Who Should Pay for the Mistakes on NASA’s Next Big Telescope?

The Atlantic ^ | 7/18 | Marina Koren

[caltaxed]

Budgets and schedules are secondary to diversity awareness and high Engagement Scores on the annual Gallup Survey.

Obama, Bush and Clinton destroyed our defense contractors' effectveness.

Allowing a consolidation which resulted in only three major defense contractors also reduced competitiveness.

[Calvin Locke]

Part of the Hubble mirror problem was the yearly budgeting.

The "work" done on it was not continuous, for one thing.

Can't remember the lack of lack of gravity compensation when the mirror was "built" and "tested" in Earth's gravity.

[Nifster]

Had Congress not changed the original specs

[skepsel]

Wasn’t it President Reagan that said an elephant was a mouse built to govt. specs?

[publius911]

From an original cost estimate of $500 Million, now over 8.8 Billion, 17 times the original cost.
It freaks me out just wanting to make a comment about this thread. Other than both sides are at fault, accepting a contract loose enough to allow this to happen.

Moving right along...

[prophetic]

You mean like the F35 fighter aircraft?

[prophetic]

And the requirements were all hammered out using the waterfall method which is a very right management implementation style. Has anyone tried the Agile method recently?

[trebb]

That's what happens when one tries to stay "cutting edge" instead of building what was originally designed and then moving on to the later technologies - delays and huge cost overruns.

This happens because they know that once a project is being funded, it is easier to modify it to many times the original cost than it is to scrap it and replace it with a new project....ran into this crap a LOT when developing courses for NSA...idiots kept demanding unnecessary integration so even programming a switch (maybe done once every 3-6 months) could be done from main consoles instead of via the console developed specifically for programming the switch....they kept crying, "Gotta stay cutting edge" and I kept telling them that if they didn't pick a point and finish, they would be chasing that cutting edge after Jesus returned....and never have an operational suite.....I wasn't their favorite person at any of the meetings...

[KC Burke]

I would be happy if the products specified were still readily available at the time of execution.

[mad_as_he$$]

Yup. But NASA is notorious for change orders and the contractors rape us taxpayers on them.

[minnesota_bound]

The reason why we and other “aliens” cannot contact each other is because of cost overruns.....

[RedStateRocker]

That’s the other half of the equation.
NO CHANGE ORDERS> PERIOD. It should bed written into law for all government contracts- NO change orders, no delays, to exactly balance the absolutly enforced obligation of any and all contractors to deliver.

Some things should be absolute and unchanging; any contract for design, building or implementation should be so on both sides.