First the Superconducting Super Collider, now the James Web Space telescope?

Meanwhile, the odious ISS still flies.

BBC;
22 August 2011 Last updated at 19:50 ET
JWST price tag now put at over $8bn
Jonathan Amos By Jonathan Amos BBC science correspondent

Nasa says it will now cost $8.7bn to launch the James Webb Space
Telescope in 2018 and operate it for five years.

The assessment - some $2bn higher than previous estimates - has
emerged from documents sent to the US Congress.

James Webb is regarded as the successor to Hubble and will carry
technologies capable of detecting the light from the first stars to
shine in the Universe.

But delays and cost overruns have dogged the project, and now some
politicians want JWST cancelled.

The House Appropriations Committee put forward a draft 2012 budget for
the US space agency last month that would terminate funding for the
observatory.

The equivalent Senate body has yet to have its say, however.

Nasa itself has fiercely defended the telescope, with senior officials
describing JWST as one of their top priorities.

The observatory is supposed to be the next great undertaking in space
astronomy, incorporating the biggest mirror ever sent into orbit. Its
near-infrared detectors promise a swathe of remarkable discoveries
about the early cosmos.

But getting the observatory ready for flight has proved to be a major
technological challenge.

An independent assessment last year suggested the telescope's total
cost had ballooned from $3.5bn to $5bn, and that continued delays
would inflate the final bill well beyond $6bn.

In parallel with the price escalation, the probable launch date has
slipped deeper and deeper into the decade with some commentators
wondering whether JWST might not even be ready to fly this side of
2020.

Nasa responded to the all criticism by making management changes and
ordering a "bottoms-up review" of the project.

It is this review that has now established the $8.7bn figure as the
new baseline price tag for JWST, a Nasa spokesman told BBC News. It is
the full life-cycle cost - to build, launch and operate the
observatory.

The agency would explain how to fund the revised baseline in the US
President's 2013 budget request to Congress made at the beginning of
next year, the spokesman added.

One complicating factor for US politicians as they move to decide the
future of JWST is the international fall-out that would result from
cancellation.

JWST is being prepared in partnership with Europe and Canada. Europe,
for example, is providing two of the telescope's four instruments and
the rocket to put it in orbit. This commitment would guarantee its
astronomers 15% of the observing time on the observatory.