THEY say good things come to those who wait. And when it comes to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), we have been waiting long enough. Originally due to launch in 2007, it has been plagued by delays due to engineering problems, the need to find money to meet its soaring costs and, more recently, the covid-19 pandemic. It has now racked up a bill around 20 times its initial budget.
Finally set to blast off in a few weeks, this extraordinary machine promises to show us the moment the first stars lit up and solve all manner of cosmic mysteries. But given all the effort and the eye-watering expense, will it be worth it?
Advertisement
“To put the telescope’s price tag in perspective: it is less than the latest US aircraft carrier”
We could compare the project to another feat of engineering, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Like the JWST, the LHC was first conceived in the mid-1990s. It would be a vast underground ring of magnets designed to accelerate and smash particles together to reveal the secrets of the quantum world. It was also late: it was meant to be finished in 2005, but was first switched on in 2008 – and it cost more than $5 billion to build.
Despite all that, the LHC is clearly a success story, revealing the existence of the Higgs boson, a particle that confers mass on all others, along with additional insights that have given us invaluable clues to the very nature of reality.
The promise of the JWST is just as great. But it is far later than the LHC and twice as expensive. Even if the telescope does deliver on its promises, we shouldn’t simply shrug off the expense of such projects in the name of science. In future, we need to find ways to manage epic projects better – and manage expectations. For starters, we should be more realistic about costs from the get-go. However, we should also see the JWST’s price tag in perspective: it is a few billion dollars less than the most advanced US aircraft carrier.
Ultimately, the telescope’s success rests on the risky next phase of the mission. A few days before Christmas, engineers plan to strap it inside a rocket, fire the engines and send it on a long journey into space. For those astronomers watching with bated breath, a safe launch would be the most long-awaited – and expensive – Christmas present they could wish for.
