I thought the "silver snoopy" award was NASA's highest honor? I guess that is more of an astronaut award vs. a scientist/engineering award.
Northrop Grumman Employees Receive NASA’s Highest Honors for Building the JWST
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Re: Northrop Grumman Employees Receive NASA’s Highest Honors for Building the JWST
#22One thing that will be memory holed because of the ultimate successful launch is just the MASSIVE overpromising on schedule and budget. Nearly criminal, in fact. Billions of dollars wasted and countless valuable missions that had to be sacrificed. The team (I think under new management) eventually delivered a successful launch, so no one will remember. I do think the final team who got it turned around and actually l…
It's somewhat amusing to read this criticism on a website primarily populated by people in the software industry, which is hardly a paragon of accurate estimation and forecasting. Proportionate excesses (i.e. 10X over-budget) may not be the norm, but they are hardly rare, and they are always for projects far more prosaic than launching a telescope into space.
I work in the aerospace industry, not software.
Re: Northrop Grumman Employees Receive NASA’s Highest Honors for Building the JWST
#23That reminds me of what Whitney Webb wrote and said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=w-d3jFIGxdQ&ab_c...
Re: Northrop Grumman Employees Receive NASA’s Highest Honors for Building the JWST
#24I thought the "silver snoopy" award was NASA's highest honor? I guess that is more of an astronaut award vs. a scientist/engineering award.
I posted above but my grandfather has one and he was a jet propulsion engineer. Maybe he doesn't have the "silver snoopy" and just a snoopy. I forget and he's passed but I distinctly remember a Snoopy on his wall as a kid.
Re: Northrop Grumman Employees Receive NASA’s Highest Honors for Building the JWST
#25Congratulations to the whole team! I know this celebrates the achievements by select Northrop Grumman employees, but the JWST success deserves to be shared among all the teams: NASA, ESA CSA, U Arizona, Ball Aerospace, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and the Space Telescope Science Institute.
I work at the latter institution and I believe two individuals here were also awarded this honor.
Re: Northrop Grumman Employees Receive NASA’s Highest Honors for Building the JWST
#26One thing that will be memory holed because of the ultimate successful launch is just the MASSIVE overpromising on schedule and budget. Nearly criminal, in fact. Billions of dollars wasted and countless valuable missions that had to be sacrificed. The team (I think under new management) eventually delivered a successful launch, so no one will remember. I do think the final team who got it turned around and actually l…
And money well worth spent IMHO even 10 times that amount to increase our understanding of the universe say compared to spending on Twitter. Orchestrating a very complicated remote deployment 1.5 million miles from earth with no do overs deserves some kudos.
Agreed buying Twitter is a waste, but the projects who lost out due to defense contractor incompetence were other science and astronomy missions. It is, in fact, understanding of our universe that suffers when borderline grift like this occurs.
Re: Northrop Grumman Employees Receive NASA’s Highest Honors for Building the JWST
#27One thing that will be memory holed because of the ultimate successful launch is just the MASSIVE overpromising on schedule and budget. Nearly criminal, in fact. Billions of dollars wasted and countless valuable missions that had to be sacrificed. The team (I think under new management) eventually delivered a successful launch, so no one will remember. I do think the final team who got it turned around and actually l…
So off by price by a factor of 20
Re: Northrop Grumman Employees Receive NASA’s Highest Honors for Building the JWST
#28Re: Northrop Grumman Employees Receive NASA’s Highest Honors for Building the JWST
#29One thing that will be memory holed because of the ultimate successful launch is just the MASSIVE overpromising on schedule and budget. Nearly criminal, in fact. Billions of dollars wasted and countless valuable missions that had to be sacrificed. The team (I think under new management) eventually delivered a successful launch, so no one will remember. I do think the final team who got it turned around and actually l…
So off by price by a factor of 20
May be we should rethink the cost-plus structure of space/defense projects. There is an incentive for suppliers to run the billable-hours treadmill forever. See the F-35 program. I worked in defense and it was pretty much an internal joke/culture to "Just bill it to Sam".
There is probably a balance between incentivizing suppliers and keeping them afloat for defense reasons in the name of space exploration. We could probably do both at the same time and get tax payers more for their buck.
Like wouldn't it be awesome to ship 4x JWSTs for the same cost? We could get 4x more data and have redundancy in the project, etc. Or we could run 1 JWST project + X more projects to explore space, send probes, etc. for the same cost to tax payers. I am not proposing this and they're silly suggestions, just to give some color to opportunity costs that incurs in these overbloated gov projects.
Re: Northrop Grumman Employees Receive NASA’s Highest Honors for Building the JWST
#30I thought the "silver snoopy" award was NASA's highest honor? I guess that is more of an astronaut award vs. a scientist/engineering award.
I posted above but my grandfather has one and he was a jet propulsion engineer. Maybe he doesn't have the "silver snoopy" and just a snoopy. I forget and he's passed but I distinctly remember a Snoopy on his wall as a kid.
That is so cool, I would treasure that should it ever fall in your possession. And it looks like its just silver snoopy: