JWST and the AASThe Plan for the AAS- A new JWST Backdrop- A 50” 3D TV- A 42” plasma TV- “Pieces” of JWST at booth- Take home informational material - Brochures - Education material - Science media guide- Link to social media and websites- Take home items to increase “word of mouth”

Dec 16th, 2010 TIPS Meeting

JWST Community and Public OutreachJWST Exposure is Growing!

Dec 16th, 2010 TIPS Meeting

The Super Conducting Super Collider- courtesy Robert Smith

• To rising cost estimates; there was a widespread and corrosive perception that the initial cost had been a crude buy-in. I think it was approved at around $4.4 Billion and within months extra billions were added. This perception helped `frame' the later debates and discussions and the cost at the end had gone up to at least $11 billion.

• The perception of poor management. Hence by the time of cancellation, not only was the cost rising endlessly (or so it seemed), the management performance to date by the DOE and physicists gave no confidence things could be got back on track.

• By the time of the SSC's death the broad domestic political debate was largely centered on the deficit and deficit reduction (e.g., Perot's run for President in 1992). Thus the new Congress that met in 1993 was a very different beast from the one that approved the SSC in 1987 and was seriously eyeing cuts

– the SSC ended up directly against the Space Station. By 1993, the Congress had decided there had to be a symbolic sacrifice to appease the deficit gods and it came down to the SSC vs the Space Station. Only one winner in that fight.  

• Very hard to make a clear and punchy public case for the science of the SSC: What the heck is the Higgs Boson and why should we care?

• Enemies: Scientist opponents of the SSC were willing to speak out very publicly against the SSC. It's bad when a Princeton Nobel Prize winner testifies on the Hill against your project. A widespread fear that the SSC would eat everyone's lunch + some opponents were angry at the hype (SSC would cure AIDs etc).

• The high energy physicists did a poor if not inept job of constructing a strong `coalition' of supporters. They certainly seem to have started woefully late.

• With the end of the Cold War, high energy physics was just not as prestigious by 1993 as it had been earlier. Molecular biology had eclipsed it (e.g. the Genome Project)  

The Super Conducting Super Collider- courtesy Robert Smith

New York Times, 10 November 2010

natureTHE TELESCOPE THAT ATE ASTRONOMY

natureTHE TELESCOPE THAT ATE ASTRONOMY

NATURE | EDITORIAL Scope for change Nature 468, 346 (18 November 2010)

Tough lessons must be learned if NASA is to avoid repeating a costly accounting error.

“Given Hubble's transformational impact on astronomy — and on the wider public's engagement with science — the case for a next-generation, all-purpose space observatory seems as strong as ever. That makes it all the more urgent to launch the JWST in a timely manner. Once Hubble is retired, the JWST will become the crucial tool with which astronomers can follow up on discoveries made by wide-field survey telescopes on the ground and in space.”

NATURE | CORRESPONDENCE

Space telescope is worth the effortMatt Mountain, John Grunsfeld & Heidi Hammel

Nature 468, 508 (25 November 2010)

Your sensationalist headline 'The telescope that ate astronomy' could more

appropriately have highlighted the promise of NASA's James Webb Space

Telescope (JWST) for astronomy's future (Nature 467, 1028–1030; 2010).

No facilities exist on or off this planet — or are called for in the recent US

decadal survey of astronomy and astrophysics — for finding the first galaxies

or for detecting liquid water on habitable planets around other stars. These

capabilities have been part of the JWST science plan since its inception.

• Enemies: Scientist opponents of the SSC were willing to speak out very publicly against the SSC. It's bad when a Princeton Nobel Prize winner testifies on the Hill against your project. A widespread fear that the SSC would eat everyone's lunch + some opponents were angry at the hype (SSC would cure AIDs etc).

• The high energy physicists did a poor if not inept job of constructing a strong `coalition' of supporters. They certainly seem to have started woefully late.

• With the end of the Cold War, high energy physics was just not as prestigious by 1993 as it had been earlier. Molecular biology had eclipsed it (e.g. the Genome Project)  

The Super Conducting Super Collider- courtesy Robert Smith