This post by Phil angers me. While it is true that the public may perceive the discrepancy in numbers as a horrible mismanagement issue, the truth is that one can not compare an initial estimate to the actual budget of a project, without taking into account changes to a project before it's actually approved, after everyone has had their say about it. And later changes to the project for which budget increase was approved. By doing so anyway Phil isn't helping either. It's bad enough that efficiency needs to be improved at NASA and contractors, but comparing apples and oranges just to get that message across doesn't help.

You can NOT say that a project is over budget by comparing it to an initial estimate. All you might say is that the estimate must have been wrong, which of course is also a claim that must be supported. Phil might be an excellent astronomer, and do very well at conveying science issues to the public, but I get the impression that he does not have a whole lot of experience with projects and budgets.

All this with the caveat that I don't know the details of the MSL or JWST projects, funding, budgetting and estimates. Perhaps I'm completely off base but if so I would welcome some information to help me understand my wrongness. And the caveat of my own grouchyness because of having to deal with lots of issues with budgetting for one of my own projects :/

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