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Bolden and Mikulski hold a press conference to lobby for continuing funding for the James Webb Space Telescope.

Bolden and Mikulski hold a press conference to lobby for continuing funding for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Before JWST entered development, around the turn of the century, program officials projected it would cost $1 billion to $3.5 billion and launch between 2007 to 2011, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Jan. 8. Now, after lengthy delays [seven years] and billions in added costs [a real budget of $8.8 billion], JWST is entering its peak development years, in which major subsystems will be put together, tested, integrated with one another, and tested again. It will be, according to Bolden, one of the most difficult parts of JWST’s construction.

“This is our tough budget year,” Bolden said. It is also the most expensive, according to projections the White House released last April with its 2014 budget proposal. Bolden spoke to the press here after he and Mikulski, JWST’s biggest ally in Congress, held a town hall meeting at Goddard, the center in charge of building the massive infrared observatory. Both NASA employees and executives from some of JWST’s major industry contractors attended.

Mikulski told reporters that automatic budget cuts known as sequestration, which reduced NASA’s 2013 appropriation to about $16.9 billion, “resulted in furloughs, shutdowns, slowdowns [and] slamdown politics [which] are exactly what could derail or cause enormous cost overruns to the James Webb.”

I am especially entertained by the disasters Mikulski lists in the last paragraph, all of which she blames on sequestration. They are identical to the lies Democratic politicians like her told before sequestration took effect, none of which happened. That she now makes believe as if these disasters did happen and expects us to believe her new lies about the future illustrates how much in contempt she holds the general public. Does she really believe people are that stupid?

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

6 comments

  • ” Does she really believe people are that stupid?”

    See: Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, California, New York City, Presidential elections of 2008/2012, and this gem

    http://www.salon.com/2014/02/02/why_youre_wrong_about_communism_7_huge_misconceptions_about_it_and_capitalism/.

    I’ll be commenting on the last in the very near future.

  • joe

    The author of this tripe is encouraged to export his self to n. Korea, he seems so enamored with the benefits of communism, he can stay there!!

  • Concur. I’ve noticed those in favor of State-directed societies never seem to want to move to one. Instead, they want to turn free societies into Orwellian nightmares; I suspect because they think they’ll be in charge (things never work out that way). We see this in the emigration of Big Government types from states where they voted for Big Government, saw the effects, and move to states with less government. Of course, the first thing they want to do is enact the very policies that failed in the first place.

  • Edward

    “I’ve noticed those in favor of State-directed societies never seem to want to move to one. ”

    I have noticed that those in favor of freedom flock to this country in droves. Many of them are so desperate that they break the law in order to enter this country.

    In the days of the iron curtain, many were so desperate for freedom that they risked death just to get to Western Europe.

  • I once worked with an engineer who emigrated from Russia. He told me that when he and his wife saw they might have a chance to leave in 1991, they made arrangements. They were allowed one suitcase apiece. They were both in their early 60’s when they emigrated, knowing that there would be no Social Security for them, probably no retirement, and that they would very likely not get work in their field. Even so, they were both enormously grateful to have the chance to live in the US.

    They aren’t unique. I’ve talked with and worked with people from all over the world, even from ostensibly ‘free’ countries like the UK, who came here for one reason. I hold a special contempt for those who would turn the US into a ‘worker’s paradise’. If freedom in the US disappears, there’s nowhere left to go.

  • joe

    My endodontist is from Pakistan, he has a practice in downriver area in Michigan and teaches in Pakistan, he told me that it used to be that his students wanted to come to the U.S., now he says that these students are watching what is happening here and no longer wish to come here, they see our freedoms being eroded and are planning on going elsewhere.

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