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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday March 04 2018, @04:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the easier-to-correct-down-here dept.

The U.S. Government Acountability [sic] Office (GAO) has warned that the launch of James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is likely to be delayed again, which could cause the budget cap set by the U.S. Congress to be exceeded:

The U.S. Government Acountability [sic] Office (GAO), a non-partisan group that investigates federal spending and performance, has issued a report on the James Webb Space Telescope that has astronomers worried. "It's likely the launch date will be delayed again," the report concludes — an ominous statement, given that any further delays could risk project cancellation.

Last year NASA announced a delay in the telescope's launch to sometime between March and June 2019. The 5- to 8-month delay came from problems integrating spacecraft components, especially its complex, five-layered sunshield, which must unfold perfectly when the telescope is deployed. Right after requesting the change in launch readiness date, the mission learned of further delays from its contractor, Northrum Grumman, due to "lessons learned from conducting deployment exercises of the spacecraft element and sunshield."

The mission now has 1.5 months of schedule reserve remaining, the GAO finds. Delays during integration and testing are common, "the phase in development where problems are most likely to be found and schedules tend to slip." The project has a total of five phases of integration and testing, and has made significant progress on phases three and four, with the fifth phase beginning in July.

GAO's 31-page report, February 2018: JWST: Integration and Test Challenges Have Delayed Launch and Threaten to Push Costs Over Cap.

Also at Science Magazine.

Previously: Launch of James Webb Space Telescope Delayed to Spring 2019
Launch of James Webb Space Telescope Could be Further Delayed

Related: James Webb Space Telescope Vibration Testing Completed
NASA Considering Flagship Space Telescope Options for the 2030s
WFIRST Space Observatory Could be Scaled Back Due to Costs
JWST: Too Big to Fail?
Trump Administration Budget Proposal Would Cancel WFIRST


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @05:48PM (15 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @05:48PM (#647681)

    That EXPLAINS a *LOT*.

    I talked to a former chief mechanic at McClellan AFB a few years back. A few years before the base closed down he'd developed a testing and repair procedure for the F-14's avionics for the Navy. Long story short, he managed to do repairs on the units for 1/16th what NG was charging for repairing the units, on a far shorter turnaround base AND it lasted at least 16 hours. Apparently the Grumman units had an MTBF of around 4-8 hours, took months to get returned, and promptly re-failed. According to him, half of the F-14 flights at that point were going out with a big chunk of the navigation avionics system uncalibrated or out of commission.

    While I am sure this is a different branch of NG from that one, I think the shortcomings there, 20ish years ago are probably still at play with whoever is handling these components for NASA today.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday March 04 2018, @06:05PM (13 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday March 04 2018, @06:05PM (#647683) Journal

      NASA's risk-averse and tedious testing procedures have been identified as one reason for the delays.

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      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday March 04 2018, @07:31PM (11 children)

        by frojack (1554) on Sunday March 04 2018, @07:31PM (#647700) Journal

        Tedious testing is probably warranted.

        Since its eventually going to be located near the Earth–Sun L₂ Lagrangian point, nobody is going to be able to visit it and repair it.

        Hubble was almost a total loss, except that we could get to it and partially repair it.
        Mars Climate Orbiter got metric and imperial messed up.
        Schiaparelli Mars lander cratered because nobody simulated atmospheric entry.

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        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Virindi on Sunday March 04 2018, @08:49PM (8 children)

          by Virindi (3484) on Sunday March 04 2018, @08:49PM (#647717)

          It is obvious that better reliability is needed. However, it is not obvious whether NASA's "tedious testing" helps achieve this.

          It is very easy to do large amounts of completely worthless, bureaucratic testing, and not decrease the failure rate. Is what they are doing now actually useful? I don't know.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:24PM (7 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:24PM (#647769)
            This [nasa.gov] is the rationale behind this tedious testing, in the words of Richard Feynman.
            • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:44PM (4 children)

              by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:44PM (#647785) Journal

              There won't be any humans going up in flames if the JWST or Ariane rocket fail. Just dollars.

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              • (Score: 2) by Kell on Monday March 05 2018, @12:08AM

                by Kell (292) on Monday March 05 2018, @12:08AM (#647792)

                But admittedly, billions and billions of dollars, and the combined efforts of thousands of scientists and engineers over several decades. Probably worth safe-guarding that, too.

                --
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              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @12:13AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @12:13AM (#647795)

                Yes, well, we live in a capitalist system! Dollars are more precious than human life. Couldn't we send some humans up there to reduce the number of dollars at risk?

              • (Score: 2) by Virindi on Monday March 05 2018, @01:18AM

                by Virindi (3484) on Monday March 05 2018, @01:18AM (#647807)

                There won't be any humans going up in flames if the JWST or Ariane rocket fail. Just dollars.

                And those dollars could have been put to much better uses! Feeding the hungry, curing cancer, whatever! Except the dollars are already spent now.

                It is a sunk cost problem.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @01:26AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @01:26AM (#647809)
                Probably still cheaper to do the tedious tests than to have a space telescope that represents billions of dollars worth of science and engineering to fail.
            • (Score: 2) by Virindi on Monday March 05 2018, @01:13AM

              by Virindi (3484) on Monday March 05 2018, @01:13AM (#647805)

              This does not in any way address my point: that more testing does not necessarily equate to better reliability. The Challenger report merely discusses institutional attitudes of "faith" and "not my problem".

              I never argued against reliability, or trying to make the best design possible. But the path towards getting a better design than now is not always to just throw more dollars and hours into contrived testing and list ticking. The answers to problems in the real world are never so simple; it requires a judgment call. And after such insane cost and time overruns, it is natural to ask if such a judgment call was even considered or if the institution is just on bureaucratic autopilot.

            • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday March 05 2018, @03:06AM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 05 2018, @03:06AM (#647839) Journal
              Let's look at what Feynman wrote:

              An estimate of the reliability of solid rockets was made by the range safety officer, by studying the experience of all previous rocket flights. Out of a total of nearly 2,900 flights, 121 failed (1 in 25). This includes, however, what may be called, early errors, rockets flown for the first few times in which design errors are discovered and fixed. A more reasonable figure for the mature rockets might be 1 in 50. With special care in the selection of parts and in inspection, a figure of below 1 in 100 might be achieved but 1 in 1,000 is probably not attainable with today's technology. (Since there are two rockets on the Shuttle, these rocket failure rates must be doubled to get Shuttle failure rates from Solid Rocket Booster failure.)

              [...]

              It is true that if the probability of failure was as low as 1 in 100,000 it would take an inordinate number of tests to determine it ( you would get nothing but a string of perfect flights from which no precise figure, other than that the probability is likely less than the number of such flights in the string so far). But, if the real probability is not so small, flights would show troubles, near failures, and possible actual failures with a reasonable number of trials. and standard statistical methods could give a reasonable estimate. In fact, previous NASA experience had shown, on occasion, just such difficulties, near accidents, and accidents, all giving warning that the probability of flight failure was not so very small. The inconsistency of the argument not to determine reliability through historical experience, as the range safety officer did, is that NASA also appeals to history, beginning "Historically this high degree of mission success..."

              In other words, Feynman emphasized determining failure rate from trying and failing, not from tedious testing that doesn't do the job. One-off (that is, making one of a design) has enormous reliability costs with the biggest being merely that one doesn't know until one deploys the project what sort of problems it'll face. And by then, it's too late. If instead, NASA had built several (3+) space telescopes, then they could have launched one, learned from the problems demonstrated, to improve the next and repeat. All the testing in the world won't catch a fatal problem that you didn't know was there. Deploying the space telescope will discover those.

        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday March 04 2018, @10:23PM (1 child)

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday March 04 2018, @10:23PM (#647745) Journal

          The budget for JWST [wikipedia.org] was at $500 million in 1997, $1.8 billion in 2000, $3 billion in 2005, and roughly $8.8 billion today (possibly more if GAO is right).

          With less tedious testing, maybe the budget would have been half, with a slightly higher chance of failure but an earlier launch date (by years).

          JWST is too big to fail now, but it could teach us a few lessons about future telescopes. We want them big and cheap, and that could be done with something like BFR. Make the telescope, test it a bit, launch it, repeat.

          As for servicing the JWST, it could still be serviced even if it is not designed for it. Hire India's ISRO to create a robotic servicing craft. Send them a few technical advisors to cut down on dumb mistakes. Pay for a cheap BFR launch from SpaceX. Even if it cost $1 billion, it would be well worth the trouble. Such a servicing mission will likely be necessary around 2029:

          JWST needs to use propellant to maintain its halo orbit around L2, which provides an upper limit to its designed lifetime, and it is being designed to carry enough for ten years.

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          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Virindi on Sunday March 04 2018, @10:49PM

            by Virindi (3484) on Sunday March 04 2018, @10:49PM (#647756)

            Yeah exactly, at this point it almost seems like they could have cut the cost in half and launched two instead. Or more!

            At some point being able to launch a whole bunch of times for the same cost serves as much better testing than merely adding billions of dollars of bureaucracy. Testing without actual mission experience has diminishing returns.

            All new-design endeavors are like this; software is the obvious example that is the same. As long as lives or huge fortunes aren't at risk (or maybe even if they are) there is a limit where you need a trial deployment to actually find the "hard bugs". Simply adding more "testing" because you are risk-averse is not going to help much because at some point, the problems that you are likely to encounter are precisely the ones your testing did not anticipate.

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 05 2018, @08:53AM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 05 2018, @08:53AM (#647910) Journal

        NASA's risk-averse and tedious testing procedures have been identified as one reason for the delays.

        When your supply channels are run by Sergeant Bilko (because this is how MIC can extract the highest profit), I think NASA may be right.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @06:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04 2018, @06:13PM (#647685)

      I talked to a former capt in the airforce that automated an inventory and ordering system. Nuked from orbit it was going to put 200 people out of work.

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