NASA's Successor to Hubble Is $1.4 Billion Over Budget and 1 Year-Plus Behind Schedule, Inquiry Fin

NASA's Successor to Hubble Is $1.4 Billion Over Budget and 1 Year-Plus Behind Schedule, Inquiry Finds

An independent review of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), has revealed that the telescope will cost about $1.4 billion more than had been thought.

Scientific America

Casani's group, which included representatives from academia and industry, sought to determine the minimum cost and earliest launch date for JWST. The figures they came up with were a cost of $6.5 billion, up from a prior estimated cost of $5.1 billion, and a launch date of no sooner than September 2015. The telescope had previously been targeted for a June 2014 launch.

This kind of news seems to be the norm coming out of NASA as of late with over budget projects that run years past their original launch dates. It also seems that the project could be in some serious financial problems in the coming years.

But both estimates, Casani noted, "would require funding in fiscal years 2011 and 2012 that would be substantially over what is in the President's request." In other words, political and economic realities may cause further slips of the launch date as well as additional cost increases. The project would need more than $250 million above what President Obama had requested for it in both 2011 and 2012 to meet the panel's targets.

wtf..
this isn't even 1 percent of our budget