David Kipping

So the aliens can't hide from us forever.

Our technology is getting to the point where we're going to find them in their own home.

Yeah, it was a long process.

I mean, almost as soon as Hubble launched, they started planning the successor to Hubble, which was James Webb.

It was famously over budget.

I think the original budget was supposed to be $800 million and ended up costing $10 billion.

Isn't that crazy?

It just went completely overblown.

But this was because there was some bad contractors.

Astronomers tend to underestimate that.

budgets a little bit when they're planning these things out.

And there's inflation.

So these things, you know, if you do a project over 20 years, which is what it ended up taking, because it was 1995, I think, and then we got it in sort of, was it 2021, 2022, actually ended up getting in the sky.

So it took a long time, right, for that project to develop.

We are starting the HWA project now.

There's already design teams, working groups that are putting the first, you know, blueprints together of what this thing would look like.

But, of course, it's in jeopardy because the White House wanted to slash the NASA science budget by 50%, which basically just ends that entire program.

There's about 40 NASA missions that would end in that White House budget.

But, fortunately, the Senate readjusted it back up to pretty much last year's levels.

I've been to D.C.