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'Eight billion bucks or bust': From pirates to 'stupid mistakes' — the wild story of how James Webb Space Telescope almost failed to launch
- Congress approved the funding of the James Webb Space Telescope but under a rigid budget cap of $8bn. Budget overruns, bureaucratic malfeasance, congressional oversight, accidents, and "stupid mistakes" repeatedly created havoc with the budget and the launch timeline for the JWST deep into the 2010s.
- Mike Menzel, the Senior project manager, would tell the review boards "what he needed was 'margin' — shorthand not just for the margin of error, but also beyond the margin of error. 'The normal rules don't apply here', Menzel would say."
- The launch date slipped from October 2018 to June 2019, and then a further delay to spring 2020 as a result of budget overruns and accidents. In January 2019, Congress approved a further $800m infusion, bringing the total expenditures to $8.8bn. In July 2020, the telescope would launch no sooner than October 31, 2021.
- The telescope couldn't be shipped as if it were cargo aboard a freighter; instead, it required a special temperature and humidity-controlled container, which survived a 16-day, 5,800-mile passage down the west coast of Mexico, through the Panama Canal, up the Kourou River to the Port de Pariacabo, and into the processing facility near the launch site in French Guiana.
- A high tension clamp band snapped off, shaking the observatory, but an inspection revealed no damage.
- The James Webb telescope finally launched from French Guiana on December 25, 2021, to the relief of astronomers and scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, viewers around the world, and the author who tells the story of the telescope's conception, development, and execution in his book "Pillars of Creation: How the James Webb Telescope Unlocked the Secrets of the Cosmos."
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