Strong Political Support Needed for Building the James Webb Space Telescope

According to analysts, built James Webb Space Telescope is a business that requires political support outside of NASA and the international scientific community. This is a lesson to be learned from past projects "big science".
JWST is scheduled to succeed Telescope NASA / ESA Hubble Space as the U.S. space agency's primary mission to orbit the Earth. Hubble itself plagued by problems, delays and cost overruns during its development.
NASA needs $ 10 billion and about 20 years to make the Hubble together, and five additional shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the satellite. Last maintenance flight carried aboard the orbiter Atlantis, back in 2009.
At this point, JWST also several years behind schedule, and estimated to cost more than $ 8800000000 dollars. Unlike Hubble, however, do not benefit from broad political support in Congress and elsewhere, reports Space.
In fact, the U.S. Senate want to have the whole project was stopped last year, and only through a small miracle that the bill did not pass. JWST will continue to receive development funds throughout 2012, although it can stop the flow of money next year.
In general, "big science" projects require everyone to be on board. They usually take a lot of time to develop, cost and time delayed, and finally really frustrating to put together.
On the other hand, the data they can not be matched by anything scientists have access to. JWST, for example, be able to look far back into the Universe as when the first stars began to produce light.
Additionally, it will be able to detect planets in orbit around its parent star, to investigate the final fate of stars and galaxies, studying the accretion disks around black holes and more.
"For the big science on a scale of mega-projects, the support of the scientists is necessary but not sufficient historical records found. Science raises questions of great and strong support from outside the scientific community is required to maintain long-term mega projects," said Robert Smith.
Analyst is a historian of science at the University of Alberta in Canada. From a historical perspective, the United States does have a history does not always support major projects, such as particle accelerators Superconducting Super Collider proposed.
SSC should be larger than the CERN LHC, but never managed to get enough support.