The report says this large strategic mission [the first mission] is of an ambitious scale that only NASA can undertake and for which the U.S. is uniquely situated to lead. At an estimated cost of $11 billion, implementation of this IR/O/UV telescope could begin by the end of the decade, after the mission and technologies are matured, and a review considers it ready for implementation. If successful, this would lead to a launch in the first half of the 2040 decade.

Robert responded: “Proposing something that won’t be built for two decades is absurd. And the cost is even more absurd, as it is ten times what Hubble cost and seems more designed as a long term jobs program where nothing will get built but money will continue to pour in endlessly to the contractors and astronomers hired. That is what Webb and Roman essentially became.”

Robert and I disagree a bit. At least the plan is to ensure the the technology is mature before building the telescope. It is a bit like Gravity Probe-B, which spent two or three decades developing the technologies needed, and during this development period there were many papers and patents issued, and several PhD degrees earned.

I am very much in horror with the initial cost estimate. How much of this is to be used for technology maturation and how much for building, launching, and operating the telescope? No matter how this is distributed, the cost is enormous. Surely we can find a way to do the same science for less cost.

Five years after beginning this first mission, the report recommends NASA start preliminary studies of both a Far-IR strategic mission and a high-resolution X-ray large strategic mission with target costs of $3 billion to $5 billion.

Even if these target costs are for both, rather than for each, it is also very expensive.

I am reminded of a time in the late 1970s or early 1980s when many people noted that the costs of military aircraft were skyrocketing. The joke was that if it kept up like that, pretty soon the entire military budget would go to building only one fighter jet. When the B-2 bomber was put into production, Congress looked at the enormous cost and decided to build a single bomber each year at a cost of $2 billion (1990s dollars) rather than build two at a cost of $3 billion ($1.5 billion each) — not counting development costs. The joke almost came true. How much was spent building the F-22 and how many were made?

https://militarymachine.com/f-22-cost/

The cost of one aircraft alone is an estimated $334 million which includes research and development (unit cost of $150 million). The Air Force originally wanted 700 F-22s to be produced but had to cancel production just shy of 200 because they were already over-budget.

The flight cost per hour for an F-22 is roughly $70,000.

…

This number means the cost of ownership, including modifications over the lifetime of the jet. In 2014, the F-22 fleet required over 40 hours of maintenance per flight hour. It seems that as the fleet has aged, the maintenance requirements have increased considerably. The F-22 cost per lifecycle of one Raptor is an estimated $334 million.

We seem to be looking at a similar phenomenon in government space telescopes. They are getting more and more expensive, and if it keeps up like this, pretty soon we will only be able to afford to build one every decade.

Neither article said that the decadal report recommended rebuilding or improving the Arecibo radio telescope.

How The Space Shuttle Started Its Engines And Launched
Scott Manley (November 6, 2021)
https://youtu.be/PgT9-oMXgCU
11:49

Jay: By the way, I am not saying it can’t be done. I am just trying to point out that none of this is ever very simple.

Star Trek and most modern sci-fi movies have made too many people, even engineers, become nonchalant about these challenges. They think by simply changing the frap-a-stat to higher modulation for ten seconds, the frequency of the failing transistor will become stabilized and the ship will be saved.

It don’t work that way in real life.

And I think Jeff Bezos is slowing learning this lesson as well. :)

Jay: In its present configuration, Dragon capsule cannot do a servicing mission to Hubble. No robot arm, and that will be essential to provide a base of operations for any spacewalker.

I know I have seen the astronauts use the SpaceX suits for the flight, but has an EVA from the Dragon been thought of? Can an EVA be done from Dragon?

tangentially related– you might like some BBC video of Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 as well. (The BBC wiped and/or destroyed most all of their video recordings from that time period, precious little remains. Compare and contrast British coverage with American news.)
I have 8 BBC clips posted at the Archive for safekeeping. (There’s some amateur super-8 mm film of the Apollo 8 launch as well…)
https://archive.org/details/@voption

“Our preferred architecture is the most expensive one, with the most technologies that need to be developed,” says Gaudi, co-chair of the HabEx team.

This is how we ended up with JWST costing so much and taking so long. Rather than develop the technology as secondary payloads on less expensive missions, they want to develop it on an expensive mission in which the technology is mission critical. This is foolish and prevents many other useful missions to go unfunded and good science never seen.

“All the other architectures are less expensive and require fewer technologies to enable the science, but of course they also can’t do as much science.”

This may be true of each of the others, but we can get so many of the others that the amount of science is more in the long run. Develop the technology first, then use it on the expensive mission. The science from this method may take longer to obtain, or it may not, considering all the trouble the development causes, but less money is wasted and more overall science is accomplished with this method. With a little patience, the same science will eventually be done for an overall increase in the amount of science accomplished.

These scientists are not acting like adults but like impetuous, impatient children who want it now, like Veruca Salt in the book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” As with Veruca, they don’t get it now. Instead, it gets delayed by all the very expensive trouble they get into with the new technology.

NASA is fantastic at deep space exploration, which is a pretty established tech now. Radiation hardening is understood, both solar and themo from plutonium power systems… In the bag.

Human launch, reusability.. not so much. It’s easy to extrapolate out that big complicated systems would be better off tendered out. ( As to it’s credit, NASA is doing with Artimus.)

Government dollars ( and Euros, and Krona ) should always be pumped into space exploration, our future can only be beyond the Earth, but I agree with all here that very often the ones that propose these projects, and invite the proposals have zero idea of the financial tree they are asking to nest upon.

Ref-” Put a lot of relatively small and inexpensive optical telescopes into orbit, say 2 meters…”

Yes, If we’re taking a Vote, sign me up. Two or more Hubble size telescopes, with current technology optics & sensors = a better investment.

Universe In A Mirror
https://archive.org/details/the-hubble-space-telescope-and-the-visionaries-who-built-it

My readers all get it. Put a lot of relatively small and inexpensive optical telescopes into orbit, say 2 meters (78 inches) in diameter (slightly less than Hubble) and the payback in astronomical discoveries will be enormous, and will happen now, not in 2040 as proposed by this absurd decadal survey.

For example, the mirror on Kepler was I think 33 inches. As small as that is, comparable to many amateur homebuilt telescopes, the space telescope discovered thousands of transiting exoplanets in one small patch in the sky. Imagine what twenty such telescopes could do.

Just spit balling here but consider the flexibility, utility, and reliability of something like a standardized 2-3m design deployed at a rate of 10 or so each year on a continuing basis. Sensor suites would vary as needed, and evolve over time with technology advancements. They could cooperate when necessary to increase sensitivity and provide multispectral coverage, have a stretch goal of supporting optical interferometry a la VLT and Keck when deployed in formations, and operate on MANY different more modest investigations when allocated separately.

I bet a $1B budget could get an initial constellation of at least 20 or more scopes deployed including the launch costs. Also, you could draw lots of international and academic partners to the effort for specialty sensor packages, coronagraphs that fly in formation with a scope for exoplanet studies, etc. And by tying it into StarLink you’d have a high bandwidth backbone network to facilitate global control and datalink needs with no impact on our deep space network.

My 2 cents : )

By the way, if we are not pushing into bleeding edge or beyond technology then couldn’t NASA or better yet, private owners bid the project out for a firm fixed price and delivery date?

This kind of thinking needs to go away.

A Ford class carrier costs this much, and it’s considered a first class strategic asset. But a Ford has a crew on board to repair things that break, and it can return to port if something breaks that the crew can’t easily fix.

Gary: In a word, yes. If the astronomical community did what NASA’s manned program has been doing, and shift to buying its services from the private market, they would get the telescopes they want very quickly, for very little money.

An excellent description of the decadal survey program. A bunch of people make a nice pile of money flying around to posh hotels/resorts with dining and the entertainment on the expense account – all on the taxpayers dime. At the end of which comes a nice printed and bound report with glossy pictures that amounts to nothing