http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46334188/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.TzYdKcWLssI

NASA reportedly will slash planetary science to make up for telescope cost overruns

The Mars missions would take $1.4 billion.  The Webb Telescope, originally estimated at $3.5 billion is now up to $8 billion.  $4.5 billion OVER on a $3.5 billion project.  (I know about inflation, which has been quite low, and I don’t care.)

Read about the development of the F-35 and see the same things, and winding up with a near-useless craft.  (One version of the F-35 had it carrying exactly 2 air to air missiles and nothing else.)

The only way to counter this mindset of getting started, just get started, tell ‘em anything but just get started and we’ll have ‘em mentality would be to completely cancel the Webb Telescope.

Take it off the board.  No money for a rocket, sell the scrap to Edmunds and Radio Shack.  None of the “it’s almost done” stuff.  It should have been “almost done” at $3.4 billion, not now.  If you can’t build it right, you can’t run it right, and we’re sorry – after all it’s our money, you’ll get to keep what you’ve been paid.  Hubble was sent up with a faulty mirror, and we had to eat that cost, too.  Perkins-Elmer wasn’t charged a dime.  We’re tired.  Done.

No more.  The unemployment line is downtown, and you are all eligible.  Every damned last one of you, and should have been eligible $4 billion ago.  It would have been much cheaper.

See what happens to other projects downline.