(July 12, 2011 at 4:39 pm)Welsh cake Wrote: I'm not surprised.The cost went from an initial estimate of $1.6bn (£996m) to more than $6.5bn (£4bn) .
How the hell you do spend a billion let alone four on anything? Those must be some really f***ing expensive paperclips Nasa needs.
NASA, being underfunded, undermanned and constantly under threat of being denied vital funding, has a history of underestimating the cost of such. Perhaps it is because Americans are too goddamn greedy to actually spend what it takes, so instead additional funds are wasted in the ensuing clusterfuck to rectify the former and make it workable.
As Min notes, the USS Ronald Reagan cost a shit ton, but we saw no threats to cancel such.
I am marveling at your apparent rage at the cost of the JWST, and suppose you really have no idea as to the true costs of many, many things, from battleships to space telescopes.
Something in common with many conservatives, I might add.
Furthermore, I would like to point out that the penny pinching nature of your statement is completely skew with respect to doing science. NASA is not, has not and will never be an organization for doing anything other than research. Even Apollo was research, research into a wholly unmapped area of space travel et al, but still research at the core. NASA is not here to be a cheap genie that pops up the results of RnD at a fraction of the cost -- NASA is a research organization.
And the sooner you get your head out of your money grubbing ass and recognize it, the sooner you can appreciate that charting new horizons in science and technology is expensive.
Anyone who says otherwise is selling something, to paraphrase The Princess Bride.
