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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: 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.

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  • (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.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (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.

        --
        Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
      • (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.