cost.” Be glad you only have to worry about your own budget, and not an entire division of the national treasury.
No comments:
Post a Comment