Space Telescope Price Tops $8bn

Was going to watch the video of the thing unfolding, but not if I am forced to watch a 30 second advert first.

Just read a book for 30 seconds....or use that time to trim your fingernails.

I can't stand the adds either....but perhaps a small inconvience to get information for free.

Now that I'm at work, I'll probably take a look at it. I can find plenty of 30 second diversions here.

Cheers.

That's when I usually clip my finger nails (at work).

You wrote, "Was going to watch the video of the thing unfolding, but not if I am forced to watch a 30 second advert first."

That's to help pay for the $8.7 billion.

Does anybody have any comprehension how much money $8,700,000,000.00 is?

I'm not saying that research isn't of value, but we don't have that kind of money laying around to spend on "space research". Let's focus on research that has impact here and now. I know there are things of value from research that have come about because of space exploration, but I think there is plenty right here that we don't understand that could use research dollars in a more wise fashion.

When our financial situation becomes better and there is money (that isn't borrowed) for discretionary spending, then we can pursue that avenue of research.

I know, the government beauracrats make decisions on a daily basis to spend on many things that don't make sense to you and me. We all have opinions on what things are of value, but there again it comes back the role of government as delineated in the Constitution.

That is 8.7 times the amount of money we are spending to not fight in Libya - so far.

The real downside to this is that NASA is going to be pulling from other NASA project budgets to pay for it.

I have mixed emotions about this.

On the one hand, the idea that state of the art research and development can ever be done on budget or schedule is ridiculous - there's a reason why we call the unknown "unknown".

On the other hand, it doesn't seem fair to penalize other projects for overruns on this one.

Congress should do what congress always does - cancel the project and then complain about how NASA never finishes anything.

It doesn't stop there. A number (five I think) congressmen are trying to pull another 1/3 billion from NASA to have it redistributed to their districts.

The net effect is to take funding from the Kennedy Space Center and move it to the Marshall Space Flight Center and other contractors and forcing more downsizing at the KSC.

We will probably see even more defunding as budgets get tight and general interest in space flight continues to erode.