James Webb Space Telescope is at risk of US political budget shenanigans

The project to build and launch the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope is again suffering at the hands of a chosen few during party-based political shenanigans during US budget negotiations.

A full-size mock-up of the JWST, covering an area of a tennis court, in Baltimore USA.
Hubble's mirror is about the size of three of the JWST's 18 hexagonal mirrors.

NASA needs at least a next year funding guarantee of $530 million to keep the James Webb Space Telescope project on track and to prevent further cost blow-outs. Of course it is lamentable that the scientists and engineers working JWST got the costs so far wrong. A blow-out from less than $1 billion to a current estimate of $8.7 billion is a serious failure in anyone's language, making the Sydney Opera House blow-out look like lunch money.

But to be a little fair, every single aspect of this project is pushing into totally new science. And because the JWST will be located far out in Earth's Lagrange Point 2, there will be no chance of some astronauts dropping in to fix up problems as happened with Hubble. And this is because JWST is an infra-red telescope rather than visual. So protection of its delicate optics from infra-red light - heat - is critical. Hence the location were it will be shielded by Earth from much of the sun's light, aided by the big multi-layer heat shield.

And in turn, that means everything about the JWST design must work first time flawlessly. Requiring engineering at the limits of our knowledge and often beyond. And that costs dollars.

But why is it just US dollars funding this? This is a project of global significance. The EU came in late in the Hubble project when it ran into similar difficulties. Why isn't the world coming in to help build JWST? Surely there is a role for the United Nations to champion such a thing? Founded in the Cold War, surely the UN should by now be able to turn at least some attention to such matters?