    [House Hearing, 115 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                          JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE:
                      PROGRAM BREACH AND ITS IMPLICATIONS

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                  COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                         ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                        JULY 25, 2018 AND JULY 26, 2018

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 115-72

                                   __________

     Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

           Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov

                           _________

                 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

    30-882 PDF           WASHINGTON : 2018

                  COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

                       HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair

    FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma             EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
    DANA ROHRABACHER, California         ZOE LOFGREN, California
    MO BROOKS, Alabama                   DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
    RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois             SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
    BILL POSEY, Florida                  AMI BERA, California
    THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky              ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
    RANDY K. WEBER, Texas                MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
    STEPHEN KNIGHT, California           DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia
    BRIAN BABIN, Texas                   JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
    BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia           CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania
    BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia            JERRY McNERNEY, California
    RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana         ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
    GARY PALMER, Alabama                 PAUL TONKO, New York
    DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida              BILL FOSTER, Illinois
    ANDY BIGGS, Arizona                  MARK TAKANO, California
    ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas            COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii
    NEAL P. DUNN, Florida                CHARLIE CRIST, Florida
    CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana
    RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
    DEBBIE LESKO, Arizona
    MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
                                C O N T E N T S

                                 July 25, 2018

                                                                       Page
    Witness List.....................................................     2

    Hearing Charter..................................................     3

                               Opening Statements

    Statement by Representative Lamar Smith, Chairman, Committee on
      Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives..     4
        Written Statement............................................     6

    Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
      Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House
      of Representatives.............................................     8
        Written Statement............................................    12

    Statement by Representative Brian Babin, Chairman, Committee on
      Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives..    14
        Written Statement............................................    16

    Statement by Representative Ami Bera, Ranking Member, Committee
      on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
      Representatives................................................    19
        Written Statement............................................    21

                                   Witnesses:

    Hon. Jim Bridenstine, Administrator, NASA
        Oral Statement...............................................    22
        Written Statement............................................    25

    Mr. Tom Young, Chairman, JWST Independent Review Board
        Oral Statement...............................................    31
        Written Statement............................................    33

    Discussion.......................................................    38

                                 July 26, 2018

                               Opening Statements

    Statement by Representative Lamar Smith, Chairman, Committee on
      Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives..    74
        Written Statement............................................    76

    Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
      Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House
      of Representatives.............................................    78
        Written Statement............................................    81

    Written by Representative Brian Babin, Committee on Science,
      Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...........    83

    Written Statement by Representative Ami Bera, Committee on
      Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives..    85

    Written Statement by Representative Barbara Comstock, Committee
      on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
      Representatives................................................   110

                                   Witnesses:

    Mr. Wesley Bush, Chief Executive Officer, Northrop Grumman
        Oral Statement...............................................    86
        Written Statement............................................    89

    Mr. Tom Young, Chairman, JWST Independent Review Board

    Discussion.......................................................   104

                Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record

    Documents submitted by NASA......................................   134

    Documents submitted by Northrop Grumman..........................   135

                          JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE:

                      PROGRAM BREACH AND ITS IMPLICATIONS

                                  ----------
    WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 2018

                          AND THURSDAY, JULY 26, 2018

                      House of Representatives,
                   Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                       Washington, D.C.

        The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in Room
    2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lamar Smith
    [Chairman of the Committee] presiding.

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        Chairman Smith. The Committee on Space, Science, and
    Technology will come to order. Without objection, the Chair is
    authorized to declare recesses of the Committee at any time.
        Good morning, and welcome to today's hearing entitled
    ``James Webb Space Telescope: Program Breach and its
    Implications.'' I'll recognize myself for an opening statement.
        Today, we will hear from Administrator Bridenstine on
    NASA's plans to ensure that the James Webb Space Telescope is a
    success. We will also hear from Tom Young on the findings and
    recommendations of the JWST Independent Review Board.
        Tomorrow, at the second part of the hearing, Northrop
    Grumman's CEO, Mr. Wes Bush, will testify. We will learn more
    about why Northrop failed to deliver JWST on budget and on
    schedule and what can be done about it.
        Welcome to Jim Bridenstine, who is testifying for the first
    time since leaving the Committee to become NASA's
    Administrator. He began his job with our high expectations, and
    he has already exceeded them. Jim, that's the highest
    compliment I can pay you.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Why, thank you.
        Chairman Smith. We can be confident that he is striving to
    tackle the program management issues NASA faces, specifically
    those associated with the James Webb Space Telescope.
        Starting on March 26, 2018, NASA began notifying this
    committee about the James Webb Space Telescope's cost and
    schedule breaches. Now that the Independent Review Board has
    completed its work, we should review the decades-long JWST cost
    overruns and schedule delays. And if Members will take a look
    at this chart that's on the screen in front of us.
        [Slide.]
        Chairman Smith. This chart chronicles JWST's substantial
    cost growth and launch schedule delays starting with the 1996
    initial projections in the lower-left-hand corner all the way
    to the IRB's 2018 projection in the upper-right corner. It is
    truly staggering to behold how this space telescope's cost and
    schedule projections went from costing the same as a space
    shuttle mission--around half-a-billion dollars with an original
    launch date in 2007--to now becoming an expenditure exceeding
    $9 billion with a new launch goal in March 2021. This is 19
    times the original cost and a delay of 14 years. It doesn't get
    much worse than that.
        The cost of delaying the launch again will add almost
    another billion dollars to the total program cost. The $8
    billion development cost cap set in 2012 will be exceeded by
    $803 million. With other program costs added in, the IRB now
    estimates the total cost at over $9.6 billion.
        The IRB also stated that technical complications and
    unclear reporting roles, responsibilities, and lines of
    communications greatly impacted the development schedule and
    its associated cost increases. Mr. Young will provide details
    during his testimony. We will discuss options going forward,
    such as the contractor watch list designation contained in the
    bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2018.
        I support the continuation of JWST to mission completion
    and appreciate Administrator Bridenstine's efforts to improve
    contractor performance. Going forward, Congress needs to have
    the necessary confidence in NASA's contractors to put us on the
    right path at a reasonable cost. Anything short of that will
    undermine Congressional confidence in contractors' ability to
    deliver on their promises.
        Usually, when government contractors make mistakes, no one
    is held accountable. The mistakes ``just happened'' or ``were
    unavoidable'' or ``won't happen again.'' But in every case, the
    American people pick up the bill. We often forget there is no
    such thing as federal dollars. It's the American taxpayers'
    hard-earned money. If space exploration is going to continue to
    earn the public's support, then contractors will have to
    deliver on time and on budget. If they cannot, they should be
    penalized.
        [The prepared statement of Chairman Smith follows:]

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        Chairman Smith. That concludes my opening statement, and
    the Ranking Member, the gentlewoman from Texas, is recognized
    for hers.
        Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much. Good morning to everyone
    and, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for holding this hearing on the
    James Webb Space Telescope program breach and its implications.
    Excuse me.
        Welcome to our witnesses, to the Administrator Bridenstine
    and Mr. Young. We appreciate your commitment to this high-
    priority science mission.
        As a powerful observatory that will be 100 times more
    sensitive than the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space
    Telescope will be a gateway to unlocking the origins of the
    universe. Further, like Hubble, it will also be an inspiration
    for our next generation of scientists, engineers, and citizens
    and a symbol of American--America's leadership in space,
    science, and exploration.
        I appreciate the tireless commitment and dedication of NASA
    to its industry, international, and academic partners, also for
    their work on this project.
        The hardware for the mission is now complete, and the
    observatory is undergoing integration and testing. Getting to
    this point has not been easy. A 2010 review of the project
    identified significant costs in growth--schedule growth while
    subsequent re-baseline plans help keep the program on track for
    many years. Today, we will discuss another series of setbacks.
        I want to commend NASA for establishing the Independent
    Review Board. The Independent Review Board and I want to
    recognize the members for contributing their time and expertise
    and Mr. Young for his leadership in chairing the effort.
        The message is clear. Mission success for the James Webb
    Space Telescope needs to be the priority, and finding potential
    embedded problems and minimizing the impact of human errors
    must be a focus going forward.
        That said, the Independent Review Board was also clear on
    the fact that both NASA and the prime contractor for the
    mission, Northrop Grumman, have contributed to the 29-month
    schedule delay and the $1 billion cost increase to the project.
    In particular, the review board found complex and confusing
    management reporting on the project and inconsistent,
    uncoordinated communications on the James Webb Space Telescope
    within NASA and with external stakeholders, including Congress.
    This is not good news, especially since some of these problems
    were identified in the 2010 review.
        I hope that today's hearing will inform us on how NASA
    plans to ensure that these and the other findings and
    recommendations of the Independent Review Board are
    successfully implemented and how lasting processes are being
    put in place to prevent these problems from occurring on other
    NASA projects.
        I am also concerned about the potential collateral damage.
    I'm eager to hear from the Administrator on how NASA plans to
    ensure the health and balance of the astrophysics program,
    including small missions research and analysis and the next
    high-priority decadal survey mission--excuse me--the WFIRST,
    given the additional resources that will be needed to complete
    the James Webb Space Telescope.
        And as I've said on many occasions before, inspiring and
    challenging projects such as the James Webb Space Telescope are
    an investment in our future, and the review board found that it
    is an observatory with incredible capacity and awesome
    scientific potential. And while it is up to this committee to
    carry out the oversight of the taxpayers' significant
    investment in this project, we must not lose sight of the
    importance of bringing the James Webb Space Telescope to a
    successful outcome.
        And, Mr. Chairman, I have a letter I'd like to submit for
    the record.
        Chairman Smith. Okay.
        Ms. Johnson. This is a letter of support of the project
    from the American Astronomical Society.
        Chairman Smith. Without objection, the letter from the
    American Astronomical Society will be made a part of the
    record.
        [The information follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much. I yield back.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]

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        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.
        And the gentleman from Texas, the Chairman of the Space
    Subcommittee, is recognized for his opening statement.
        Mr. Babin. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank you
    witnesses, expert witnesses, for being here as well.
        As Chairman of the Space Subcommittee and proud
    representative of Johnson Space Center, I'm a very tireless
    advocate for NASA. I strongly believe in the mission of NASA,
    and I commend the tremendous dedication of the NASA and
    industry team under Mr. Bridenstine and the rest of the team.
    However, as Members of this Committee, we have a responsibility
    to every taxpayer to ensure that government agencies, including
    NASA, are being good stewards and effective at managing our
    resources with which they are entrusted.
        Today's hearing will focus on the serious issues associated
    with the James Webb Space Telescope program breach and its
    implications, the Independent Review Board's analysis and
    recommendations, and the coming debate over Congressional
    reauthorization of JWST. Chairman Smith summarized the IRB's
    findings and recommendations, so I want to use this opportunity
    to discuss NASA's lost opportunities due to flagship program
    cost overruns.
        As the Space Subcommittee Chairman, I focus on the NASA
    budget in its entirety and every project and program in the
    agency's portfolio, particularly those where budget limitations
    force difficult decisions on reducing specific project budgets
    or whether we can even fund them at all. Please give your
    attention to the chart on display.
        [Slide.]
        Mr. Babin. The Committee surveyed NASA's science portfolio
    over the last few fiscal years to identify project budget
    reductions and unfunded requests due to limitations. These
    projects are listed by fiscal year starting on the left there
    with fiscal year 2013 all the way up through fiscal year 2019.
    You can see those.
        Now, with the fiscal year 2018 coming to a close shortly
    and the IRB's announced JWST cap breach of $803 million in
    development costs, this chart reflects the reality of the
    breach going into fiscal year 2019 budget planning. In terms of
    lost opportunities and NASA's budgetary trade space, it is
    important to know the full impact of JWST breach on NASA and
    the American public as a whole.
        So we'll bring up the next one.
        [Slide.]
        Mr. Babin. The $803 million needed to fund the JWST cost
    breach could fund nearly every one of NASA's science funding
    shortfalls from fiscal year 2013 all the way up through fiscal
    year 2016. These projects include earth science and education
    projects greatly promoted by our Democratic colleagues on the
    Committee.
        And looking forward to fiscal year 2019 and NASA's future
    flagship program plans, the cost issues with the Wide Field
    Infrared Survey Telescope, or WFIRST, will become a subject of
    debate right alongside the JWST Congressional reauthorization.
    The fiscal year 2018 omnibus required an updated lifecycle cost
    estimate for WFIRST, and NASA's report concludes the estimated
    cost range is $3.3 billion to $3.9 billion. This lifecycle cost
    estimate exceeds the NASA-imposed cost cap of $3.2 billion
    included in the bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2018.
        To give perspective to the funding dilemma presented by
    JWST and WFIRST cost issues, NASA's WFIRST estimate includes a
    request for $371 million, which is now reflected on the fiscal
    year 2019 chart.
        Thank you.
        [Slide.]
        Mr. Babin. The bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2018
    seeks to limit flagship program overlap to reduce NASA's risk
    of becoming overwhelmed by WFIRST development before JWST is
    operational in space. Thus, it is my hope the IRB report and
    our witness panel testimony will shed some light on lessons
    learned with JWST and lead to a successful flight and
    operations in March 2021. We do not want these mistakes
    repeated during the development of WFIRST.
        Congress needs to understand the unvarnished truth of the
    status of these programs today, as well as the plan going
    forward. Decisions made now can have long-lasting implications
    on future missions. We need to know that there is not a
    systemic or a fundamental management problem with how NASA
    plans and executes these larger strategic missions.
        And I want to thank the witnesses here today, helping us to
    better understand where we are and how we plan to move forward,
    and I look forward to your testimony.
        I yield back.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Babin follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Babin.
        Mr. Babin. Yes, sir.
        Chairman Smith. The gentleman from California, Mr. Bera,
    the Ranking Member of the Space Subcommittee, is recognized for
    his opening statement.
        Mr. Bera. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the
    Ranking Member for holding this hearing.
        In many ways, these hearings are a continuation of hearings
    that the Space Subcommittee had last month on NASA costs and
    schedule overruns, and it's always good to see our former
    colleague, Administrator Bridenstine, on that side of the
    podium.
        I won't reiterate what both the Chairman and Ranking Member
    and the Chairman of the Subcommittee have gone through, but I
    do think what the cost overruns suggest and remind us is the
    complexity of mentioning when you're thinking about doing
    something that you've never done, the scientific and
    technologic complexity. And, you know--and it also highlights
    the important role that Congress has in our oversight role in
    making sure that, as we're budgeting and thinking about those
    future priorities, we're doing so with the most accurate
    information.
        As we think about-- I'm someone--I think along with a lot
    of my colleagues--that puts a lot of faith in the decadal
    survey and in an objective way kind of laying out what our
    priorities are. And in that decadal survey when we think about
    WFIRST and think about future projects, in that context I'm
    going to be curious to hear both today and tomorrow what we can
    learn in terms of if we look backwards on Webb in terms of
    budgeting, in terms of timeline, that will help inform us going
    forward.
        I do think there will be robust dialogue and discussion as
    we look at future missions, future budgets and allocations
    knowing that this is a pretty significant cost overrun. One
    billion dollars is a lot of money. So it is what can we learn.
        At that Space Subcommittee hearing, we also started to talk
    about, as NASA contracts out with other commercial vendors and
    others to do a lot of the important and necessary work, what
    are newer types of contracts that do share some of the risk
    there and--on deliverables. You use them in many other
    industries. Are those even viable in this context when you're
    trying to do something that you've never done before and what
    does that look like? And I do think, over this Congress but
    then also into future Congresses it will be important for us to
    have that conversation as we think about prioritizing.
        And then just one last statement. I think it is worth
    noting that, despite the headline-grabbing finding of schedule
    and cost growth, the IRB's concluded that James Webb should
    continue based on its extraordinary scientific potential and
    critical role in maintaining U.S. leadership in astronomy and
    astrophysics. And, you already have a lot of the sunk costs in
    there, so it would be shortsighted on our part not to say, you
    know, let's finish this incredibly important project.
        But again, as we go forward, it'll be interesting to hear
    from NASA, as well as the contractors and subcontractors what
    can we learn from the Webb experience that helps better inform
    us going forward as Members of Congress.
        So thank you. And with that, I'll yield back.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Bera follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Smith. All right. Thank you, Mr. Bera.
        Our first witness today is Mr. Jim Bridenstine,
    Administrator of NASA. A former colleague and Member of the
    Science Committee and its Space Subcommittee, Mr. Bridenstine
    now serves as a Senior Space Science Advisor to the President
    and oversees agency operations.
        Prior to his election to Congress, Mr. Bridenstine was the
    Director of Tulsa's Air and Space Museum. He completed a triple
    major at Rice University and earned his Master's of Business
    Administration at Cornell University.
        Our second witness is Mr. Tom Young, Chairman of the
    Independent Review Board. In this role, Mr. Young led a team of
    11 members to conduct a review of the JWST program. Mr. Young
    is the former Director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
    as well as the former President and Chief Operating Officer of
    Martin Marietta Corporation.
        He earned both a bachelor's degree in aeronautical
    engineering and a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering
    from the University of Virginia and a Master's of Management
    degree from MIT.
        We welcome you both, look forward to your testimony. And,
    Mr. Bridenstine, if you'll begin.

                   TESTIMONY OF HON. JIM BRIDENSTINE,

                          ADMINISTRATOR, NASA

        Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you, Chairman Smith. It's an honor
    to be here. Chairman Smith, Chairman Babin, Ranking Member
    Johnson, Ranking Member Bera, thank you all for your leadership
    on this Committee. Thank you for your leadership with the James
    Webb Space Telescope quite frankly. And, when I was on your
    side there back in March, NASA came to Congress and let
    everybody know that we're up against a cost overrun and of
    course an increase in schedule. And at that moment I knew that
    I would be sitting on this side coming back and testifying
    before the Committee that I used to serve on.
        So here we are, and I want to share with you some of the
    things that I've learned in my time here at NASA. First of all,
    the Independent Review Board was called for by NASA at a time
    when we were having trouble with the spacecraft element of the
    James Webb Space Telescope. When I say the spacecraft element,
    there's really two elements. One is the optical telescope
    element, which includes all the scientific capabilities, and
    then really the bus.
        And if you go back in time, we really believed at NASA that
    the most difficult part of the James Webb Space Telescope
    would, no kidding, be all of the scientific instruments and the
    capabilities on that side of the spacecraft. The spacecraft
    element seemed to be a little bit more routine.
        There's one big difference in this spacecraft element than
    every other spacecraft that we've ever developed, and that is
    that we need a sunshield. On one side of the spacecraft we need
    to be down around 7 degrees Kelvin, which is near absolute
    zero. That's an incredibly cold temperature and necessary in
    order to use the infrared side of this telescope, which is
    really just--it's detecting heat signatures from galaxies that
    go back to the very dawn of time if you will, the very
    beginning of the universe. So in order to do that, it has to be
    extremely cold.
        So that--we need a heat shield. And that heat shield is a
    very complex, very dynamic piece of equipment that is unique in
    this particular spacecraft. And it has five layers, and the--in
    order to deploy it, think of five sheets the size of a tennis
    court stacked on top of each other, and on one side of this
    heat shield the temperatures are going to be almost, you know,
    300 degrees Fahrenheit and on the other side minus 390 degrees
    Fahrenheit separated by maybe just a couple of feet. That's a
    very impressive scientific achievement once it's complete.
        But to deploy that heat shield is very complex and very
    challenging, and there's a whole lot of single points of
    failure. And we have to test it. And NASA was going through a
    process of deploying that heat shield and then folding it back
    for the purpose of testing. And in that process we discovered--
    NASA discovered--I wasn't there at the time, but NASA
    discovered that this is going to take a lot longer. We were
    very optimistic in the amount of time that we believed that it
    would take to test this. Ultimately, that proved to be
    incorrect.
        And during the course of this, NASA said we need to have an
    Independent Review Board to--and I want to be really clear.
    Nobody likes Independent Review Boards. They are not fun. They
    are not fun for NASA, they are not fun for the contractor. But
    NASA called for an Independent Review Board on itself because
    of the delays and the cost overruns that we got on James Webb.
        During the Independent Review Board, there was more testing
    being conducted and embedded problems were found in some human
    errors were found that once again delayed it during the course
    of the Independent Review Board. So that's how we came to the
    conclusion that we needed to really do a re-planning, and that
    re-planning has been done and we're looking now at a launch
    date of March 30 of 2021 and a cost overrun of about $800
    million. So it's gone from a development cost of $8 billion to
    $8.8 billion and a total lifecycle cost of $8.8 billion up to
    $9.6 billion. These are massive increases, and I understand
    that.
        It's also true--and I want to be really clear about what
    we're doing here. And Ranking Member Bera I think hit the nail
    on the head. We are doing things that have never been done
    before, and we are doing things that nobody on the face of the
    planet other than the United States and our European, you know,
    supporters, the European Space Agency has instruments on this
    telescope. This has never been done before in the history of
    the world, and it really sets the stage for who in the world is
    the leader in astrophysics and these kind of capabilities. And
    only the United States of America could accomplish this. That's
    where we are.
        I also want to be clear that we are going to change how we
    understand the universe. We're going to see very--all the way
    back to the very beginning of the universe, what we call cosmic
    dawn, the very first light from the beginning of the universe.
    And the reason that this telescope is an infrared is because
    the universe is expanding, all the time expanding. In fact,
    it's expanding at an accelerating rate, and we're trying to
    understand, why is that happening?
        But when you see back to the very beginning, cosmic dawn,
    you're talking about, as the universe expands, those
    wavelengths lengthen, so instead of being able to detect
    optical light, we're going to be looking at infrared light. And
    that gives us a requirement to have this extremely cold
    cryocooled antenna that can see back that far basically
    detecting heat signatures from light from the very beginning of
    dawn.
        We're also going to be able to see inside of other galaxies
    in ways that we've never seen before. We're going to be able to
    look at the atmospheres of exoplanets. This is also I think an
    important point. If you go back in time when we started this
    project, we did not even know that exoplanets existed. Now, we
    know that there are thousands of exoplanets, planets maybe even
    like Earth orbiting other stars in our galaxy. We're going to
    be able to use this telescope with a spectrometer to
    understand, what are the atmospheres of this planet like, and
    are they capable of hosting life? So this is a tremendous
    capability that we're bringing to bear that, again, nobody else
    on the planet can do.
        So I want to reemphasize how important this mission is, and
    the work that this committee has done helping us get to this
    point has been amazing. It's not comfortable to come back and
    have to testify on cost overruns and of course schedule delays,
    but at the end, my testimony to you is that I really believe
    that this will be worth it.
        And I look forward to answering your questions, and I
    appreciate all of you having me here today.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Bridenstine follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Bridenstine.
        Mr. Young?

                 TESTIMONY OF MR. TOM YOUNG, CHAIRMAN,

                     JWST INDEPENDENT REVIEW BOARD

        Mr. Young. Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Johnson and
    Committee Members, I'm pleased to present the results of the
    Independent Review Board evaluation of the James Webb Space
    Telescope mission.
        The IRB charter established by NASA require that we
    evaluate all factors influencing JWST success. Our report is
    complete. We believe we have satisfied our charter. Our report
    contains 32 recommendations. We believe the implementation of
    all--underline in all--32 recommendations is required to
    maximize the probability of JWST success.
        Our initial observation is that JWST is an observatory with
    incredible capability, awesome scientific potential, and
    significant complexity, risk, and first-time events. An
    overarching recommendation of the IRB is that mission success
    be the top priority in all future JWST activities. JWST is at a
    point in its development that every appropriate thing that can
    be done to maximize mission success should be done.
        There are a large number of JWST accomplishments that
    require recognition. All flight hardware has been delivered.
    All science instruments have been integrated into the science
    module, which has been combined with the telescope to form the
    optical telescope and science instrument model called OTIS.
    OTIS has been successfully tested. The science instruments have
    met their requirements, and it has been delivered to Northrop
    Grumman for integration with the spacecraft and sunshield. This
    is but a few of the positive JWST accomplishments.
        In our report, we cite seven noteworthy JWST firsts, the
    most noteworthy being the sunshield, which is mandatory for
    success, and it has no significant legacy. There are two yet-
    to-be-completed phases of the JWST project that represent
    significant risk. The first is integration and test. To date,
    there have been human errors and embedded problems that have
    caused significant delays in integration tests, resulting in
    large schedule delays.
        The IRB has been very--has very specific recommendations
    focused upon human errors and embedded problems. The success in
    implementing the IRB recommended corrective actions will
    determine the success of completing JWST development.
        Human errors are mistakes made by people working on the
    flight hardware or developing procedures that dictate how work
    on the flight hardware is to be conducted. Three examples of
    human errors that have had a major impact on JWST schedule and
    cost are: wrong solvent used to clean propulsion valves, test
    wiring erroneously connected to flight hardware without
    adequate inspection, sunshield cover fasteners improperly
    installed. The capability of the integration and test workforce
    and the quality of procedures must be such that human errors
    are minimized, and when they occur, their impact is negligible.
        Embedded problems or problems in the as-built hardware that
    are undetected until a major test many months in the future
    after the problem is introduced or, even worse, not detected
    until the observatory is in space. The valve solvent problem
    and sunshield fastener problem are examples of embedded
    problems that have had a major impact on scheduling. An in-
    depth audit by NASA and Northrop Grumman of the flight
    hardware, including drawings, procedures, et cetera, is
    required to identify any additional embedded problems that may
    exist.
        The second JWST phase with high risk is spacecraft and
    sunshield deployments that occur during observatory
    commissioning. Approximately 307 single-point failure items
    must work to success--have these deployments be successful.
    This phase of JWST is similar to the entry-descent-landing
    phase of a Mars science laboratory mission which, for
    comparison, had 72 single-point failures when it landed on Mars
    in 2012. Both are high-risk missions with no ability to test as
    you fly. A world-class systems engineer established as EDL
    manager has been critical to the success of Mars landers. The
    IRB recommends the position of commissioning manager staff by a
    world-class engineer be established for JWST.
        There are several additional technical and management
    recommendations from the IRB. If fully implemented, such
    recommendations as NASA certification launch vehicle and
    management reporting and communication increase the probability
    of mission success.
        The IRB recommended launch date for JWST is March 2021.
    This is a 29-month delay from the October 2018 date established
    in 2011 with a cost of approximately $1 billion. Five factors
    have caused this delay: human errors, embedded problems, lack
    of experience in areas such as the sunshield, excessive
    optimism, and systems complexity. The JWST complexity and risk
    cannot be overstated. The IRB recommends--recommending March
    2021 launch date assumes the successful implementation of the
    recommendations in our report. No allowance has been made for
    additional INT errors or embedded problems with multi-month
    impacts. Additional sunshield deployments during INT beyond the
    currently planned two or removal of the spacecraft sun system
    or science estimate.
        With all factors considered, the members of the IRB are
    unanimous in recommending that JWST continue based on its
    extraordinary scientific potential and critical role in
    maintaining U.S. leadership in astronomy and astrophysics.
    Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Young follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Young. And I'll recognize
    myself for questions. Let me address the first one to
    Administrator Bridenstine. When we take a look at the cost
    overruns, when we take a look at the missed deadlines in regard
    to JWST, what are your options when it comes to contractor
    accountability for this particular mission, as well as for
    others?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So for this particular contract it's cost-
    plus and award fee, and the award fee is the profit because,
    other than that, the contractor is working at cost. The award
    fee is based on a set of metrics that NASA determines.
    Technical capability is included in that; cost, schedule,
    business administration is included in that. And during the
    course of evaluating the contractor, we're making
    determinations as to what their award fee will be.
        So a couple of things here. Number one, their award fee has
    not been as good as it otherwise would have been, so that has
    in essence hurts their bottom line. And number two, when
    there's a cost overrun or a schedule delay, as we have right
    now, there is no award fee, so they are in essence working
    right now at cost.
        Chairman Smith. Okay.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Now, ultimately, as has been identified,
    there's going to be a commissioning process of the satellite
    once it's in space, and there are potential award fees in that.
    Those potential award fees add up to--if they were to maximize
    it, it would add up to about $60 million. We have already taken
    off the table $28 million of the $60 million, which again is
    not helpful to the contractor and hurts their bottom line. It
    is also true that the remainder $30 million-plus available
    they're going to have to perform in order to accomplish and
    achieve that award fee, which is again there only profit.
        Chairman Smith. Okay.
        Mr. Bridenstine. It is also true that there are provisions
    in the contracts to actually claw back previously earned award
    fees. And I want to be really clear, Mr. Chairman. We don't
    want any of that to happen going forward. We want success going
    forward, which means that the punishment they've already
    received would be the punishment they will receive. That
    doesn't guarantee that's how it's going to be going forward----
        Chairman Smith. Right.
        Mr. Bridenstine. --but, ultimately, we want them to be
    successful because if they're successful, then we are
    successful. And so those are some of the tools that we have in
    our belt.
        Chairman Smith. Okay. That is really helpful, all those
    options that you just mentioned, and I appreciate that.
        Next question, is there any legislation that Congress can
    pass that will help you enforce contractor accountability? Do
    you need any more authority than you already have?
        Mr. Bridenstine. We have really good authorities that we
    utilize right now. We have what's called an Acquisition
    Integrity Program that's administered by the Office of the
    General Counsel at NASA. The Acquisition Integrity Program
    ultimately has provisions by which a contractor can be
    suspended or can be debarred. Again, we don't like exercising
    those authorities, but under the federal acquisition
    regulations, those are tools available to us.
        If there's a law that Congress could pass, one of the
    things we're doing right now is we are taking some of our best
    talent and we are embedding them with Northrop Grumman in this
    process. You know, NASA--we like to count ourselves a smart
    buyer. When I say that, we have--and this is absolutely true.
    We have really intelligent and capable and qualified people
    that we can take off of other projects and put on to this
    project, for example, and we are doing that right now and
    embedding them with the contractor. That's----
        Chairman Smith. Okay.
        Mr. Bridenstine. --smart buying. One of the challenges we
    have going forward is a lot of the talent is going other places
    because of the way we hire. So if we could--if you could pass
    one law, maybe direct-hire authority could help us ultimately
    keep our smart buyer capabilities.
        Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Bridenstine.
        Mr. Young, how do you think the program management for JWST
    compares to other programs that you've analyzed?
        Mr. Young. It depends on how far back you--excuse me. It
    depends on how far back you're going back in the program, I
    mean, looking at the charts that you had this morning. If you
    go back to, say, the first confirmation that I'm familiar with
    where I think JWST was confirmed by NASA at $2.75 billion with
    a 2011 launch, you know, we--the costs have increased roughly a
    factor of three since that time period----
        Chairman Smith. I was primarily talking just about the
    program management itself in isolation. Do you consider it to
    be one of the worst, one of the average? How does it compare to
    others?
        Mr. Young. Well, I'm kind of sneaking up on that answer.
        Chairman Smith. Okay. All right. I've got limited time, so
    I hope you'll sneak up quickly.
        Mr. Young. Okay. And I'll sneak fast. Okay. So if you look
    at the program, it's grown a factor of three in a decade. It is
    hard to take a program with those characteristics and conclude
    it's anything other than a not-well-managed program and by
    comparison not a well-managed program.
        Chairman Smith. Okay. Any description as to what you think
    of a program that costs 19 times what was anticipated and is 14
    years delayed?
        Mr. Young. My description would be the same, poorly
    managed.
        Chairman Smith. Okay. And what about recommendations, Jim
    Bridenstine mentioned a couple of the options that he had, like
    sanctions. Do you have any recommendations going forward for
    what we might do with some of those fees and some of the profit
    and how that can be used to encourage Northrop Grumman to
    perform better?
        Mr. Young. I think his comments were very good. I would
    really underline the fact that at this stage in the program all
    of us--emphasize all of us--need to be focused on maximize the
    probability of JWST being successful. So if I--I'm speaking
    only as an individual, but if I had this problem, I would take
    all of the available fees that currently exist, be they the fee
    on work to be done, the award fees that have not been awarded,
    the future award fees, I'd put them altogether and I'd put them
    in one lump sum and I would have the criteria for getting them
    the quantity and quality of data returned by JWST after it's on
    orbit. So I would turn every dollar yet to be awarded into an
    award fee based on mission success.
        Chairman Smith. That is a very good suggestion, which I
    endorse, and I thank you for mentioning it today.
        The gentlewoman from Texas, the Ranking Member, is
    recognized for her questions.
        Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Administrator, you mentioned in your last statement
    that we're moving people and unable to control some of that
    movement. Could you expand a little bit on that?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So there's a number of things that we are
    already putting into place ultimately to ensure success, so we
    have taken some NASA talent and put it on this project that--
    and it's not just people and bodies. It's capability, it's
    people with history and--that are highly qualified on this
    project embedded with Northrop Grumman. We are also instituting
    more oversight from the Goddard Space Flight Center and from
    NASA headquarters, and in fact we have created an even stronger
    mission assurance capability so that every screw that goes on
    to this spacecraft ultimately is being quality assured so we
    get immediate feedback if something is--if anybody believes
    something is not right.
        We want everybody to be empowered to say stop because one
    of the challenges that we've had is that there are embedded
    problems. Some of these problems are screws that were put in
    the sunshield covers going back years, and we don't discover it
    until the integration and tests.
        I also want to--and I think it's important for me to
    testify that--and I heard it from Mr. Young as well. We're at
    the integration and test phase. All of the hardware is built.
    The software is ready to go. In fact, the scientific
    instruments have already been tested. What we're doing now is
    we're integrating the scientific instruments ultimately with
    the spacecraft and then testing that. And that's where we're
    having the challenge.
        So I think it's important to note, if I can give an
    analogy, we're on the five yard line we're trying to punch it
    into the end zone. And I know that, you know, a cost overrun
    and a delay is not what Congress wants to hear, but at this
    point, given the scientific return, I think it's critical that
    we continue to put all of our resources here to get it
    complete.
        Ms. Johnson. Do you think you have the proper tools to hold
    Northrop Grumman accountable?
        Mr. Bridenstine. I do at this point. It is my assessment
    that we have a contract that gives us flexibility ultimately to
    hold them accountable.
        Ms. Johnson. Mr. Young, would you like to comment?
        Mr. Young. My comments would be similar. I think we do make
    some observations in our report of areas that we think it
    really be strengthened. One I think was in one of your opening
    statements. I think it's very clear that NASA have clear lines
    of authority and accountability for managing this project, and
    an observation was that they did not exist when we were looking
    at them. We made a very strong recommendation in this regard
    that the Center Director of Goddard have a clear responsibility
    for the success of the program and the Associate Administrator
    of SMD have a clear responsibility for the success of this
    program.
        Our observation is that's not been the practice to date.
    That's our recommendation. I don't know what NASA's response to
    that is, but accountability, clear-lines responsibility, and
    authority to proceed are critical to managing a program such as
    JWST.
        Mr. Bridenstine. I would just piggyback on that and say we
    are in fact implementing that recommendation of the IRB and
    certainly it will make a difference.
        And by the way, Tom Young used to be the Director of the
    Goddard Space Flight Center, so he knows a thing or two about
    the organizational structure so--
        Ms. Johnson. Well, let me thank you both and kind of review
    that this is the first time we've ever done something like
    this. It's a big project, and it's an important project, and I
    would hope and I believe that both of you will continue to--
    well, your responsibility, Mr. Young, is over, but I hope you
    keep a little eye going, too. And thanks to both of you.
        I yield back.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.
        The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Babin, is recognized for his
    questions.
        Mr. Babin. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        My first question is for Administrator Bridenstine. The
    JWST program cost issues pose a budgetary threat to the other
    NASA science mission programs, especially the WFIRST program.
    What is your assessment of the budget planning challenges for
    NASA science mission programs in light of the latest JWST cost
    overruns?
        Mr. Bridenstine. That's a wonderful question, Chairman, and
    it's something that we think about and we worry about because
    you're absolutely right. This cost overrun is going to be a
    challenge going forward. So I'd like to start by saying that,
    right now, we have a very balanced portfolio for astrophysics
    that includes small missions that are not very expensive,
    medium missions that are a little more expensive, and that we
    have these, as you mentioned, flagship missions that are
    strategic in nature, take a long time, and very expensive but
    ultimately make the United States of America the premier
    country when it comes to these kind of scientific capabilities,
    which we all like and believe in. When we do these massive
    flagship missions, as you just identified, and there are
    overruns and there are delays, it absolutely makes us in
    essence cannibalize some of the other missions in the future.
        You mentioned WFIRST. The idea of WFIRST presumed that JWST
    would be on orbit and delivering science, and so it is my
    recommendation that, you know, we move forward with WFIRST
    after we move forward with JWST. I think that's--now, it is
    true that we can do some development now. I'm not saying that
    we need to shut down WFIRST and we shouldn't do it.
        Mr. Babin. Right.
        Mr. Bridenstine. What I'm saying is there's opportunity
    here because it presumes JWST would be on orbit. It is also
    true that, as we go forward with this balanced portfolio to
    make sure that we are getting the best science that we can get
    in astrophysics and throughout the entire Science Mission
    Directorate, we want to follow what Ranking Member Bera
    mentioned, which is the decadal surveys that come from the
    National Academies of Sciences. So that gives us kind of our
    guidance if you will to make sure that we're not damaging our
    total portfolio to deliver the absolute best science.
        So I will--this is important, too, Mr. Chairman. The goal--
    when you think about 2019, we have--there is some money that is
    left over from last year, plus the--you know, the--at this
    point JWST was intended to be in operation, so we have the
    operational money that we can apply to the development of JWST,
    so for 2019 it doesn't look like we're going to need any more
    money. The first time that we're going to need any more money
    is going to be 2020----
        Mr. Babin. Right.
        Mr. Bridenstine. --and that's when we're going to have to
    look at ultimately how do we balance this portfolio to make
    sure we get the mix right.
        Mr. Babin. And our reauthorization bill actually specifies
    that before WFIRST is complete, we've got to have JWST on
    orbit.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Babin. Yes. Also, for both of you gentlemen, the Trump
    Administration has included space as part of the national
    security strategy. Do you think the JWST development issues
    signal an erosion in the quality of the American space
    industrial base to our near-peer adversaries, thus negatively
    affecting our national security strategy? Are JWST problems
    signs of more serious problems with our space industrial base?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So we--there is a study underway right now
    that is considering that as an issue. I don't want to prejudge
    that study, but I will tell you the industrial base is
    something that is critically important to the national security
    interests of this country, and NASA plays a role there. Our
    scientific capabilities ultimately are for peaceful purposes. I
    mean, that's just the reality. We do discovery, we do
    exploration, we do science. That's what NASA is, that's what
    NASA does. We inspire and we educate. And so we don't get
    involved in national security directly.
        It is absolutely true, though, that what we do does help
    the industrial base, and the technologies in many cases can be
    used both for science and for national security. So I don't
    want to prejudge the study, but certainly NASA plays a role
    here.
        Mr. Babin. Okay. And Mr. Young?
        Mr. Young. My general observation is that the industrial
    base is strong. I think that the problems that we're talking
    about on JWST are problems that we know how to solve. I mean,
    they're not failures of F equals MA or what have you. So it
    is--space is a one-strike-and-you're-out business. You don't
    get two swings at it. And what that really says is it takes
    extraordinary discipline, it takes extraordinary training of
    the people, and it takes a safety net that prevents a problem
    when it occurs because humans are going to make errors from
    that problem becoming mission catastrophic. We know how to do
    that. The disappointing thing in what we're talking about here
    to be honest is these are problems we know how to prevent.
        So my observation would be, yes, we should learn from JWST
    the--every day in a one-strike-and-you're-out business you've
    got to renew your focus on discipline, but it's certainly that
    we know how to do, can do, and it will be a positive factor not
    only for the civil space program but also for national security
    space.
        Mr. Babin. Thank you very much. I wish I had 10 more
    minutes, Mr. Chairman, but I don't. And I yield back.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Babin.
        The gentleman from California, Mr. Bera, is recognized.
        Mr. Bera. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        As I said in my opening statement, when you're looking at
    budgeting, et cetera, it's complicated, particularly when
    you're doing budgeting for something that you haven't done. I'm
    a simple person. I think about it in the context of my daughter
    going off to college and she's going to start her senior year.
    And we made a contract saying you're going to finish in four
    years, and she assures me she is going to finish in four years,
    but I don't--we won't have this conversation in the committee
    hearing if she comes back at the end of that fourth year and
    says I've got a couple units that I it won't be a comfortable
    conversation. And, Administrator Bridenstine, I know this isn't
    a comfortable conversation.
        And I think everyone understands that, given the scientific
    importance of JWST, given the sunk costs that we already have
    in this and the additional costs, it doesn't make any sense not
    to complete this mission and, you know--and do it in a way that
    optimizes success. I mean, it would be a real shame if we
    stopped this mission. It would be an even bigger shame if we
    continued. And I think, Mr. Young, you said 307 single-point
    failure areas, which suggests how complicated this is, that we
    went through you to finish and we got 306 right but we didn't
    get the 307th right.
        So, I don't sense that Congress or the committee will say
    put a halt on this, but it doesn't mitigate what we think about
    going forward, right? I mean, I think a lot of us understand
    the scientific importance of WFIRST, et cetera. It does make it
    harder for this body in fiscally austere times when we're
    thinking about a lot of budget considerations, not just in the
    area of NASA but obviously throughout the entire federal budget
    as we authorize and allocate funds going forward.
        And I think in that context--and, Mr. Young, through the
    IRB process, I'd be curious about hearing some of what we've
    learned looking backwards that will help this body in its
    oversight role make better decisions going forward. Does that
    make sense?
        Mr. Young. Sure, good question. I think that you can
    certainly look at JWST but you can also look at WFIRST. I think
    what NASA did recently with WFIRST was they did an in-depth
    review of the WFIRST program to look at requirements, cost,
    budget, all the factors. And they did it at a time where
    there's total flexibility. In other words, for WFIRST today
    everything is controllable that you can make every decision
    that you want on the program. You can adjust the requirements
    to go with the cost, to go with the schedule, to go with the
    technical risk. And that's--now, what it also requires is after
    you got all those data, if you'll allow me to say so, it
    requires leadership to utilize those data to turn them into a
    credible program.
        But I think that it should become common practice for
    programs, flagship missions, not only for astronomy and
    astrophysics but across the board to--prior to entering into
    real development to take the time to really look at all the
    trade space and to make intelligent decisions as to how far you
    want to push the technology, how far you want to push the
    requirements, and what's affordable and what is a reasonable
    schedule in the process. I actually think that's an
    extraordinarily powerful tool that can eliminate some of the
    issues that we're talking about now with future programs,
    starting with WFIRST.
        Mr. Bera. So as--I guess maybe this is for Administrator
    Bridenstine. As we start to look forward certainly within JWST
    but within future programs, I think it'll be incredibly
    important to think about what we've learned, to think about
    there's obviously scientific and technological risks that are
    unexpected, but also, if I listen to Mr. Young, there's the
    organizational, decision-making, human error side of things
    that we ought to have a lot more control over and put the
    systems and processes in place, the redundancy, et cetera, that
    helps prevent these types of issues happening in the future.
        So, you know, it looks like I'm out of time, but again, we
    can't undo the past. Let's just make sure we learn from the
    past and we don't repeat the same failures in the future.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Bera.
        The gentleman from California, Mr. Rohrabacher, is
    recognized for his questions.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. This, of course, is very disturbing when a
    large amount of wealth has just evaporated that we thought we
    had and we had planned on. And when you talk about the real
    difficulty of the mission--you have to come to the point where
    this type of mission where every screw has to have its quality
    tested, and that's part of this. Well, I can tell you this is
    about the biggest screw job I've ever seen, and it's the
    taxpayers getting screwed here.
        And, however, let us note when we say that and understand
    that and we expect more, that this is not inconsistent with
    other things that we have witnessed from NASA and from the
    aerospace industry. I remember the C-17 project, and the C-17
    was $1 billion over budget and they were going to close down
    the whole line, and I remember--it was one of the first things
    when I came here--I remember calling my father, who was a DC-3
    pilot in World War II, saying ``should I vote for the money to
    put this C-17 back in production? Because they have already
    gone almost $1 billion overrun and they're going to have to
    start all over in building the line.''
        And my dad said, ``well, let me ask you this. Do you think
    the C-17 is going to be needed by people who are defending our
    country in the future?'' And I said, ``well, yes, because we're
    going to have to project power.'' And thank God I thought of
    that because I said in the future we're going to have to
    project our power to areas on the other side of the world
    rather than having bases everywhere.
        And he said, ``well, then you just answered your question.
    You need the airplane.'' And he said every single plane I
    know--my dad was a career pilot--every single plane had cost
    overruns, every single plane, he says, because they're trying
    to do what they haven't done before. And that's what goes with
    that territory, when you're doing something that you've never
    done before.
        I would hope that we can be more realistic, and we can hope
    that Mr. Bridenstine in his new job here can be more realistic
    in the assessments. Let's note that in 2002 we awarded, what,
    $824 million to TRW for this telescope project, and it was
    supposed to be launched eight years later. And now, it's twice
    as long as what was expected, and the cost is 12 times more
    than expected for the James Webb Space Telescope. But when you
    look back, the Hubble Space Telescope was 12 times the cost and
    twice as long as expected as well. I think I see a trend there
    somewhere. And I think that we need to be very serious about
    that. I mean, I remember we had trouble with the space station
    as well in cost overruns, and we certainly had trouble with the
    Hubble and the C-17.
        Let me ask you, Mr. Young, is one of the problems of these
    professionals that we rely on in the aerospace industry, are
    they bidding and saying they can do something before they know
    they can do it or--it's one thing to say ``we believe we can do
    this,'' but are they basing a lot of their bids on maybe
    something that they don't know they can do but they think they
    can? Is that one of the problems?
        Mr. Young. If you take JWST, the bidding was a long time
    ago, as you point out, it was in '02. And NASA, we've come a
    long way since '02 in our understanding as to how to cost these
    projects and to establish schedule for these projects. But I
    think it is fair to recognize that on--with cost-plus programs
    this is not--you're not going to enjoy this answer, but with
    cost-plus programs, contractors fundamentally bid lowest
    credible cost, and it's really up to the evaluators to have a
    competent capability such that lowest credible doesn't win. So
    there is a situation that exists, but that's the status that
    existed then and probably, you know, still to a degree exists
    today. But as long as lowest credible cost wins, lowest
    credible cost will be bid.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. And can we change that? Is there an
    alternative to that?
        Mr. Young. Sure, there's an alternative, and that is the--
    how smart the buyer is to be able to establish what the
    realistic costs are and to punish in the bidding process
    bidding unrealistically low cost.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, when we try to analyze what the cost
    of the screw job is going to be, I hope that we understand that
    that's what the cost is to the American people if we aren't
    handling that in a professional way. Thank you very much.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher.
        The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Lipinski, is recognized.
        Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        It's good to have you back, Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you for
    your work there at NASA. This is obviously a critical program.
    The impact that this is going to have on astrophysics and for,
    you know--we talked a little bit about what that means in terms
    of searching for life, seeing the beginning of the universe,
    the impact is very hard for everyone to understand.
        I think one of the issues that we have here in this
    Committee and Congress in general is trying to understand the
    technology, understand how we can do the best job we can do to
    get the best science at the--you know, without the cost
    overruns, without the delays. But lacking the expertise, we
    have a difficult time with that.
        We've discussed a lot of things. You and Mr. Young have
    discussed a lot of things that went wrong with the JWST and
    some things that could be changed going forward. So I wanted to
    ask you, Mr. Bridenstine, do you believe that, going forward,
    that lessons learned really can be applied here? Because it
    seems there's a lot of things that we're talking about, and
    some of them taking more time, I mean, that's going to be more
    time and more cost, you know, figuring these things out, making
    sure that everything's covered, making sure that everything is
    checked. Are you confident that there are lessons learned? And
    how are those lessons learned going to be, you know,
    implemented going forward?
        And Mr. Rohrabacher brought up, you know, well--and Mr.
    Young said that everyone--everyone who's bidding always
    underbids. Well, do you have the ability at NASA to really get
    these things better under control so that you can deliver
    better for the American people going forward?
        Mr. Bridenstine. All wonderful points, and certainly the
    answer is I really believe that there are a whole host of
    learning points here and that these learning points ultimately
    need to be distributed not only across NASA but across
    government at large. And so one of the first things we're doing
    is we're taking the lessons learned, when you think about all
    of the 32 recommendations from the Independent Review Board,
    we're compiling those and we're going to have a roadshow and go
    to all 10 of the NASA centers and other facilities that NASA
    has and we're going to go around and we're going to talk about
    ultimately what the failure was here. This is an opportunity,
    quite frankly, to learn and to prevent this kind of thing from
    happening in other missions.
        A couple of things I think are important to address on the
    chart we saw, you know, the $500 million original cost figure.
    One of the challenges NASA had going back all the way to then,
    the early 2000s, was what are the requirements? What are we
    building here? And at the time the telescope was going to be a
    4 meter--it's going to have a four meter mirror. The primary
    meter--or the primary mirror was only going to be four meters
    large. Then it was determined, well, hold on a second, we want
    to see all the way back to the very beginning of the universe,
    the very first light. Well, that means we have to be able to
    detect even more trace infrared signatures that we've never
    been able to do before.
        So how do we accomplish that? Well, we have to have, you
    know, almost absolute zero temperatures, we have to have this
    massive heat shield that is very intricate with five different
    layers of Kapton sheets, so on one----
        Mr. Lipinski. But----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes.
        Mr. Lipinski. Excuse me because I'm running out of time
    here.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes.
        Mr. Lipinski. Is there--going forward, though----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes.
        Mr. Lipinski. --I understand the complexity and the added
    complexity as looking for something that could do more. Is
    there a way that we can be confident here that this is not
    going to happen in the future? It wasn't just the added
    complexity.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Right.
        Mr. Lipinski. The complexity was added, but then how much
    it was going to cost, how long it's going to take----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes.
        Mr. Lipinski. --there was not a--it doesn't seem to maybe
    have been realistic, you know----
        Mr. Bridenstine. That is absolutely true, and that was the
    recommendation from the Independent Review Board is that we
    were excessively optimistic.
        Mr. Lipinski. Well, let me ask Mr. Young. Are you--how much
    confidence do you have that we're not going to be back here
    with another, you know, WFIRST or any other major NASA
    projects, that we're not going to be talking about the same
    issues again after we've gone through this?
        Mr. Young. If you could narrow your question, if--and do I
    believe that for JWST we know the lessons learned in order to
    successfully complete this program. I believe my answer to that
    is yes. And what I really mean is that if the recommendations
    that we have made, if NASA implements them as we intended in
    the depth that we intended them to, then I believe we will
    maximize the probability of success of JWST.
        A few fundamentals: We have got to--when human errors
    occur, we have got to have the processes in place that keep
    them from having any significant impact on schedule, and we
    know how to do that. The other item, which is harder, is the
    embedded problems. There have been two. Are there any more
    embedded problems? And if they are, we have got to find them
    before we get to the test so that we can eliminate them.
        Now, that is a hard item. That will take tens of people
    months to go through. Fundamentally, what you're doing is you
    are reestablishing the pedigree for each piece of hardware that
    you are----
        Mr. Lipinski. So it's more time is going to take?
        Mr. Young. Yes. Yes, it could--it possibly could----
        Mr. Lipinski. And we have to understand that.
        Mr. Young. It's possible it could take more time.
        Mr. Lipinski. We have to be accepting of that.
        Mr. Young. It's possible. That's possible. I actually think
    that the schedule has been established with the reservations
    that I--or with the footnotes that I put on in my comments is a
    realistic schedule, but the program is really at a point right
    now that you--there's really--the control parameters are small,
    and that is you really have a choice between cost and schedule
    and risk. I mean, that's what your--that's what the program is
    managing from this day forward. And if you try to go too fast
    with too little cost, then you're probably going to add risk.
    And it doesn't mean that you don't have to be prudent in how
    you manage the risk, but you're really trading risk, schedule,
    and cost every day is what the project people would be doing
    from this day forward in JWST.
        Mr. Lipinski. Well, I think the science is so important
    that we--no question that we need to move forward. Thank you.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Lipinski.
        The gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Brooks, is recognized.
        Mr. Brooks. Good to see you here, Mr. Bridenstine.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you.
        Mr. Brooks. I miss some of our witty conversations during
    votes on the House Floor.
        Mr. Bridenstine. You bet.
        Mr. Brooks. You have not been replaced, but we're looking.
        Mr. Bridenstine. All right.
        Mr. Brooks. Per the testimony, the James Webb Space
    Telescope delay cost taxpayers roughly $800 million. With the
    limited resources of the NASA budget, I'm concerned that other
    space priorities will have their funding impacted by these cost
    overruns, and that concern has been heightened by your
    testimony that these cost overruns may force NASA to, quote,
    ``cannibalize other missions,'' end quote.
        With that as a backdrop, will you commit here today that
    these James Webb Space Telescope cost overruns will not come
    from the space and human exploration or, more specifically, the
    space launch system portions of the budget?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So there--at this point, that hasn't even
    been discussed, so this is relevant to the Science Mission
    Directorate exclusively, and that's where at this point we've
    had discussions about, you know, what are the options going
    forward.
        Mr. Brooks. What is the timetable for NASA's determination
    of what programs will be cannibalized to come up with that now
    $800 million shortfall?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So maybe the word cannibalized isn't the
    right word, but the idea is there is an opportunity cost going
    forward, what missions maybe we--do we not start and that kind
    of thing. So the answer is by the 2021--or, actually, by the
    2020 time frame is when we're going to need to have additional
    funds, and so between now and then we're going to have to make
    determinations. And, you know, that process is right now. It's
    underway. And in this process what we're trying to do is,
    again, evaluate where we are with respect to the decadal
    surveys for each of the divisions of the Science Mission
    Directorate, make sure that we're in compliance with that, and
    ultimately, do it in a way that people can agree on. And I'd
    love to have your feedback on that.
        Mr. Brooks. Well, as a member of the Space Subcommittee and
    also as a member of the Science, Space, and Technology
    Committee, you can imagine how each of us on this Committee
    focus on different parts of what NASA does for our country. And
    I suspect that each of us has some concern about whether things
    that we believe are most important may be delayed as a result
    of these James Webb Space Telescope cost overruns. So if you
    could please keep us informed as you engage in your decision-
    making process, I would very much appreciate it, and I'd submit
    that the Committee as a whole would also do so.
        Mr. Bridenstine. You can count on it.
        Mr. Brooks. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the
    balance of my time.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Brooks.
        And the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Beyer, is recognized.
        Mr. Beyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much.
        Mr. Bridenstine, welcome back.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you.
        Mr. Beyer. You know, how much has changed since 1996----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Oh, my goodness.
        Mr. Beyer. --when this was first put out there at half-a-
    billion dollars? And I was just thinking about so many projects
    that we've seen over the years, whether there's been actually
    evolution in design, what we expected the project to do, the
    kind of instruments that were on board. I love that you brought
    up the search for the cosmic dawn and looking back into that.
    Can you even talk about how much cosmology has changed, the
    science itself in those 22 years, and what impact has that had
    on the delays and the cost?
        Mr. Bridenstine. It's a wonderful question, and when you
    think of the universe at large, we're--NASA is learning new
    things every single day--how the universe is expanding and not
    just expanding but expanding at an ever-increasing rate; it's
    actually accelerating--and what is causing that, and can James
    Webb help us understand that--you know, at the edge of the
    universe there are galaxies in essence disappearing because
    they're accelerating faster than the speed of light. So those
    galaxies, the light from them if they're faster than the speed
    of light, that light can't get back to Earth, which means
    there's a lot of things we don't understand about the physics,
    astrophysics that this particular spacecraft is going to help
    us learn.
        Going back to the very beginning of cosmic dawn, we're
    going to learn how did the very first galaxies form, what did
    that first light look like, what was its shape, what was its
    pattern? And we have models at NASA that we believe could be
    accurate, but I'm telling you they're not because we don't
    know.
        We talk about things like dark matter and dark energy,
    things that we have very little understanding of. We cannot
    interact with it in any way. We cannot sense it, we cannot
    detect it, but we--there's evidence of it based on how objects
    move in space. There's evidence of gravitational effects of it.
        And so--and all of these things--talk about gravitational
    waves, things that, you know, just recently we have been able
    to detect, you know, so all these kind of, you know, new things
    that didn't exist, you know, even a few years ago--and earlier,
    I mentioned the exoplanets. The idea that exoplanets existed is
    a--I mean, the idea that they existed is not new, but we had no
    evidence of it until, you know, within the last ten years, and
    now every day we're detecting new exoplanets. And now there's
    thousands of exoplanets right near our own star, and the
    question is, you know, can this help us understand the
    atmospheric composition of those planets that are around other
    stars and help us understand whether or not life could exist
    there? So----
        Mr. Beyer. Well, I really want to thank you for the
    comprehensiveness of that answer because I think you point out
    very clearly that this isn't simply mismanagement or cost
    overruns or delay. It's the fact that the world and science
    itself is changing----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes.
        Mr. Beyer. --in ways that impact the project that we have
    completely different expectations for in 2018 than we had in
    1996.
        Mr. Bridenstine. That----
        Mr. Beyer. So let me ask you another completely speculative
    question, but you did so well on that one. Nine-point-six
    billion dollars is what we're going to spend. What would be the
    value of the knowledge that we get compared to that $9.6
    billion?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So, again, we don't know what we don't
    know until this spacecraft is operational. I want to be clear;
    we are doing everything we can to make it operational. But when
    it becomes operational, it's going to change our understanding
    really of astrophysics, change our understanding of the
    universe and even galaxies and their formation and the
    formation of planets. So all of this is going to add tremendous
    value.
        But I would also argue--and I really believe this--that the
    United States of America may have lost some ground when it
    comes to science and astrophysics on the international scene.
    What this spacecraft represents is the reestablishment of the
    United States of America is the preeminent Nation when it comes
    to astrophysics and science. And I think that's an important
    part of our leadership in the world, and ultimately, other
    countries all around the world are coming up with ideas on how
    to use this spacecraft, and they want access to it, countries
    that you wouldn't normally think of that--and universities that
    have great astrophysicists that want to have access to this.
    And they're sending NASA ideas all the time on how to use this,
    so there's a whole host of capabilities that we can't even
    predict yet until it's on orbit, and we're doing everything we
    can to get there.
        Mr. Beyer. Mr. Chairman, I just wish we had a head of NASA
    that was excited about this project.
        Chairman Smith. Well, when you asked your first question, I
    could see that answer going on for a couple of hours, but I
    thought it was a good answer.
        And thank you, Mr. Beyer.
        We'll now go to the gentleman from California, I believe,
    Mr. Knight. He's recognized for questions.
        Mr. Knight. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I had the honor of having the new Administrator at our new
    NASA caucus last night, and he spoke about all of the great
    things that NASA is doing. And we brought up what New Horizons
    did and how that was kind of a mankind-changing event. It was
    on every newspaper across the globe. This wasn't a national
    issue; this was a total-globe issue when we went by Pluto and
    we were able to go within 10,000 miles of Pluto's surface and
    do all of the things that New Horizons brought to us.
        But I'd like to kind of look at what we've done in
    progression with Hubble and even closer to home with SOFIA and
    some of the other telescopes that we use and what we see and
    what we get. Give me an idea--and I think you've expanded on
    this quite a bit--but how much of a game-changing event is
    James Webb going to be----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes.
        Mr. Knight. --compared to what Hubble gives us that's 350
    miles away from us and James Webb being almost a million miles
    away from us and cruising?
        Mr. Bridenstine. It's a wonderful question, and I've heard
    Chairman Smith talk about Hubble a lot in my days on this
    Committee and his excitement for it. And I'll tell you the
    story he tells and how Hubble absolutely changed the game of
    what we understand about our universe. The way Chairman Smith
    describes it, if you hold a penny up at arm's length and you
    look at the eye of Abraham Lincoln, when Hubble looks through
    that eye, which is a very small piece of sky, just--that's all
    the piece of sky that it's looking at, but in an area of space
    where there's not a lot of stars in our own galaxy so we could
    see beyond our galaxy, Hubble started taking pictures in areas
    like that.
        And instead of seeing stars, Hubble saw thousands and
    thousands of galaxies. So we now believe that there are
    potentially 400 billion-plus galaxies, each with 400 billion-
    plus stars, and I'm just throwing out round numbers here. Every
    galaxy is very different.
        Mr. Knight. We won't hold you to those numbers.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Right, okay. But it changed the way we
    understand our place in the cosmos and ultimately how complex
    our cosmos is. And Hubble changed the game. It changed
    textbooks. You know, the--we didn't grow up with that
    knowledge. Now, we have that knowledge, and it's in the
    textbooks that my kids are reading.
        James Webb is going to do the same thing for our
    understanding of how, you know, physics in the early universe
    worked because there's a lot of things we don't know. And so it
    will change textbooks. It will be generational just like Hubble
    was, and it's a whole new level of understanding that we're
    going to have to have as a Nation and as humanity.
        Mr. Knight. Absolutely. And I appreciate the Chairman doing
    this. This is very important. It's important for us as
    Representatives for us to know what is a cost overrun, what is
    a time overrun, what are the difficulties, and is this
    something that we saw when we started out on this.
        A lot of times government asks for something that we might
    not know how to do, but over a period of time we're going to
    learn that, something that maybe we've got a get a little
    better at, too. This is an extremely difficult issue, and this
    is something that is going in a different direction. But as I
    like to say, America takes giant leaps where others thought was
    impossible, and that's exactly what we're doing with James
    Webb.
        So I think that everyone has said keep it on time now, move
    forward, let's get this in the air so that our academics, our
    kids who are going to learn from this and scientists around the
    world are going to learn. That is who we are going to impact.
    This is a humankind event. This is not something that's easy,
    and this is not something that we're going to have more
    problems. But when this happens, this will be a humankind
    event.
        So I appreciate your leadership. I appreciate the
    enthusiasm. That's what NASA is about. It's achieving. It's
    making sure that that seven-year-old that wants to be an
    aeronautical engineer or an astronaut or whatever looks at NASA
    and says, ``look at all they're achieving.'' That's what I want
    to do. And it changes the globe for the better, so thank you.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Mr. Knight, I would add that we're making
    great progress on the low-boom flight demonstrator.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Knight.
        And thank you, Mr. Bridenstine, for that great description
    of the deep-field view taken by the----
        Mr. Bridenstine. There you go.
        Chairman Smith. --Hubble Space Telescope. I've actually
    passed out over a thousand 8 x 11 glossies of that deep-field
    view, that----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Is that right?
        Chairman Smith. --speck of sky where you describe where
    nothing was thought to exist. The film was exposed for 24
    hours, and in that speck, there were 3,000 points of light,
    each not a star but each a galaxy consisting of an average of
    100 million stars. If anyone wants to know why we explore, take
    a look at that deep-field view.
        The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Lamb, is recognized
    for his questions.
        Mr. Lamb. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Bridenstine, you used the term reestablishment of the
    United States as the leader in astrophysics. Could you just go
    a little further with that? Do you feel that we've lost ground
    in recent times? And what would be the reason for that?
        Mr. Bridenstine. I don't know that I would say--well, I
    would say that others have gained ground, how about that? And
    there are other countries around the world that are developing
    capabilities all the time. The European Space Agency is doing
    wonderful work. China is in fact establishing a pretty
    impressive astrophysics capability. And so I wouldn't say we've
    lost ground. I would say others have gained ground.
        We welcome that. Knowledge is knowledge, and we want them
    to be successful. In this particular case, this is going to
    gain new ground for the United States of America, and I think
    it's important that we always strive to do more because when we
    do more, then they're going to do more, and ultimately, our
    knowledge, especially from James Webb, from Hubble, these
    capabilities, the data that we get from it, the information,
    the scientific--it's available to the world. And scientists can
    actually use the data to make discoveries that NASA doesn't
    have the capacity to make on its own. And so when we make it
    available, a lot of people find new things that we didn't
    ourselves even discover, and so it's good for the entire world.
        Mr. Lamb. Absolutely. Do you--so I think that's an
    important point that the funding discussion behind this both
    for James Webb and for NASA overall isn't taking place in a
    vacuum. China, you mentioned, is making significant investments
    in astrophysics, and I think we know that in their space
    program they're going it alone in some areas, you know,
    suggesting that there is a bit of competition going on. Is that
    something that you think should influence the discussion of the
    NASA budget and the decisions we make in 2020 when there is,
    you know, a projected shortfall because of these overruns?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Absolutely. I mean, I do believe that, you
    know, NASA is an agency that can establish American leadership,
    that ultimately the NASA budget always returns far more than
    the investment. And I can give example after example. We
    actually promote the fact that we--we have a spinoff Twitter
    feed, NASA spinoff, so go to ``at NASA spinoff'' and you'll
    find all kinds of capabilities that have been developed. What
    NASA does we make available to the world, and then people use
    it for all sorts of things that are good.
        But humanity itself, the way we communicate, the way we
    navigate, you probably may have had DirecTV or dish network,
    maybe internet broadband from space, the--you know, using GPS,
    the way we predict weather, the way we understand the climate,
    certainly the way we do national security and defense, disaster
    relief, simple things that we don't normally think about like
    banking requires the GPS signal. Banking is fundamental to the
    United States of America. Every transaction requires that
    timing signal from GPS.
        So when you think about what space represents, it
    represents a fundamental increase in the standard of living not
    only for all Americans but for the entire world. And all of
    those capabilities are available because of a trail that was
    blazed by NASA, these investments if you will.
        And so the answer is yes, when the United States Congress
    makes determinations to invest in NASA, it always strengthens
    the United States of America, and it always lifts not just our
    citizens but citizens around the world in ways that we never
    even imagined when we make the investments. So I do
    fundamentally believe that NASA is a great investment for the
    United States.
        Mr. Lamb. Thank you. Just one more question. We have talked
    in this Committee before about developing the future workforce
    in aerospace and astrophysics, and one of the pieces of
    feedback we heard was that NASA's sort of comparative advantage
    when they're competing I guess against private-sector employers
    is the ability of NASA to give its workers really hands-on
    experience on one-of-a-kind projects, especially earlier in
    their career. Do you know if that's happening on James Webb? Is
    there a younger workforce that's able to take part in this and
    able to get the kind of experience that they wouldn't be
    getting anywhere else?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So that's a wonderful question. NASA is,
    as you can imagine--it has for seven years in a row been the
    number-one federal agency as far as workforce. When I see
    number one, the best place to work as determined by the workers
    themselves. So that's really an amazing capability. What that
    means is that NASA's workforce, we don't have a lot of
    turnover. In fact, it's about 4.5 percent per year, which means
    our workforce is aging, and that's just the reality.
        So we are using authorities right now to attract a younger
    workforce, a program called the Pathways Program that helps us
    get interns and ultimately recent college graduates, recent
    graduates from master's programs. We're doing what we can to
    get a younger workforce, and we are engaging them absolutely in
    projects. In fact, right now this summer, we have over 1,600
    students interning at NASA, and a lot of those interns, you
    know, they're--I'll tell you, most of them want to work for
    NASA. There's not going to be spots for all of them to work at
    NASA, but they're probably going to work in the--in a related
    field or for a contractor or something like that.
        So the answer is yes, we're doing what we can. The
    workforce is in fact aging. There is a bow wave that I am very
    concerned about because eventually there's going to be a lot of
    retirements coming. We've got to be very cognizant of that and
    preparing for it today. And of course--and it's my belief that
    NASA's doing what it can to make sure that we're prepared for
    that bow wave. But the workforce is aging. You're making a
    great point. We're doing what we can to make it younger.
        Mr. Lamb. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield. Thank you.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Lamb.
        The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Hultgren, is recognized
    for his questions.
        Mr. Hultgren. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you both for
    being here. This is an important hearing as we continue our
    oversight of the James Webb Space Telescope and review recent
    problems that we've had.
        Back in a hearing in 2011 on the issues with the telescope,
    I talked about my thoughts of the importance of American
    leadership in these fields and how this really is part of who
    we are as a Nation and the fact that we continue to be an
    exceptional Nation. It's important to acknowledge that we've
    had some very serious issues with project management over the
    life of this program, but we also have to remind ourselves that
    we're almost over the finish line, and this is truly where we
    all do want to be. Many people looked at the 2011 re-plan as
    the last chance. It's obviously not what we want to see.
        Administrator Bridenstine, thank you for your work. It's so
    good to see you back here and especially in the role that
    you're in, so congratulations and thanks for your work. Also,
    it was good to see you last night and again want to commend you
    on the vision that you're bringing to NASA and the direction
    that the President and the Administration has charged you with
    and NASA with. It's exciting, and you can just feel the
    excitement that so many are sharing with that.
        You know about my views on these world-leading projects.
    I've always been so proud of NASA's ability to inspire and
    bring others along, certainly from young children that you
    inspire in STEM to also our foreign partners on ISS or other
    ESA projects.
        I wondered if you could discuss some other projects that
    NASA is working on or planning and how the capabilities of
    James Webb are necessary for them to get the best science. In
    short, how many other investments are we making that rely on
    this initial investment, and what else do we have to lose if
    this does not go up?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So James Webb, when you think of it, the
    astrophysics division of the Science Mission Directorate, James
    Webb is one piece, and there are other missions out there that
    can help us ultimately that are less expensive, less capable
    but ultimately can help us determine how to best use James Webb
    as a force multiplier if you will. So it is absolutely true
    that we think of it as a system of systems and that some of the
    smaller missions inform how we want to use the flagship
    missions.
        That being said, we have to get this right. As Tom Young
    mentioned, there's over 300 parts that are single points of
    failure, which is why we are testing it and retesting it and
    testing it some more to make sure that it works in every single
    one of these--I want to be clear about this, too. Single--300
    single points of failure is a lot. That's not what NASA
    normally does. NASA does normally have projects that have a lot
    of single points of failure. The Curiosity rover that landed on
    Mars had over 70 single points of failure.
        It's a successful mission, overwhelmingly successful. We
    are discovering right now that, you know, there are complex
    organic compounds on Mars, which has never been determined
    before, and now we're finding them, which increases the
    probability of life. Methane, of course, cycles are now--we now
    know that methane cycles are commensurate with the seasons on
    Mars and in fact, you know, today, you are probably going to
    see reports that we have found what appears to be liquid water
    about 1.5 kilometers below the surface of Mars, amazing--that
    wasn't from Curiosity. That's from another satellite mission
    around Mars that has, you know, radar.
        So--but these are capabilities that we make investments in.
    They have single points of failure. This one's more complex.
    There's more single points of failure. We have to be more
    diligent about every aspect. That's why we're putting so much
    effort into mission assurance and other things. But it is a
    force multiplier, as you're acknowledging----
        Mr. Hultgren. Yes.
        Mr. Bridenstine. --that the other missions that we do are
    excellent. This actually makes them even better. It makes those
    investments even better.
        Mr. Hultgren. It's really helpful. Let me go down to one
    last quick question----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Hultgren. --in my last minute here. Administrator, you
    brought up this little bit last night, but I think it would be
    good to get it on record. And this is also something I had
    asked former NASA Administrator Griffin and it's something that
    worries me as we work with other nations on world-leading
    science experiments. What is the first question you get from
    our foreign partners when you come to them and see how we can
    collaborate? I'm always worried about our budgetary process and
    especially CRs, but your comments last night did give me hope.
    I wondered if you could talk about what you're hearing from----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes.
        Mr. Hultgren. --collaborators?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you for bringing that up. I just got
    back from the Farnborough Air Show. The heads of space agencies
    from throughout the world were there, and we had great
    collaborations. I was going with the mindset that I'm going to
    have to make a sales pitch, that our--you know, we're going
    forward to the moon with a sustainable architecture so that
    this time we can stay and then we're going to go on to Mars. We
    need all of our international partners involved and more, and
    we need not just our international partners but commercial
    partners. And I was going there to make a sales pitch.
        And overwhelmingly what I heard from our international
    partners, which we've established strong partnerships with I
    think it's over 90 different countries at this point, although
    they weren't all of this one event, what I heard overwhelmingly
    is tell us what we need to do. It wasn't me trying to make a
    sales pitch. They're ready to go.
        Mr. Hultgren. That's great.
        Mr. Bridenstine. They want direction and then they can sell
    their governments and we can move forward as a body. Space
    represents, in my view, a very strong soft-power tool for the
    United States of America to establish leadership. James Webb is
    a perfect example of that. The European Space Agency is
    providing two scientific instruments. They're providing
    scientists that are going to be integrated with our scientists
    on James Webb, and they're providing a launch capability.
        So the European Space Agency has really stepped up to the
    plate on James Webb. They're making sacrifices the same as
    we're making sacrifices because they, like us, believe it will
    be worth it.
        Mr. Hultgren. Great. Thank you.
        Mr. Lucas. [Presiding] The gentleman's time has expired.
        Mr. Hultgren. I yield back.
        Mr. Lucas. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from
    Florida, Mr. Crist, for five minutes.
        Mr. Crist. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you,
    Administrator Bridenstine and Mr. Young, for being with us
    today. I appreciate your time.
        It's a concern of mine that the repeated schedule delays
    and cost overruns are putting increasing pressure on both NASA,
    as well as Northrop Grumman to prevent any further slippage.
    While it's important to keep schedule and cost under control,
    it's even more important in my opinion to make sure that we get
    this done right and that we don't cut any corners that could
    negatively impact mission success. So, Administrator
    Bridenstine, how will NASA be able to guarantee that the
    remaining integration and test work is not affected by this
    schedule pressure?
        Mr. Bridenstine. That's a wonderful question. The
    Independent Review Board made an assessment on both schedule
    and costs. NASA ran independently an assessment on schedule and
    costs through our agency program management council and our
    directorate program management council. We came to in essence
    the same conclusion. We wanted to make sure that there was
    adequate margin for both cost and schedule so that we weren't
    putting ourselves up against the wall. So we do believe there's
    adequate margin in there.
        At the same time we are incorporating all of the
    recommendations from the Independent Review Board. There are,
    you know, two recommendations that we haven't implemented yet
    but we're making progress on, and so I really believe that
    we're going to be able to accomplish the task. We've--again, we
    have taken NASA workforce and put that--put them on this task,
    highly qualified NASA workforce. We have strengthened the
    mission assurance piece, which is immediate feedback in
    response to every--you know, every item that goes on or off the
    spacecraft is being overseen by somebody who can stop the
    entire program immediately. We are providing direct oversight
    from the Goddard Space Flight Center, and we're providing, you
    know, direct oversight from NASA headquarters as well.
        So I do believe that we've taken all the tools that we have
    and we're using them to the best of our ability. And if we
    continue to execute how we're executing right now, we will be
    on cost, we will be on schedule, and we will have mission
    success.
        Mr. Crist. Okay. Thank you, sir.
        Mr. Young, would you add anything to that?
        Mr. Young. I thought that the description was really quite
    good that was just given. I think that the only thing I would
    underline is that when we do hit the hard spots--and there will
    be some--that mission success has got to be the defining
    criteria as to how we go forward. So I think your question is
    really excellent, and the idea is that while schedule and cost
    are important, they're not more important than mission success.
        Mr. Crist. Right.
        Mr. Young. And as long as we have that culture and
    philosophy, which I actually see existing, then I think that,
    you know, we'll proceed well, but that's got to be the hallmark
    as to how we go forward. And that's got to be communicated down
    to the lower--to working levels of the organization because
    right today, while we're having this hearing, my guess would be
    that at some--at a working level somebody made a decision that
    probably can have a real influence on the success of JWST, and
    we want to be sure that the criteria that they're making that
    decision gains us mission success and not schedule and cost.
        Mr. Crist. Great. Thank you, sir. Back to you,
    Administrator. What do you believe is NASA's responsibility
    when human error by contractors occurs, and what changes do you
    think might need to be made, if any, for contractor oversight.
        Mr. Bridenstine. So specifications and requirements that
    come from NASA ultimately need to be very crystal-clear. There
    can be no mistakes as NASA generates specifications and
    requirements. One of the challenges we saw during acoustic
    testing when you think about the sunshield covers, you know,
    the sunshields have to be folded up and then flown and--within
    a rocket faring and then deployed once in space.
        The sunshield covers had fasteners that kept them--and kept
    the sunshield covered. Those fasteners ultimately were held
    together by screws and bolts, and NASA did not specify what the
    torque specification requirements were. That's a failure of
    NASA. Should Northrop Grumman have maybe done things
    differently? Maybe, but NASA has responsibility here as well.
    And so it's on us to--mission success is on NASA. We can blame
    the contractor, but the reality is it's on us to have mission
    success.
        So accountability is critical. We have tools in place for
    accountability. We are at this point at the integration and
    testing phase. We are on the--again, I've said it before, I'm
    going to say it again. We're on the 5-yard line trying to punch
    it into the end zone. We're almost there. I believe we're going
    to get there, but going forward, we have to be--and this is one
    of the takeaways that we're going to take on a roadshow. When
    we generate specifications and requirements, we can't miss
    anything because ultimately mission success is on NASA.
        Mr. Crist. Thank you, sir.
        Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Crist.
        The gentlewoman from Arizona, Mrs. Lesko, is recognized.
        Mrs. Lesko. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You know, I'm the second-
    newest member to Congress, and I don't know if some of my
    fellow Congressmen are more used to these budget overruns or
    not, but when I read this, I thought it was outrageous that
    it's 19 times over the budget that was estimated and so far
    behind. And I really think this is just a perfect example of
    why the American public doesn't trust the Federal Government in
    spending its tax dollars. I really do. I just thought it was
    outrageous.
        So I guess my question, since I'm new, is what has been
    done since--in 2007 this was expected to be finished. Has
    Congress or NASA done anything in between besides what's just
    happening now with this IRB? And if they did do something,
    obviously, it didn't work. So I want to know if anything has
    been done in the past 11 years, and if so, why should we
    believe it's going to change in the future?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So in 2011 there was an Independent Review
    Board, and at the time the--all of this was still in
    development. Going back even further, one of the big challenges
    we had is changing requirements, changing specifications. What
    do we want the telescope to do, how far do we want to see? And
    if you go from--I mentioned this earlier. If you go from a four
    meter telescope to a 6.5 meter telescope--when I say telescope,
    I'm talking about the size of the mirror that actually reflects
    onto another mirror and then the sensors--you--when you change
    something that is this precise this much, it really has an
    impact on cost and schedule.
        In 2011, we had an independent review. We set a new
    baseline, and that new baseline actually had its launching in
    2019. And we got--again, we got all the way to the 5-yard line.
    And when we integrated the spacecraft element with the optical
    telescope element and did testing, we made all kinds of
    discoveries that were unfortunate, and not just unfortunate,
    problematic. And that's where we are today.
        So what we have to do now is, as Mr. Young has noted, we
    are going back and we're going to make sure because the way
    this telescope is going to be launched, you know, it's going to
    be a million miles away from Earth. We don't have any human
    spacecraft capability that can get up there to service it, and
    if we could, this telescope is too delicate to even service.
        That being said, we have to get it right the first time. So
    that's why we go through such extensive testing. Some of the
    testing, ultimately, we discovered things that are routine,
    which is why you test. Some of the testing demonstrated that we
    in fact have some embedded errors and some human errors,
    embedded problems and human errors, some embedded problems
    going back a number of years. Mr. Young mentioned that the
    thrusters were washed with the wrong solvent, and that corroded
    some seals. That was done years ago, and we only discovered in
    testing that that had happened. Again, this is why we test. We
    want to make these mistakes here on Earth because that mistake,
    if it was in space, it would be too late. It can't be fixed.
        So some of it is routine testing that ultimately we're
    making discoveries that we need to make discoveries on, and
    others, we're finding errors that occurred years ago, and some
    of those errors include, you know, the--using the wrong solvent
    to wash the thrusters, which is why we're going through right
    now and we are starting from a baseline and saying if we have
    to find every embedded error, that we have to go back to the
    very beginning of every component on this spacecraft and make
    sure we haven't made any errors, which is what we're doing
    because there's no room for failure once it's in space. And
    that's what we're doing. Mission success is the primary
    objective. I believe that we're there, and here we are
    requesting an extra $800 million and a few more years, and I
    think we can get it done.
        Mrs. Lesko. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I appreciate that
    we're under a new Administration and that you're new and so you
    have to take what was given you. I just again want to express
    my frustration that we're talking about taxpayer dollars, and
    it's very frustrating to me and other taxpayers that this is so
    much of a cost overrun, and although I've heard testimony how
    important it is, I understand that, it's very frustrating. I
    think we need to do a better job of making sure that we are not
    so far off the mark. Thank you----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes, ma'am.
        Mrs. Lesko. --and I yield back my time.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mrs. Lesko.
        And the gentleman from California, Mr. Takano, is
    recognized.
        Mr. Takano. Welcome back, Administrator Bridenstine.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you, sir.
        Mr. Takano. It's good to see you. And congratulations. I
    didn't get to say that to you earlier.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you.
        Mr. Takano. And thank you, Mr. Young, for being here.
        Administrator, you just mentioned an $800 million figure.
    Is that for fiscal year 2020 and fiscal year 2021?
        Mr. Bridenstine. It gets us through launch, which would be
    through March 30 of 2021, which is the new launch date.
        Mr. Takano. So March--so you have enough money for fiscal
    year 2019----
        Mr. Bridenstine. We do.
        Mr. Takano. --correct?
        Mr. Bridenstine. That's correct.
        Mr. Takano. And so this supplemental that you're asking for
    is for the year 2021?
        Mr. Bridenstine. It's really--we're not really asking for a
    supplemental, although if you'd like to give it to us, we'll
    take it.
        Mr. Takano. Okay.
        Mr. Bridenstine. The--what the law requires is that if we
    hit $800 billion--or $8 billion--gosh, dang----
        Mr. Takano. Eight hundred million.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Eight hundred. But if we hit $8 billion,
    the program is no longer authorized. And so, ultimately in the
    development we haven't hit it yet, but we will soon hit $8
    billion and we'll need Congress to reauthorize it if we're
    going to continue.
        Mr. Takano. So you're asking for an authorization----
        Mr. Bridenstine. That's correct.
        Mr. Takano. --of an additional $800 million----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes.
        Mr. Takano. --for the program?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes. And that money could come from NASA
    or if you want to appropriate additional, it could come from
    there as well.
        Mr. Takano. You know, we may have to do that. I might
    prefer not having to choose between our children.
        Mr. Bridenstine. I know.
        Mr. Takano. Right? But we have hard choices to make here.
    So $800 million. Let's see. The question I wanted to ask.
    Administrator, given that we're moving the launch date, have
    you hired graduate students and plan for graduate student work
    based on the October 18 launch date?
        Mr. Bridenstine. The March 30 launch date of 2021, have we
    hired graduate----
        Mr. Takano. Well, no, because given that you----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Oh, oh, oh, I see----
        Mr. Takano. I'm wondering if you did hire graduate students
    based on the old----
        Mr. Bridenstine. The old launch date.
        Mr. Takano. --launch date----
        Mr. Bridenstine. So----
        Mr. Takano. Can you tell me what's going on with that?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So the launch is actually being provided
    by the European Space Agency on an Ariane 5, so they are our
    international partner on this particular project. And so to my
    knowledge we haven't hired any graduate students to help us
    with the launch. It's being provided by the European Space
    Agency.
        Mr. Takano. All right. You might just want to check up----
        Mr. Bridenstine. I will.
        Mr. Takano. --on that detail because if we've hired
    graduate students----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Right.
        Mr. Takano. --based on the launch date--but maybe you've
    delayed doing that because you were uncertain about when you
    are going to be able to launch.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Right.
        Mr. Takano. How many cost overrun proposals has Northrop
    submitted to NASA since the original JWST re-plan agreement in
    2011? Do you know that?
        Mr. Bridenstine. I don't know offhand, but----
        Mr. Takano. If you could get that----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes, I will. I will get that.
        Mr. Takano. If you could get that to my office----
        Mr. Bridenstine. I'll take that for the record.
        Mr. Takano. And if you could also get me a total on the
    value of the cost overrun proposals and whether they included
    any award fees.
        Mr. Bridenstine. I will.
        Mr. Takano. That'd be helpful for me to know.
        You know, I want to go back to the workforce training
    issues that were kind of gone over by I think Mr. Hultgren and
    Mr. Lamb. You spoke about the unique workforce that you have
    and the interns and the programs, and you're worried about the
    aging out of the current workforce.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes.
        Mr. Takano. And it's a pretty specialized workforce. What
    can Congress do to support opportunities for relevant workforce
    training and experience beyond what it has now?
        Mr. Bridenstine. That's a----
        Mr. Takano. Can we do more?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Absolutely. Thank you for asking because
    I'll be sure to let you know the--one thing that we have been
    talking about a lot at NASA is the competition that exists
    today that might not have existed for NASA centers even maybe,
    you know, 20 or 30 years ago. So if you're a young person in
    Houston, Texas, there's, you know, an amazing energy industry
    down there that is trying to gobble up all of the electrical
    engineers, mechanical engineers, chemical engineers. If you're
    a young person out in the San Francisco Bay area where Ames
    Research Center is, there's all of the tech companies that are
    gobbling up those types of talents.
        And so it's--the challenge that NASA has is ultimately the
    way a young person can get a job with NASA is to apply online.
    And in the six months that follow, you may or may not get a
    response, let alone get a job. And this is a challenge that we
    need to--there is a challenge in the way----
        Mr. Takano. So there's a personnel office problem,
    inefficiencies there. The applications are kind of stuck is
    what you're telling me?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Well, that's a piece of it, but there's
    also a piece of it that there's a body of law that we have to
    follow in order to hire somebody. And a lot of our competitors
    for that talent, private companies, they can go to a job fair
    and hire somebody on the spot. And it's not--you know, when I
    say we're competing, we're not competing against the people
    that supply services to us necessarily. We're competing against
    entire other industries for that talent. And so when they can
    hire on the spot and when we hire, we have to go through this
    elaborate process, we lose. We lose a lot of talent. So direct-
    hire authority is something that we would love to have.
        Mr. Takano. Mr. Chairman, I'm sorry for going over, but I
    think this is a rich topic and I hope we can maybe explore this
    topic more with more hearings about----
        Chairman Smith. We will.
        Mr. Takano. I know we've done some stuff on workforce
    development, but I've heard a statistic that Mexico is
    producing more mechanical engineers than we are in the United
    States, and so I think--this is a broader topic and I hope we
    can devote more time to it later.
        Chairman Smith. Okay.
        Mr. Takano. Thanks.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Takano.
        The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Weber, is recognized for
    questions.
        Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        To paraphrase JFK, we choose to take risks not because
    they're known or easy but because they're unknown and they're
    hard. So you just answered the question I had Administrator
    Bridenstine. And welcome back, by the way.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you.
        Mr. Weber. We kind of miss the days you sat up here and
    make snide remarks about some of the other Members.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Now you're making them about me.
        Mr. Weber. I know. Did I say that out loud? I'm encouraged
    to hear that it's important that we lead in space. Dr. Babin
    had a conversation--I forget with which one of you it was
    with--about the fact that we were cost overrun and behind
    schedule, and that washurting us with a national security and
    with the industrial base. And I would argue exactly the
    opposite, that it's actually helping us. And when you said
    there's 90 countries who are ready to help with this, I was so
    encouraged by that because it shows the world that we are
    determined to be the space leader, and we're going to do it
    come hell or high water, if that applies to the amount of water
    we found here the other day. So thank you for saying that. I'm
    encouraged by that, Jim.
        Mr. Young, in the IGR report you made was it 32
    recommendations?
        Mr. Young. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Weber. Three hundred and seven failure areas, is that
    what I understand? And then you said all, and I'm quoting,
    ``All of us need to focus on maximizing the program,'' okay,
    end quote. Who does that for those 32 recommendations and 307
    failure areas? Do you make recommendations about who actually
    takes that responsibility?
        Mr. Young. I think it's pretty clear for each of those who
    has the responsibility. We--the--our particular activity was
    chaired by the--was--excuse me, was established by the
    Associate Administrator of Space Science. And so that in
    essence is where our report went, but we did report directly to
    the Administrator. And we did highlight some areas where we
    want to get special attention, so some are aimed towards
    Northrop Grumman, some are aimed towards NASA Goddard, and some
    are aimed towards NASA headquarters. So the answer is there are
    very specific indicators as to who should be responsible for
    each and who should be necessarily responding.
        Mr. Weber. Well, that's what I want to hear. The famous
    example about Edison and the lightbulb and when somebody said
    you failed a thousand times, doesn't that discourage you? And
    he said, what are you talking about? We're a thousand times
    closer.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes.
        Mr. Weber. So if we're learning from this, if we're going
    to use this to our benefit and show the world that we can do
    this, I think it's a good thing.
        Administrator Bridenstine, I want to come back to you. You
    named categories of missions in earlier comments. You said
    strategic, flagship, and----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Just different sizes of missions.
        Mr. Weber. There's different sizes of missions, okay.
        Mr. Bridenstine. So the idea being that for smaller
    missions there's a lot less risk because there's a lot less--
    it's not as complicated, we don't spend as much money, and if
    there's a failure, it's one failure of, say, eight different
    small missions. But for a flagship mission or a strategic
    mission----
        Mr. Weber. It's huge.
        Mr. Bridenstine. --it's--yes, it's a big impact.
        Mr. Weber. Right. Are you able to give us a percentage of
    those three categories and how much is in each category?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Well, given where we are with James Webb,
    that's by far the largest category at this point.
        Mr. Weber. Sure.
        Mr. Bridenstine. So----
        Mr. Weber. I've been there to see it by the way.
        Mr. Bridenstine. That's good. That's good.
        Mr. Weber. Yes.
        Mr. Bridenstine. It's impressive. So the--but I can get you
    a breakdown, a very specific breakdown of missions and costs.
        Mr. Weber. Right. And then, Mr. Young, back to you. You
    made a comment earlier about the contractors who bid the
    lowest. What did you call it? Lowest--there was a----
        Mr. Young. Lowest credible cost.
        Mr. Weber. Lowest credible cost. How do we fix that?
        Mr. Young. Well, you know, contractors are going to do, you
    know, what you would expect, and that is they're going to bid
    in accordance to what they think will be the determining factor
    in winning the contract so----
        Mr. Weber. So do you need authorization or change in the
    law from Congress on how the bidding process works?
        Mr. Young. I personally don't think so. I mean, I think it
    is much more the contracting organization establishing criteria
    for who wins a contract to be consistent with the--what the
    particular contracting organization wants to get from the
    contractors. But people--the contractors, you know, are very
    capable in figuring out what is the criteria that will maximize
    their chance of winning, and they're going to--they're going to
    perform in that particular manner. And the contracting
    organization has to change it such that the criteria are such
    that it gets the performance that that one in the bids that
    they get. And my personal belief is that there is adequate law
    and legislation to allow that to happen today.
        Mr. Weber. Okay. Mr. Bridenstine, you want to weigh in on
    that?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Well, just that it is important for NASA,
    when you think about the way we do contracting and we have, you
    know, contracting officer representatives, we have contractors,
    and then we have program managers and project managers, when we
    go through a contract, it is critically important that NASA be
    every bit as smart on the capabilities and the requirements
    and--as the contractor that we are buying from. We have to be
    smarter than the people we are buying from to know whether or
    not what they are telling us is accurate and can be
    accomplished.
        Mr. Weber. There's a Latin term for that. Caveat----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Okay.
        Mr. Weber. --emptor.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Okay.
        Mr. Weber. Okay? Buyer beware I think it is. But look----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Sure.
        Mr. Weber. --thank you. You guys are doing great, and we
    appreciate your commitment. And short of sounding a little
    hokay, I think you're helping to continue to make America great
    again, always have. We appreciate NASA.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you.
        Mr. Weber. Thank you.
        Mr. Lucas. [Presiding] The gentleman's time is expired.
        The Chair now turns to the gentleman from Colorado, Mr.
    Perlmutter, for five minutes.
        Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Twenty thirty-three.
        Mr. Perlmutter. Gentlemen, thank you for your testimony.
    Obviously--what did I--everybody's leaving. Oh, my gosh.
        Anyway, just--no, obviously, thank you for your testimony.
    I have confidence in both of you and in your review of
    something that really is, you know, disappointing in a lot of
    respects, but obviously this is new territory that's being
    broken. There are some contractual things. And, Mr. Young, I
    want to talk to you about them in a second. But if you have
    confidence--and I think there--a specific question came form
    Mr. Lipinski to you, Tom, that, you know, can this get done in
    this time frame that's been set for $800 million? And you have
    confidence that it can. That's good enough for me honestly.
        Let me just ask you some basic questions because there is
    some contractual stuff in here that I think really are good
    learning tools for you at NASA, for the industry generally.
    And, Mr. Bridenstine, you talked about it. So my dad was in the
    construction business, all right? He said it was always easiest
    to fix a problem at the blueprint stage before you built the
    building. And in yours you've got an added complexity, which is
    the design phase, the construction phase, and then it's a
    million-miles-out-there phase. So we're in the--sort of the
    construction phase where you can fix it here and not a million
    miles away and it's a much better use of our money to do it
    here.
        In this process, Mr. Young, in this next two or three
    years, is there--see, I think one of the things that happened
    here, there was a critical path of some sort that was used. And
    you had vendors. Northrop Grumman was the general contractor,
    had vendors to it, and then--and now we're at the integration
    stage. Could there have been something different in terms of
    the critical path that would have allowed us to see these
    mistakes, which we know can happen when people are putting the
    screws in? Is there a different way to do this critical path?
    Could we have integrated this thing earlier? That's my first
    question.
        Mr. Young. It's a good question. Let me touch on two
    aspects of it. Relative to embedded problems, you know, that
    are discovered later, you know, the technique that we utilize
    to make sure that they don't happen is to really go through a
    progressive test program. And so what it really says is that if
    you have a piece of hardware and you start out with it, you
    test it as a standalone item, and so you know the--I'll call it
    the pedigree again or the quality of that hardware all the way
    through. And so if you get to the particular point that you've
    installed out on the spacecraft before you have gone through
    each of these steps, you have made yourself vulnerable to an
    embedded problem being there that has a much larger
    implication.
        I've got to really say that we did not go back through and
    trace the history, you know, of each of these items because
    what we were trying to do is assess where we are today and what
    do we have to do to get to a successful completion.
        Mr. Perlmutter. I guess what I'd like you to do, though, is
    when you guys are doing sort of an after, you know, project
    kind of analysis, look at the critical-path piece of this.
        Mr. Young. It needs to be done. And, typically, if you walk
    through that process that you're asking about, which is
    probably no different than the construction process, by the
    way, I would argue, if each step of the way you know the
    quality of that particular hardware, then you are pretty
    confident that you have not moved too far to the right of an
    embedded problem without discovering it. So that's the process
    of doing it.
        And I do think you raise a really good point. As a lesson
    learned, it would probably be a good thing to take all of these
    and go back and look at how the step-by-step test program was
    implemented.
        Mr. Perlmutter. I'm going to change the subject just a
    little bit. So I feel like we have three opportunity costs kind
    of lost here. One is the billion dollars or $800 million,
    which, you know, I'm reading something today says that the
    majority party, the Republicans are thinking of another $600
    billion tax cut on top of the 1.5 or $1,500 billion tax cut. We
    could fix this problem a lot with that revenue that we are
    foregoing.
        But I think the two issues that I'm particularly concerned
    about are the lost science and the reallocation of assets away
    from other projects that NASA may have. If we were to authorize
    and appropriate another $800 million, could you keep those
    other projects on time or keep them going?
        Mr. Lucas. The gentleman's time is expired. The witness may
    answer the question, though.
        Mr. Bridenstine. The answer is yes, sir, we absolutely
    could. I would also argue that some of those projects haven't
    even started yet, so we would in essence start new projects
    that otherwise wouldn't get started if we didn't have the
    additional money.
        Mr. Perlmutter. Okay. Thank you.
        Mr. Lucas. The--
        Mr. Perlmutter. And I yield back. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Lucas. The gentleman yields back.
        The Chair now turns to the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr.
    Higgins, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I
    support this program and the completion of this crucial
    project. I believe the money should come from offsets in other
    areas.
        Like my colleagues, I voice my concern regarding the cost
    overruns and schedule delays, but these guys are doing
    something that has never been done before. And although all
    Americans recall the infamous ``Bridge to Nowhere,'' the
    endeavor we're speaking of today, Mr. Chairman, is a bridge to
    everywhere. So I concur with my colleagues. I believe that the
    United States should be number one on Earth, and thus, we must
    be number one in space. As a Christian-principled man, it's
    fascinating to me to observe as science begins to come to grips
    with ``Let there be light.'' And this is the mission that could
    bring us to a new level of understanding never dreamed of
    before.
        Mr. Bridenstine, thank you for your service, sir. The
    Independent Review Board recommends that NASA and Northrop
    Grumman Aerospace Systems should take a number of actions to
    address human errors during the integration and testing phase
    to prevent, or at the very least detect, embedded problems
    before they affect a project's schedule. Please elaborate on
    what actions NASA has taken to ensure that Northrop Grumman is
    properly implementing the recommendations that the Independent
    Review Board suggested to ensure that human error and embedded
    problems will not continue.
        Mr. Bridenstine. So one of the reasons that we have
    extended the time of the program is ultimately to go back and
    look at all of the components that go into the entire
    spacecraft from the beginning and ultimately to determine
    whether or not there are other embedded problems like the issue
    we had with the fasteners, like the issue we had with using the
    wrong solvent to clean the thrusters. Are there any other of
    those issues that might have been accomplished years ago that
    ultimately could end up revealing themselves in space? And what
    we want to do is make sure--
        Mr. Higgins. And fix that on the ground.
        Mr. Bridenstine. And fix it on the ground.
        Mr. Higgins. Understood. So you're very focused on the 32
    recommendations that have been concluded by the review board?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes, sir. Absolutely.
        Mr. Higgins. And for the record, Mr. Young, in regard to
    NASA and Northrop Grumman's plan for implementing your board's
    recommendations, how soon do you recommend a review of those
    implementation plans?
        Mr. Young. That's really a good question. I actually--and
    it's a decision for NASA to decide, you know, when they want
    that to be done. My personal judgment is that in the next
    couple of months the course is going to be set for JWST and
    hopefully the success--
        Mr. Higgins. Mr. Bridenstine seems to be very animated and
    sincere about following your recommendations. Can you provide
    for this Committee, sir, in writing a recommendation what you
    believe should be a time frame for a review of those
    implementations, say, 90 days or whatever you believe it would
    be? Mr. Young, can you provide that?
        Mr. Young. Yes. Yes, sir, I can.
        Mr. Higgins. And, Mr. Bridenstine, will you provide that as
    well, that you'll concur with that?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Absolutely. In fact----
        Mr. Higgins. Okay. Let me jump forward. These cost
    overruns, they predate my service at the Congressional level.
    They predate your service for NASA, sir, so we're just living
    with what we have. But we have to finish this thing. And it's
    fascinating, as you pointed out, that the largest issue you're
    dealing with is a never-before-designed spaceship. Now, had
    that spaceship been designed prior, would we have eliminated a
    lot of the problems that we've encountered with cost overruns?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Absolutely.
        Mr. Higgins. So is it not reasonable to conclude that
    future NASA projects and future space exploration projects will
    certainly draw upon the knowledge that you all are frontiering
    right now and pioneering, engineering, regarding heat shields
    in this particular type of spacecraft? Is it not reasonable to
    conclude that the work you're doing now and the treasure we're
    investing now will benefit future projects and future
    generations of all mankind?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Absolutely. We have bought down a ton of
    risk through this process.
        Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield.
        Mr. Lucas. The gentleman's time is expired.
        The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Illinois, Mr.
    Foster, for five minutes.
        Mr. Foster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our
    witnesses.
        As someone who's actually managed not multibillion but
    multimillion dollar technical projects for the government, you
    know, I probably stayed up way too late last night reading the,
    I guess, 69 pages of your independent review report. And I was
    quite impressed with the top-line recommendations you made. And
    I have a couple of concerns with NASA's plan for dealing with
    some of them.
        But let's see. First, Mr. Bridenstine, you emphasized that
    there is now the ability for more people to say stop when they
    see a technical thing. Did anyone for the two major
    difficulties you've had, either the thrusters solving problem
    or the sunshield covers, did anyone at any point say stop and
    was shouted down?
        Mr. Bridenstine. As far as the thrusters go, the--my
    understanding is the technician--and this was years ago. The
    technician ultimately did ask for permission to use a specific
    solvent and was given the go-ahead by mission assurance. Now,
    that was a mistake that was made a couple years ago and in
    testing--
        Mr. Foster. Right, but it was not an instance, you know,
    like the shuttle O-ring situation----
        Mr. Bridenstine. No.
        Mr. Foster. --where engineers got overruled--and now on the
    other one, the--which was I think a secondary problem with the
    redesign of the fastener attachment plate with concerns about
    snagging, and so a redesign of which nuts and bolts would be
    used, and so was that--I guess this is for Mr. Young. Was that
    under configuration control when someone changed the design of
    how those attachments would be made? And was there a traceable
    signature authority when that design change was made or was
    this something where a technician sort of said, okay, maybe we
    should use a different kind of nut and bolt on this?
        Mr. Young. We did not go through all the paper, so I want
    to be clear about that, but my assumption is it was under
    configuration control and there was a procedure that was
    written and established by Northrop Grumman that was
    implemented by the subcontractor in installing them, so there
    was a change process. The change was documented. The change was
    incorporated in a procedure, and that procedure was provided to
    the subcontractor as to how the screws and nuts should be
    installed.
        Mr. Foster. Okay. So if you could get actually as a follow-
    up, the actual change control response, what the formalities of
    that actually were for this change that went in because I think
    a simple thing like having a nylon insert in the bolt would
    probably change the project history a little bit.
        Now, into the big picture, the cost overrun, which in
    aggregate has been roughly tripling. I'm painfully familiar
    with a similar thing for the superconducting super collider in
    high-energy physics where the costs roughly doubled and
    eventually resulted in the cancelation. When you look in
    retrospect at the cost growth, it was almost entirely
    attributable to a decision that was made by the Department of
    Energy to task essentially a military contractor to reproduce a
    laboratory in a place--in a greenfield site with completely
    unrealistic cost estimates for that.
        And so if you look at the cost growth, this was a project
    that was split between, you know, Goddard and Northrop Grumman
    and as well as I guess the launch facilities. Can you make
    generalities about where most of the cost growth occurred?
    Because there may be lessons learned about when you split
    projects, there may be better ways to do that split. Mr. Young,
    I guess. Well, it's a hot potato. Okay.
        Mr. Bridenstine. So the--I think originally the cost growth
    came from the idea that we changed requirements. We wanted to
    see further. We wanted to see further back in time, which
    required us to go with a larger mirror. And when that
    determination was made, the cost really went up very, very
    fast. And we made a decision--when I say we, it was NASA back
    in, you know, the mid-2000s--made a decision to go with the
    much bigger, more intricate kind of--
        Mr. Foster. So that was a high-level decision----
        Mr. Bridenstine. It was.
        Mr. Foster. --in terms of the execution of the project,
    independent of that. Are there any generalities that can be
    made about the circumstances under which--did most of the cost
    growth happen in one area or another, in the scientific
    instrument package versus the bus, and so on or just the
    schedule slippage?
        Mr. Bridenstine. I think the number-one thing was just
    excessive optimism from the beginning. We didn't know what we
    didn't know, and we believed that a lot of these, you know,
    very new technologies could be developed at a much lesser cost
    and a lot less time. And as we went through the process, we
    discovered that there's a lot to be developed that we didn't
    understand, and of course we have learned from that.
        Mr. Foster. Yes. And, your report highlights these
    reporting gaps that happen very often between Goddard and
    Northrop Grumman. And I just wonder if there are lessons to be
    learned. Do future projects like WFIRST have that same sort of
    split responsibility between contractor and NASA----
        Mr. Bridenstine. So--
        Mr. Foster. --as the lab?
        Mr. Bridenstine. --WFIRST is ultimately a mission that is
    far less complex than what we have with the James Webb Space
    Telescope, so--
        Mr. Foster. Does it have the same split reporting problems
    that were highlighted----
        Mr. Lucas. The gentleman's time is expired but the
    witnesses may answer the question.
        Mr. Bridenstine. It--the organizational change that we made
    on James Webb Space Telescope ultimately will apply to WFIRST.
        Mr. Young. I think the other comment to make is I don't--
    the split's not unusual. In other words, it's common practice
    for NASA to have a prime contractor, so I think NASA has an
    overarching responsibility of--you know, for the total program,
    the prime contractor has a responsibility for executing their
    contract. And I don't think that's at all unusual, and I think
    it's--you know, it will be the way that many programs go
    forward in the future. And what it really says is that, you
    know, we do know how and we need to implement both on JWST and
    future missions a communications mechanism that is recognized,
    that that's the way we actually execute and implement projects.
        Mr. Foster. Thank you, and I yield back.
        Mr. Lucas. The gentleman's time is expired.
        The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Alabama, Mr.
    Palmer, for five minutes.
        Mr. Palmer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        You know, we've had a lot of talk about the prospects of a
    successful project and looking back and looking forward, and I
    want to do that right now on the project because I appreciate
    all the rah-rah that's gone on here. But in my opinion, the
    purpose of this hearing is to try to determine what happened
    and how we can prevent this from happening in the future.
        So, Administrator Bridenstine, I'm going to ask you this,
    and, Mr. Young, you can jump in, but I don't want long answers
    because I've got a lot of questions, and if I have to, I'll
    stick around and do a second round. But who was responsible for
    the design on the front end? Was that NASA or Northrop?
        Mr. Bridenstine. NASA.
        Mr. Palmer. Okay. Who was responsible for the estimating on
    the cost side?
        Mr. Bridenstine. We received proposals and then we make
    determinations based on those proposals.
        Mr. Palmer. So you had a combination of NASA doing the
    design, Northrop Grumman evaluating the design and presenting a
    proposal that told you $500 million?
        Mr. Bridenstine. We ultimately--NASA is responsible for
    generating the requirements and the specifications.
        Mr. Palmer. Did anyone take into account the feasibility of
    the project at the time to determine, first of all, was the
    project feasible and was the cost in line with the feasibility
    of the project?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes.
        Mr. Palmer. And--but you still took--it's 2018, 22 years
    later. You still don't have it done, and it's 19 times the
    initial estimate. How is that possible?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Again, going back in time, the
    specifications changed. We determine--
        Mr. Palmer. I understand that----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Sure.
        Mr. Palmer. --that-- I worked for two international
    engineering companies before I started a think tank, and we
    used to joke at one of them in particular that there's never a
    time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.
    That's bad for everybody. And when you do a cost-plus contract
    and somebody else is paying the cost, the taxpayers, I just see
    it time and time again, whether it's military contracts,
    whether it's NASA, that there are a number of things that
    happen. They get concerned that they won't get the funding from
    Congress so they start a project before it's ripe, and then you
    have cost overruns. There's a NASA project right now I think
    that within six or eight months it was 50 percent cost overrun.
    And then you have things like this. The initial estimate was
    $500 million. With the launch cost, you're going to be at,
    what, $9.6 billion?
        Mr. Bridenstine. That's a lifecycle cost.
        Mr. Palmer. Lifecycle cost. And I just have to wonder if
    we'd gone ahead and built the project to the initial
    specifications and launched it, how much would we have learned
    from that launch that could have been applied to a second
    generation, a third generation?
        Mr. Bridenstine. You're absolutely right. That's a
    wonderful point. I agree completely.
        Mr. Palmer. Well, that's the kind of stuff that drives me
    crazy.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes.
        Mr. Palmer. I mean, we're looking right now at a $21.5
    trillion debt, and if we have another project that takes 20
    years to complete, it won't get completed because we can't
    afford it. We'll be bankrupt. And we keep doing stuff like
    this, and we don't hold people accountable for doing it. The
    Committee doesn't exercise the proper oversight. I'm sitting
    here wondering after 22 years, Mr. Chairman, where's the
    oversight and where was the effort to hold anybody accountable
    for this? And this goes on and on and on.
        I think what we're trying to accomplish here is
    breathtaking in its scope, but we can't continue to operate
    like this. I mean, somebody at some point should have had some
    oversight over this, and maybe we would have launched this ten
    years ago and we would have learned an enormous amount from it
    so that the money we're spending now really would've had a
    magnificent return. But we haven't gotten off the ground. So
    that's the kind of stuff that I think we've got to deal with.
        For NASA to be able to achieve its mission, accomplish the
    objectives that NASA has set for itself, we have got to rethink
    how we do these contracts. I'm not a big proponent of cost-plus
    at all. I think if we did these things where we fund it up
    front at the design phase and then a certain percent at the
    next phase of construction, then you do the review, you correct
    the mistakes, and then you launch and you pay off after launch,
    I think we'd see things that cost a whole lot less and we'd see
    things get off the ground a whole lot quicker. So how do you
    want to respond to that as the new Administrator?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Well, I would say that the fundamental
    question is would we do it again? And I would say that not this
    way, we would not. The question is will it be worth it in the
    end? And we don't have an answer for that right now, but I
    believe it will be.
        Mr. Palmer. Well, I sat here and listened to you talk about
    your hopes, your visions for this project and NASA, and I heard
    one of our Democratic colleagues comment on you as the
    Administrator, and I just wonder why it took so long to confirm
    you. I appreciate what you're trying to do, and I want you to
    know that if there's any help that I can provide to you--I
    think I can speak for the Committee as well--that we can
    provide to you, particularly in avoiding other project mishaps
    like we've had for this, I think we would be more than happy to
    assist in any way we can.
        With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        Mr. Lucas. The gentleman yields back, and before I turn to
    the gentleman from New York, I'd simply note to him I'm after
    you, so you're not last, sir.
        Mr. Tonko. Okay.
        Mr. Lucas. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New
    York, Mr. Tonko, for five minutes.
        Mr. Tonko. Thank you. I thank the Chair and the Ranking
    Member for the opportunity.
        Personally, I was inspired by the years leading up to the
    moon landing. I was in high school as we competed in the space
    race against the Soviet Union for spaceflight supremacy. We had
    a passionate resolve to use science and engineering to beat our
    rivals, and after years of investing and innovating, America
    led the world in this endeavor, and our Nation was the first to
    land on the moon. The memories from that day forever linger in
    my mind. It inspired me to believe that with the will and
    necessary resources America would lead the way in continued
    exploration, research, and development. It also inspired me to
    embrace an education in science and engineering.
        So I am excited by the James Webb Space Telescope and even
    more so excited by the potential impact this work and related
    discoveries can have on engaging the public and inspiring our
    next generation of scientists and engineers. We should continue
    discussions on how to ensure mission success and how to do this
    the right way even if it takes longer than we would've liked.
        On a different note, though, I would like to hear more on
    how NASA is utilizing Webb to engage the public and to build
    our next generation of scientists and engineers. I've told
    students in the capital region of New York that I represent
    that, through STEM, you can be the scientist who learns new
    secrets about our universe, you can be that astronaut who lands
    on Mars, or you can be that doctor or researcher who discovers
    the path to better ensure a healthy passage on long
    spaceflights, or you can be the engineer who designs or invents
    a new technology or the spaceship that will take us far past
    our own galaxy.
        So, Administrator Bridenstine, what is NASA working on to
    engage the public on the inspirational undertaking?
        Mr. Bridenstine. That's a wonderful question, Congressman
    Tonko, and important because NASA is the one agency I believe
    in the U.S. Government more than any others that can inspire
    that next generation of--as you so correctly identified and to
    have an investment like this and not take advantage of it to
    accomplish that I think would be a massive mistake. So what we
    do with James Webb is critically important for that.
        One of the first things that we're going to do is--it's--
    the data and the information and the science that we receive
    from James Webb is going to be made available to the entire
    world, and it's going to be made available for free. We want
    people to know and understand what we're discovering and let
    them take the data and the information and make discoveries of
    their own, which we believe all around the world people will
    have the opportunity to do.
        It's also true that we want to engage the public, as you've
    correctly identified, by having people come up with ideas on
    how to utilize the James Webb Space Telescope in ways that
    we're not even thinking about right now. What are the
    scientific inquiries that others all around the world have? And
    we're seeing right now an interest from nations all over the
    world with their universities and their scientists making
    recommendations to NASA. And of course we're compiling a lot
    of--there's more requests for utilization than there is ability
    to utilize, which is a good problem to have. And so it--I think
    it will provide a source of inspiration from around the world.
        But more than any of that, just like we've seen with the
    Hubble, taking the new science that we learn and rewriting
    textbooks is game-changing. And so it will have--again, we're
    rewriting science textbooks. That's what NASA does, and that's
    what this will be, and that in itself is going to engage the
    public in ways that right now we don't even understand so----
        Mr. Tonko. Are there--and I appreciate that, and I think
    that's a good outcome. Are there other specific things that
    NASA is doing to communicate and involve our students?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Certainly, NASA has a number of different
    programs that get universities involved and get children
    involved. And yes, so that--you know, we have an Office of
    Education, for example. We have an Office of Communications,
    and we're very active on social media. We have millions and
    millions of people that follow us. And every new discovery that
    we make, we're communicating it out to the public and trying to
    inspire that next--you know, the 7-year-old to become the next,
    you know, Neil Armstrong. We're doing that all the time.
        Mr. Tonko. Well, I think the efforts here to engage the
    public and to pull the students into technical fields are so
    critically important to the future of this country, and to be
    able to do that through the auspices of NASA I think is an
    incredible thing. So I thank you for the leadership, and I wish
    us all well with the final outcomes here as we go forward and
    learn from our mistakes and build for a stronger future.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you.
        Mr. Tonko. With that, Mr. Chair, I yield back, and thanks
    for allowing me to be next-to-last.
        Mr. Lucas. Absolutely, my dear friend. Thank you for
    yielding back.
        I recognize myself for five minutes to just simply offer an
    observation and a question. It's good, Administrator
    Bridenstine, my old fellow Oklahoma colleague, to have you
    here. You entered into your role in a challenging time. Perhaps
    not since Administrator Webb have there been such opportunities
    and such challenges for the agency.
        I'm about 18 months younger than NASA, so my entire life
    NASA has been the--as my mother used to say, a child of the
    1930s--the Buck Rogers institution. It's been the whizbang of
    the federal government and the world. But as we enter into
    these ever-increasingly large and expensive science projects,
    the expectations and the anticipation of the constituents grow.
        Your legacy, I suspect, will be determined by how well you,
    working with all of the wonderful people at NASA and other
    contractors, deliver on finishing James Webb.
        Mr. Bridenstine. That's right.
        Mr. Lucas. I have expectations that you can do that. My
    only question quite simply to you is, as we've discussed now at
    extent, not through this hearing but through hearings and
    hearings and hearings on James Webb, this has to be right. We
    can't go put a pair of glasses on it the way we did Hubble. We
    can't go make adjustments. It has to fly correctly. Your word
    is--and I'm asking--we won't fly until we're ready. We won't
    fly until we're perfect, and when we're perfect, we'll live up
    to the expectations that we've established in this Committee
    and in this country for this project, correct?
        Mr. Bridenstine. That's correct.
        Mr. Lucas. That's all I have to ask, and that's the
    reassurance I need.
        With that, I thank the witnesses for their testimony and
    the members for their questions. The Committee stands in recess
    until tomorrow morning, at which time we'll reconvene for the
    continuation of this hearing.
        [Whereupon, at 12:35 p.m., the Committee recessed, to
    reconvene at 9:30 a.m., Thursday, July 26, 2018.]
        The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:39 a.m., in Room
    2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lamar Smith
    [Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
        Chairman Smith. The Committee on Space, Science, and
    Technology will come to order. Without objection, the Chair is
    authorized to declare recesses of the Committee at any time.
        Good morning, and welcome to the second day of the hearing
    entitled ``James Webb Space Telescope: Program Breach and its
    Implications.'' I'll recognize myself for five minutes for an
    opening statement.
        Yesterday, the Committee heard discussions about the James
    Webb Space Telescope program breaches. NASA Administrator Jim
    Bridenstine and Independent Review Board Chairman Tom Young
    provided insights into the Northrop Grumman management
    problems. As a reminder of JWST's cost overruns and schedule
    delays, take a look at the chart on display, and this is the
    chart that I also showed yesterday.
        [Slide.]
        Chairman Smith. The chart chronicles JWST's substantial
    cost growth and launch schedule delays starting in the lower-
    left corner with the 1996 initial projection of $500 million
    and a 2007 launch all the way to the--excuse me--upper-right
    corner with the IRB's 2018 projection of $9.6 billion and a
    2021 launch. That is 19 times the original cost and a delay of
    14 years. Who is going to be held accountable?
        Beginning with TRW's 1990s developmental work on JWST
    through Northrop Grumman's acquisition of TRW and continuance
    of the project's development, it is clear that Northrop Grumman
    did not adhere to the best business practices. Digging into the
    details, the IRB report describes mistakes that have greatly
    impacted the JWST development schedule and its associated cost
    increases.
        The IRB categorized those issues as follows: first-of-a-
    kind developments such as the complex sunshield for the
    telescope; avoidable human errors in the workplace, such as the
    use of a wrong solvent and applying excess voltage; lack of
    individual and organizational discipline in developing safety
    checks to catch human errors and minimize their impact;
    embedded problems with contractor quality control processes,
    such as not detecting technician and material errors until
    assembly and testing when those errors added to costs; lack of
    a contractor managed engineering audit process to catch
    embedded problems before those problems continued unchecked
    until testing and assembly.
        The IRB's description of workplace errors and lack of good
    management has been found at other space missions associated
    with Northrop Grumman. The U.S. aerospace industry has the
    highest skilled workforce in the world. Their scientists,
    engineers, and technicians have built incredibly challenging
    and complex aerospace systems. So the workplace errors and lack
    of discipline, auditing, and quality control described by the
    IRB could lead us to believe that the real issue may be with
    Northrop Grumman.
        Not that Northrop Grumman hasn't tried to convince the
    public that all is going well. As this hearing date approached,
    Northrop Grumman's JWST advertising campaign loudly proclaimed,
    quote ``Making History Requires Mission Success'' and ``The
    Value of Performance.'' But the full-page ad in The Washington
    Post, which may have cost as much as $200,000, didn't mention
    the lack of performance due to billions of dollars in cost
    overruns, years of launch delays, frustration of NASA managers,
    and avoidable workplace errors.
        As I said yesterday, when government contractors make
    mistakes, typically no one is held accountable. The mistakes
    ``just happened'' or ``were unavoidable'' or ``won't happen
    again.'' But in every case, the American people pick up the
    bill. We often forget there's no such thing as federal dollars.
    It is the American taxpayers' hard-earned money.
        Going forward, Congress needs to have the necessary
    confidence in NASA's contractors to put us on the right path at
    a reasonable cost. Anything short of that will undermine
    Congressional confidence in contractors' ability to deliver on
    their promises.
        Another adverse effect of cost overruns, of course, is that
    they can jeopardize other space programs. If space exploration
    is going to continue to earn the public's support, then
    contractors will have to deliver on time and on budget. If they
    cannot, they should be penalized.
        [The prepared statement of Chairman Smith follows:]

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        Chairman Smith. That concludes my opening statement, and
    the gentlewoman from Texas, the Ranking Member Ms. Johnson, is
    recognized for hers.
        Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me
    first apologize for being a little late. I had tox--was delayed
    from a previously scheduled meeting.
        Good morning to everyone and welcome, Mr. Bush, and welcome
    back, Mr. Young.
        The recently announced cost growth and schedule delay for
    the James Webb Space Telescope is not good news, and Northrop
    Grumman shares responsibility with NASA for the situation which
    we are facing. The human errors at Northrop Grumman that
    contributed to the cost and schedule growth on the project are
    indeed troubling.
        But let me be clear. I am not here to berate Northrop
    Grumman and its associated subcontractors but rather to see
    what needs to be done to keep this from happening again. In
    addition, the Committee, in its oversight capacity, needs to
    take a hard look at whether appropriate mechanisms are in place
    to ensure accountability at both Northrop Grumman and NASA for
    the cost growth and delays to the James Webb Space Telescope
    project.
        So I hope this morning's discussion will shed light on
    several issues, including the biggest risks to meeting the
    March 30, 2021, launch date and how much confidence Congress
    should have in Northrop Grumman's ability to meet that date. I
    also want to know what changes are being made to address the
    Independent Review Board's findings and recommendations on
    management communication on the James Webb Space Telescope
    project.
        Before I close, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the hundreds
    of employees at Northrop Grumman and NASA who are working
    tirelessly toward a successful completion and the commissioning
    of the James Webb Space Telescope. Many of them have worked
    long shifts, weekends, and have given up time with their
    families to meet the demands of this extraordinary project. We
    appreciate their important contribution. This project and the
    scientific discoveries it will enable would not be possible
    without them.
        And before I yield back, I have a letter that I'd like to
    offer to the record, which is a support letter from Mr. Hoya
    and Anthony Brown.
        Chairman Smith. Okay. Without objection, the letter will be
    made a part of the record.
        [The information follows:]

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        Ms. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]

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        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.
        And let me ask unanimous consent that the opening
    statements of the Chairman of the Space Subcommittee, Mr.
    Babin, and the Ranking Member of the Space Subcommittee, Mr.
    Bera, be made a part of the record, too.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Babin follows:]

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        [The prepared statement of Mr. Bera follows:]

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        Chairman Smith. And also, at the outset, let me note--and
    for our witnesses to be aware of as well--that we expect votes
    in about 15 minutes at 10 o'clock. We will come back
    immediately after those votes. I think those votes will take
    around 20 minutes, and then when we come back, we should have
    close to an hour before the second series of votes, after which
    it will be impossible to get members to return. So I hope
    members will remember they were supposed to be here anyway and
    come back after that first set of votes.
        Our first witness today is Mr. Wesley Bush, Chief Executive
    Officer of Northrop Grumman. Mr. Bush began his career with
    Northrop Grumman as President of the company's Space Technology
    Sector. Prior to Northrop Grumman, he served as President and
    CEO of TRW's United Kingdom-based Global Aeronautical Systems.
        Mr. Bush earned both a bachelor's degree and a master's
    degree in electrical engineering from MIT. He also completed
    the University of California Los Angeles Executive Management
    Program.
        And Mr. Tom Young is welcomed back. He testified yesterday.
    He is Chairman of the Independent Review Board. Mr. Young is
    the former Director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, as
    well as the former President and Chief Operating Officer of
    Martin Marietta Corporation. He earned both a bachelor's degree
    in aeronautical engineering and a bachelor's degree in
    mechanical engineering from the University of Virginia and a
    master's in management degree from MIT.
        Mr. Young testified yesterday, so he will not be making
    that statement a second time, but of course he will be
    available for questions.
        So we'll begin and I look forward, Mr. Bush, to hearing
    from you.

                       TESTIMONY OF WESLEY BUSH,

                        CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,

                      NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORPORATION

        Mr. Bush. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, Chairman Smith,
    Ranking Member Johnson, and Members of the Committee, thank you
    for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the
    status of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. This telescope is
    the largest and most complex astronomical science telescope
    ever built. Like the iconic Hubble Telescope, Webb will
    reaffirm and solidify U.S. leadership in space, which is
    critically important as other nations are testing our will to
    lead in space. Webb also will inspire the next generation of
    scientists, engineers, astronomers, and innovators and
    transform our understanding of the physics of the universe. But
    Webb doesn't just stretch Hubble's limits, it is a true leap
    ahead in technology and capability.
        From a technical standpoint, Webb is an incredible
    engineering feat with a 21-foot primary mirror and a sunshield
    roughly the size of a tennis court, we had to design and build
    Webb to fold up together to get it into the launch fairing.
        After launch, Webb will slowly unpack itself in space as it
    progresses towards its operating location one million miles
    from Earth, where there will be a temperature swing of nearly
    600 degrees between the optical mirror and the other side of
    the sunshield. Building a telescope that can operate in such a
    harsh environment beyond the reach of satellite servicing
    requires extensive testing on the ground to ensure that it will
    operate as planned in space.
        All of Webb's major hardware components are now located at
    our Space Park facility in Redondo Beach, California, where
    they will undergo final integration and testing. If you could
    put the first slide up.
        [Slide.]
        Mr. Bush. On the screen is a photo of the elements that
    make up Webb, altogether in the High Bay at Space Park, and it
    is absolutely a great site to see. And you can get a sense of
    the scale with the humans that are in the photo.
        We're now assembling these major parts together and testing
    it to ensure mission success. The next picture if we could move
    to the next slide----
        [Slide.]
        Mr. Bush. --shows the progress we have made in building up
    the major subsystems of the telescope and the remaining steps
    still before us.
        The optical telescope element and the integrated science
    instrument module, which is called OTIS, is complete and fully
    tested. We are now focused on testing the spacecraft element,
    which includes the sunshield. Once we have successfully
    completed the spacecraft testing, both parts of the telescope
    will be put together, tested, and shipped for launch.
        Northrop Grumman takes very seriously the trust placed in
    us to build this incredible telescope and our responsibility to
    ensure mission success. While we're proud of the technological
    accomplishments that we've achieved with our partners, we
    recognize that we have contributed to the telescope's delays.
    We worked closely with the Independent Review Board, and we
    appreciate the hard work by Tom Young and the IRB members in
    developing their recommendations, and we are currently
    implementing the IRB's recommendations and we fully support
    NASA's revised plans for the program. Mission success is our
    top priority.
        My written testimony goes into much greater detail about
    the program and how we are implementing the IRB's
    recommendations, but let me focus on two key points that I want
    to make very clear. First, the complexity of this first-ever
    program inevitably creates opportunities for human error in
    design, manufacturing, integration, and testing. And we have
    experienced some errors, and unfortunately, several of them
    have occurred at a phase in the program where they result in
    significant schedule impacts. We've also learned that some
    things that we thought we could do more quickly are simply
    going to take more time to perform in a way that reduces the
    likelihood of other errors and gives us greater confidence that
    the system will operate as planned.
        I know these delays create frustration and also impact
    funding available to other programs given the budget
    constraints, so I want to address your questions today as best
    I can to ensure that there is complete transparency on the
    facts.
        Second, I want you to know that we are confident that Webb
    will work and will perform its mission in a way that will make
    all of us in this room proud that we were part of making it a
    reality. I'm pleased to see that the IRB confirmed their
    confidence that we can be successful as well.
        Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Johnson, this Committee's
    decades-long bipartisan support has been essential to keeping
    Webb moving forward, and we are determined to make it a
    success. So thanks again for the opportunity to testify here
    today.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Bush follows:]

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        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Bush. And I'll address my
    first questions to you.
        Yesterday, Mr. Young suggested--no doubt you're aware--of
    the idea that all holding fees or all award fees be put in a
    holding account until the mission is a flight success. Would
    you agree to do that?
        Mr. Bush. So as a mechanism to ensure that we are all
    aligned on mission success, Northrop Grumman has actually
    discussed this with NASA, and we are willing to place all of
    the fee that we've already earned and the fee that we may earn
    in the future at risk based on successful activation and
    demonstration of the telescope on orbit. So we're very much
    aligned on that recommendation.
        Chairman Smith. I appreciate that positive response. I
    think you anticipated the question. Next question is this, this
    goes a step further. It seems to me that, given Mr. Young's
    description of JWST yesterday as a poorly managed program, that
    you ought to also put the $800 million and above cap expenses
    that were not anticipated and pay that yourself.
        Mr. Bush. Well, let me reaffirm that we are very committed
    to mission success, and as I said before, we are very proud of
    the progress that we've been making, but we do recognize that
    there has been cost growth. James Webb is structured as a cost-
    type contract, which is the typical contracting approach for
    such a large-scale development project that's never been done
    before. And a cost-type contract recognizes the inherent risk
    in the development and it provides the government the ability
    to direct our actions on an ongoing basis. So this type of
    contract gives the government the tools that it needs to ensure
    accountability through the direct control of our fee.
        So to your question about the financial position on the
    program, to be clear, our financial position on this program
    has been degraded in a number of ways when we experienced cost
    growth and delays. First, our award fees have been very
    negatively impacted----
        Chairman Smith. Mr. Bush, let me interrupt you. My question
    was would you agree to pay the 800 above cap cost?
        Mr. Bush. Our view on that is that would create more of a
    fixed-price relationship on this program, which would
    significantly impede and impair the relationship between NASA
    and Northrop Grumman. And as we are focused on mission success,
    we think that would be the wrong approach.
        Chairman Smith. Okay. I think that that would be justified,
    given the poor record and given the poor management that Mr.
    Young referred to yesterday. And I only wish that Northrop
    Grumman was willing to take responsibility and show a little
    bit more good faith both for the taxpayer and for the cost
    overruns, but it sounds like you've made up your mind. I just
    happen to disagree with you.
        Mr. Young, let me address my next question to you.
    Yesterday, you mentioned the cost-plus programs almost
    inevitably ended up being over cost, sometimes considerably
    over cost, and that was kind of baked into the system because
    when you're awarded a cost-plus contract, there's not much
    incentive to keep the costs down. I wondered if you had any
    ideas for how the bid criteria should be changed so that in the
    future we can avoid the massive amounts of cost overrun that
    we've seen with JWST, as well as with other programs?
        Mr. Young. Yes, I think the point I was making yesterday
    was for cost-plus programs, competitive programs, contractors
    are encouraged to bid the lowest credible cost. And why do they
    do that? They do that because the sponsoring organization for
    the contract, basically that's what wins. And I think that's
    unfortunate, but it's a fact that exists. And my comment
    yesterday and my comment today really is that what's necessary
    is that being the lowest credible bidder should not be a
    criteria for winning the contract. And if I go a step further,
    I think it also should not be the input to NASA or the
    government or this Committee establishing what's the most
    probable cost for a program. And I think that should be done
    independent of the bid price.
        So I fundamentally think that using JWST or programs like
    it in the future as an example, that NASA should develop a most
    probable cost for the program, not use a bid price from a cost-
    plus program, and that that should be the basis for budget into
    a program as being the most probable cost.
        Chairman Smith. And so it's not necessarily the low bid. It
    would be the----
        Mr. Young. In fact, I would say it certainly won't be the
    lowest bid.
        Chairman Smith. Okay.
        Mr. Young. Yes.
        Chairman Smith. Do you think that past performance should
    be taken into consideration?
        Mr. Young. I do. I think past performance--past performance
    is a strong motivator for corporations, and if I go back to my
    personal life, you know, at Martin Marietta, past performance
    was--that was a parameter that we treated as very, very
    important.
        Chairman Smith. Okay.
        Mr. Young. And even though we may be involved with a cost-
    plus contract, that did not negate the fact----
        Chairman Smith. Yes.
        Mr. Young. --that both----
        Chairman Smith. Yes.
        Mr. Young. --ourselves and our board----
        Chairman Smith. Yes.
        Mr. Young. --considered past performance to be part of it.
        Chairman Smith. Yes, I think past performance should be
    considered but I also--sometimes you get the feeling when you
    hear about, yes, something is complex, yes, it hasn't been done
    before, you almost get the feeling in regard to cost that the
    ends justifies the means. And I think that is a dangerous
    approach to take. I don't think the ends should always be used
    to justify the means, in this case the cost, but I think your
    suggestions will help us get to the goal, and I like the fact
    that you want us to consider past performance, so I
    appreciate----
        Mr. Young. If I could add just one item, and I know time is
    critical. If I could add just one item, I also think that for
    flagship missions that the kinds of things NASA does are not
    amenable to fixed price. In other words, you--I think that we
    collectively don't want NASA pursuing the easy stuff, and we
    want NASA pursuing the challenging, the difficult stuff.
        Chairman Smith. I think there's some that would be fixed
    and some not depending on the nature----
        Mr. Young. I agree with that, but flagship missions by
    their nature probably would not be in the fixed category.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Young.
        And the gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Johnson, is recognized
    for her questions.
        Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Young, due to time constraints on yesterday, there are
    a couple of questions I'd like to raise that I wanted to do
    yesterday. And you have, I think, partially addressed some of
    them this morning.
        But the review board report found that the current NASA
    reporting structure for the project is complex, confusing, and
    ineffective. It seems to me that getting that structure right
    would be critical if the James Webb project is to succeed. So
    who should be accountable for the project specifically and who
    for the overall James Webb project--program?
        And then secondly, there was some discussion yesterday
    about having the review board reconvene if NASA is following
    through to check to see whether they're following through with
    the recommendations. I'd like your opinion on whether or not
    you think this board is willing to reconvene.
        Mr. Young. Very good questions. On the first one, the
    management structure, it's our belief that a well-run program,
    clearly one of the characteristics is to have established
    accountability, responsibility, and authority individually for
    the key members of the organization and to fully use the
    resources. And you really describe what we found for JWST.
        Our belief is that the accountability and responsibility
    and authority needs to be residing, one, at the Goddard Center
    Director level. The Goddard Center Director should be totally
    responsible for the program, not just providing resources to
    implement the program. And the full capability of the Center
    Director and his or her staff would be applied to the project,
    number one. Number two, that there be a project manager, which
    there is today, who's totally responsible for the program
    reporting to the Goddard Center Director. And three, that at
    the program level, which is a broader perspective of the
    project activity, that that be the responsibility totally of
    the Associate Administrator for Space Science and specifically
    that the Goddard Center Director would report to that
    individual for the execution of the program. That in our view
    is a crisp statement of individual accountability,
    responsibility, and most importantly, authority.
        To your second item very quickly, it's NASA's decision
    obviously whether or not they want to have an examination of
    the implementation of our recommendations. Our belief is that
    it should be done. The IRB is willing to do that, and we
    personally think that it needs to be done early enough in the
    process that it's before--that it can have an impact and late
    enough where things have been done. So our recommendation would
    be like the latter part of September would be a terrific time
    to do that review if NASA believes it would be appropriate.
        Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Bush, what do you consider to be the most important
    corrective actions that you put in place to avoid some of the
    past shortcomings and if you're willing to work with the
    findings and recommendations of the review board?
        Mr. Bush. Thank you for that question. We do fully support
    the findings of the review board, and I, too, agree it would be
    a very good idea to have a follow-up in the process with the
    review board. I think the most important things that the review
    board pointed out in terms of ensuring that the steps that are
    being taken as we go forward are primarily focused on mission
    success are the areas where we are ensuring that when we align
    processes, when we align training, when we engage with our team
    on the floor who have their hands building this thing every
    day, that the discipline is there, that the understanding is
    they not only have the ability to put their hand up and say
    stop everything but they have the responsibility to do that if
    they even suspect something might be wrong.
        We've also worked hard to enhance the safety net on the
    program, and let me explain that. And I think the IRB said it
    really well, that human errors are inevitable, but we have to
    do everything that we can to put a safety net behind them to
    make sure that we catch them as early as possible. So in our
    company, and I think in most in our industry, there are two
    organizations that work alongside the folks in the program who
    are, again, touching the program every day, the mission
    assurance organization, as well as the engineering
    organization. And we have given them the ability and the
    responsibility to be digging in deeply onto the program to go
    back, take a hard look at everything that we have done.
        Mr. Young and his team used the term embedded errors. We
    want to make sure that we do not have those any place in the
    program. NASA is actually leading a process to go back and help
    do that scrub. Our team is highly engaged on that. So we've
    worked hard to enhance the safety net behind the team as well,
    so it is both reinforcing the team, giving them some extra
    tools, but also enhancing the safety net so that we can make
    sure that we're doing the right thing for mission success.
        Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.
        After the gentleman from Oklahoma is recognized for his
    questions, we're going to recess until after these votes and
    then resume the hearing immediately after.
        The gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Lucas.
        Are you going to yield to the gentleman from Texas?
        Okay. Thank you. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Babin, the
    Chairman of the Space Subcommittee, is recognized.
        Mr. Babin. Thank you very much. I appreciate that, Mr.
    Chairman and Vice Chairman. The first question is for Mr.
    Young. Yesterday, Administrator Bridenstine called a schedule
    of testing for JWST ``optimistic,'' and your report says the
    same thing. From your experience, what are your observations of
    overly optimistic expectations being an issue with other major
    NASA programs?
        Mr. Young. Well, I--there's probably a natural tendency for
    projects to be optimistic, so--and, fundamentally, people who
    aspire to be involved with projects are naturally I think
    optimistic. On the other hand, there really has to be a process
    that both encourages optimism and balances it with realism. And
    so I guess we would say that that process wasn't as strong as
    it should have been in this particular situation, and optimism
    in doing a lot of the INT planning dominated, which I think was
    a fundamental mistake. And that clearly is a Northrop Grumman
    responsibility, but NASA also plays a role in our view in being
    a damper, if I could say that way, on the optimism that is
    incorporated.
        Mr. Babin. All right. Thank you very much. Well, you don't
    want overly pessimistic people working on these programs----
        Mr. Young. You don't.
        Mr. Babin. --either----
        Mr. Young. That's right.
        Mr. Babin. --that's for sure.
        And, Mr. Bush, the Trump Administration has emphasized
    space as part of the national security strategy. Do you think
    the JWST development issues signal an erosion in the quality of
    the American space industrial base to our near-peer
    adversaries, thus negatively affecting our national security
    strategy?
        Mr. Bush. I think what the Administration is doing with its
    emphasis on space is incredibly important for our country. As I
    said in my opening remarks, I am quite concerned that our will
    to lead is being tested every day, and because of that, I think
    it is especially important that we take on programs like Webb
    to demonstrate to the world that we can lead and that we can
    continue to set the pace on technology.
        Your question related directly to concerns about the
    erosion in the industrial base, and I did have a number of
    concerns as we went through a very difficult period after the
    sequester where the industrial base, along with our customer
    communities, were very negatively impacted. But as I take a
    look and in particular at Webb, I do not see those particular
    issues evident. I think they are more along the lines of the
    issues identified by the Independent Review Board.
        But as I look ahead and I think about our industry and I
    think about our capacity to really lead, there are concerns on
    the horizon that we need to be very focused on, concerns
    associated with workforce, STEM education, and our willingness
    to take on these very risky projects so that we can continue to
    lead.
        Mr. Babin. Okay. Thank you. Very well.
        And, Mr. Young, during yesterday's testimony, you also
    mention that NASA and Northrop Grumman's plan for implementing
    the IRB's recommendations will be set in the next couple of
    months and that the implementation plan must be reviewed before
    it becomes set. Do you believe that an Independent Review Board
    should conduct this implementation plan review, and if not,
    should the SRB conduct this review?
        Mr. Young. I actually think it should be the IRB to do it.
    The review board was the one who obviously developed--
    established the recommendations. One of the things that's
    always difficult is putting on paper exactly what it is that,
    you know, review board thinks is necessary to be implemented,
    so we did the best job we thought we could in that regard, but
    there's also subject to interpretation. So I think it's
    important to the people who sponsored the recommendations to be
    those who examined the implementation of the recommendations to
    assure that they're consistent with what was intended when they
    were developed.
        Mr. Babin. Yes, sir. And then one last question for Mr.
    Bush. Congress fully understands that JWST is a very complex
    mission both in terms of spacecraft design and its intended
    operating environment. Putting aside the sunshield situation,
    Mr. Bush, what other development areas have contributed to this
    schedule delay?
        Mr. Bush. So over the years there have been a variety of
    issues. They range back from the decisions early in the program
    to scale up the size of the optic and the approach to
    conducting the mission. I think those were very appropriate. It
    was a learning process in terms of what would really be needed
    to implement the physics objectives of the program. But as we
    have progressed through the program, we've had enormous
    success. There were basically 10 technological inventions that
    we had to get behind us to even enable us to get to the point
    that we are at today where we could be integrating and testing
    the full capability. We've had tremendous success in those
    technological developments.
        But as we've gotten into the integration and test process,
    as the IRB I think very accurately pointed out, the issues have
    been finding the small things that aren't tested until later in
    the process, that when we find them, they have these big
    impacts that we have to go through to undo things, put it back
    together again, and then retest it because we're determined
    that we're going to test this thing comprehensively before we
    launch it.
        Mr. Babin. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. And I yield back,
    Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Babin. And I understand the
    gentlewoman from Virginia, Mrs. Comstock, has a unanimous
    consent request? Okay.
        Mrs. Comstock. To submit a statement for the record.
        Chairman Smith. Okay. Without objection, the statement will
    be submitted for the record.
        [The prepared statement of Mrs. Comstock follows:]

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        Chairman Smith. We'll recess until after these votes and
    then resume immediately.
        [Recess.]
        Chairman Smith. The Science, Space, and Technology
    Committee will resume our hearing, and the gentleman from
    California, Mr. Bera, the Ranking Member of the Space
    Subcommittee, is recognized for his questions.
        Mr. Bera. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Thank you, Mr. Bush, for being here and, Mr. Young, for
    your patience and coming back for a second day. I talked about
    a little bit yesterday with projects of the size and scope and
    difficulty of James Webb, one of the challenges is
    appropriately budgeting, thinking about things, and figuring
    out the time to do something that you've never done before,
    understanding the science, et cetera, and there's a lot that we
    can learn from the contracting, the construction, and design
    and the overruns on James Webb.
        I tend to be a simple person. As I talked about yesterday,
    putting it in simple terms, I think about it as the contract I
    made with our daughter when she decided she wanted to go to
    college. In this case, you know, a lot of us have done home
    remodels and you kind of lay out what you want to do and so
    forth and think about what--as you bid that out to various
    contractors and you make a decision. And most of us run into
    cost overruns when we do that.
        Part of it is self-inflicted. As you're going to the
    project you realize, hey, you know what, we're doing this,
    let's remodel the kitchen as well. Those are conscious
    decisions to spend more money.
        Again, as we look at the history of James Webb, as we
    started designing this, thinking about it. Science advanced.
    Consciously, we said, well, hey, if we're going to already send
    a telescope out there, science is advanced now; let's add some
    things on. Those are predictable cost overruns. And we should
    have conscious debate of whether that's what we should do, et
    cetera.
        And my sense is we've done that multiple times over the
    length of the project. I'm not suggesting that we don't do that
    because if--it makes sense for us to add additional items and
    delay the project in order to advance science and get more
    information in a cost-effective way, that may make sense. But
    then there's also, I think, Mr. Young, you brought up some of
    the potentially avoidable cost overruns the human error
    component of this. And, you know, I know--I asked you, Mr.
    Young, some of the things that we've learned from this
    experience that we could-- as we go forth and do additional
    sciences, Mr. Bush, from the contractors' side of things, I'd
    like to hear your side as you look to the IRB report what are
    the things in our oversight role as Members of Congress as we
    are going to have to make trade-offs and decisions from the
    contractors' side of things. What are things that Northrop
    Grumman has learned that could inform Congress?
        Mr. Bush. So I think a lot of this goes to this notion of
    how do you retire risk when you're managing complexity? And we
    all learn each time we take on something at the new level of
    complexity how you actually approach those types of steps in a
    process. So some of the risk retirement can occur actually
    before you start a program, and in fact there are some
    procurement approaches that a variety of places in NASA as well
    as DOD use where they attempt to get as much technological--
    excuse me--risk retirement in place before you start the
    program. And if you're able to do that, then you are able to
    better define a path forward. The challenge with doing that is
    that sometimes actually takes a little bit longer at least at
    the beginning to do those risk retirements.
        So on a program like Webb, as we have gotten into it, I
    think one of the big lessons learned was clearly that risk
    retirement was not only associated with the technologies
    themselves. I spoke earlier about this remarkable set of
    inventions that have already been successfully completed on
    Webb, which I think we should all be proud of. This--these in
    and of themselves, those inventions represent advancements not
    only for the space community but they have spinout effects as
    well. And NASA's been, I think, doing an incredible job of
    spinning things out.
        But the issues were not only in the technology development
    for risk retirement. They were also in a lot of the processes,
    the actual processes for implementing the pieces as we went
    along. A good example, we've never done anything quite as
    complex in a deployment as folding up the sunshield, and what
    we've learned is it takes longer to fold it up and unfold it
    each time we go to test it than we had planned.
        Mr. Bera. Since I'm going to run out of time, is there a
    way----
        Mr. Bush. Right.
        Mr. Bera. We've talked a little bit about risk-sharing
    contracting as well. Certainly in health care we do some of
    that where if you're under budget, on time, or ahead of time,
    there's a benefit to the contractor. If you're over budget more
    delay, there's some risk that's borne. Is that a type of
    contract that actually could work in this particular space?
        Mr. Bush. Yes, those types of contracts need to be combined
    with a risk-management, risk-reduction process so that that--
    those risks can be understood. But yes, the answer is
    absolutely yes.
        Mr. Bera. Great. And, Mr. Chairman, before I yield back,
    I'd ask unanimous consent. I've got a letter from
    Representative Ted Lieu, whose district represents where some
    of Webb is being constructed and put together in support of the
    James Webb----
        Chairman Smith. Okay. Without objection, the letter will be
    made a part of the record.
        [The information follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Smith. And the gentlewoman from Virginia, Mrs.
    Comstock, is recognized for her questions.
        Mrs. Comstock. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. Thanks. I appreciate
    the opportunity to talk with you today, and thank you. I think
    yesterday's testimony was very helpful hearing from Mr.
    Bridenstine and also hearing about how all of these evaluations
    and the critiques really have come together, and I certainly
    got that impression from him. I wasn't able to hear all of Mr.
    Young's testimony yesterday but certainly did get the
    understanding.
        And I think, Mr. Young, you said this yesterday, ``Space is
    a one-strike-and-you're-out business, and we can't have
    problems that are catastrophic.'' And I think from all the
    testimony we've had yesterday and today, that seems to be a
    very large part of the commitment that, given the Hubble
    Telescope is only 350 miles away, and it's been serviced five
    times, We were able to get there and do it, but when you're a
    million miles from Earth, that is not a potential solution so
    we have to work on all of the risks and changes here.
        And with all this, I want to make sure that as we are doing
    all this evaluation, looking at taking the risk and everything,
    that people are going to feel comfortable coming forward. I
    want to make sure you--and it seemed like Mr. Bridenstine did
    feel comfortable with that yesterday--I want to make sure that
    all the teams that are working on this and the additional
    supervision now, that when there is a mistake, when there is a
    problem, even if that problem is going to lead to more costs,
    that we are going to catch that problem before. Do you think
    that the climate and the systems that are put in place now will
    still allow for that?
        Mr. Bush. Yes, let me let me remark on that if I might,
    Congresswoman Comstock. One of the most important things in our
    industry, particularly in the space industry, is the ability of
    employees to feel very, very comfortable to put their hand up
    when they--as I mentioned earlier, either when they know
    something's wrong or even if they suspect something might be
    wrong. So this goes to this culture of understanding what
    really mission success means on a day-to-day basis. So it's
    something that we work very, very hard on.
        It gets reinforced constantly at all levels of engagement
    to the point that we take the extra step of rewarding and
    recognizing employees who put their hand up and say, wait a
    minute, let's stop, let's take a hard look even if it means an
    impact on schedule because much better to do it while we're
    building it, find it then, and be confident that it's going to
    work.
        So I have a lot of confidence. I've seen our team do this
    now a number of times. These issues that we're talking about
    today are issues that our team found. And they did that. They
    put their hand up. And they are eager to go through this
    process that's underway now to see if there's anything else
    that we need to figure out, that we need to find. This is a
    team of people who are absolutely dedicated to mission success.
    They work on this thing all the time. And I've talked to many
    of them. They dream about it at night. They are inspirations in
    terms of how committed they are. And they are, I am confident,
    going to continue to put their hand up if they think
    something's wrong.
        Mrs. Comstock. And I'd like to thank both of you for your
    work on this front. I'd like to acknowledge--obviously,
    Northrop Grumman is in my district, and Mr. Bush, in all your
    work, I want to thank you. I really appreciate that your will
    to lead is being tested every day. Failure is not an option
    here. We need to have mission success. I appreciate all that
    you're doing in the STEM pipeline. I see you throughout my
    district all the time and all the work you're doing there, the
    importance of the workforce development that you had
    highlighted, and I know the first time we had met was when we
    were battling together--I was back in the state house--when
    Northrop Grumman was coming here and the Governor was working
    to get you here but also we were fighting the sequester
    together with Congressman Wolf, and I appreciate your work
    there and the importance of this.
        And, Mr. Young, thank you also for your service on this
    front, and I think going forward it's important that we
    understand--that we all appreciate how challenging these
    missions are, and growing up we all saw all the movies and the
    challenges and the failures that have come with space, but also
    the great successes. We learn from the mistakes certainly as--
    the famous Thomas Edison quote, we want to make sure that any
    of the problems that we've had are all geared towards a
    successful mission, so thank you.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mrs. Comstock.
        And the gentlewoman from Oregon, Ms. Bonamici, is
    recognized.
        Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much, Chairman Smith and
    Ranking Member Johnson. And to our witnesses, I regret that I
    was in another committee where I had a commitment yesterday and
    I missed Administrator Bridenstine's testimony, but in the
    event he's watching, I send greetings. He was on this Committee
    not that long ago, and I thank him for his work at NASA and for
    his service to the country.
        You know, over the years, our country's investments in
    space exploration have led to so many exciting discoveries
    about our universe. I've been on this Committee my entire time
    in Congress, and we've often discussed planetary science and
    human space exploration. And an emerging theme is the role that
    NASA plays in sparking the imaginations of the next generation
    of students to pursue studies in science and astronomy. And
    certainly, members of this Committee understand the importance
    of making progress on restoring our sense of pride as a country
    and international leadership in space discovery. We also know
    that the James Webb Space Telescope is a high priority for NASA
    and that thinking big and taking risks is part of what space
    exploration is about.
        I share the concerns, however, about the latest setbacks,
    and I applaud NASA for establishing the Independent Review
    Board. I hope this hearing, as well as the hearing yesterday,
    can help identify a path forward that minimizes risks and
    additional delays.
        Mr. Bush, I want to follow up on Ranking Member Eddie
    Bernice Johnson's question. We understand the scope and
    complexity of the project, but some of this, as your testimony
    admits, was human error, so are you convinced that Northrop
    Grumman has put in place adequate practices to minimize the
    risk of additional errors? And, as you said in your testimony,
    most of the complex issues are now behind us, so how can you be
    confident that from this point to launch you won't encounter
    additional complex issues?
        Mr. Bush. So to answers to your two questions there, first,
    with respect to our degree of confidence in finding the issues
    today, there was I think several important perspectives on
    that. One is--and Mr. Young and the IRB pointed this out. We're
    never going to be able to get human errors to zero. You know,
    the word human in that equation tells you that. So what we have
    to do is do our very best with the humans involved to make sure
    that they've got the right processes, that they're with
    discipline following those processes, and that they have the
    right qualifications to do the job. So that's a big part of it.
        The second part of it, though, is the safety net and making
    sure that we have a robust approach to backing up the humans
    that are doing the job so that, if they do make an error, there
    is someone there or some other process involved that with high
    likelihood will identify before it propagates into the system.
        Ms. Bonamici. And are you convinced that you--that the
    company has done that----
        Mr. Bush. I feel very, very good about where we are in that
    regard, but we're going--we are continuing to self-test that.
        So your second question I think related to what the
    Independent Review Board talked about as embedded problems,
    things that might still be there. So we are in process. NASA is
    leading this. We're going through all the records. We're going
    through taking a second pass to see if there is anything else
    that we can possibly find or conceive of that might be an issue
    that we need to get addressed quickly. I think we're going to
    be through this in just a number of weeks, and if it is the
    case that the Independent Review Board takes another look, I
    think that would be a great thing for them to look at as well.
        Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. And I'm going to ask Mr. Young a
    question, but I did notice that you said most of the complex
    issues are now behind us, not all.
        Mr. Bush. Well, we have to test the satellite, right? We
    test it for a reason.
        Ms. Bonamici. And, Mr. Young, thank you for your testimony.
    How can Congress--and following up on Mr. Bera's question--how
    can Congress assess NASA's progress in implementing the
    findings and the multiple recommendations from the Independent
    Review Board, and should the board be reconvened to determine
    if NASA is on track to meet those metrics, and if so, when?
        Mr. Young. My personal belief is the board should be
    reconvened and--because I think it's the group who's, you know,
    most formulated to assess the implementation, and it needs to
    be done after NASA and Northrop Grumman have had adequate time
    to understand and do--implement or begin the implementation of
    the recommendations.
        Ms. Bonamici. What do you think adequate time would be?
        Mr. Young. Well, I think it should be by probably this--
    sometime in September this year is when it should be done. And
    I think if this Committee is interested in the result of that,
    then I'm sure that, you know, that the--NASA and the review
    board would be delighted to report back to you what we find.
        Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. And I'm certainly not going to
    speak for the Chairman and the Ranking Member, but I'm pretty
    convinced that this Committee would be very interested. Thank
    you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Bonamici.
        And the gentlewoman from Arizona, Mrs. Lesko, is recognized
    for her questions.
        Mrs. Lesko. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        As I talked about yesterday, having a project 19 times over
    the original cost estimate is obviously very troubling, and I
    think it is a prime example of why taxpayers think that the
    Federal Government isn't spending taxpayer dollars wisely.
        I used to be in the construction business years ago, and
    when we signed a contract for a certain amount, and when you
    had changes, there were change orders that set forth how much
    extra it would cost. So I'm trying to understand how something
    can be 19 times over the project. How often do you communicate
    with NASA? Is there a contract similar to what I described? Do
    you go back to them and communicate with them on a regular
    basis and say, you know what, we had human error and there was
    a problem and now it's going to cost $2 million more, or we're
    changing the project because technology is more advanced now
    and we want to do this and it's going to cost, you know, $1
    billion more, or can you kind of explain the process? Because I
    need to understand how we got here.
        Mr. Bush. Yes, it's a very good question, and obviously for
    those who have not observed how something of this complexity
    gets created, a very, very spot-on question. It is the reason
    that this is a cost-type contract. We work side-by-side with
    NASA every single day. No significant decision is taken on the
    program unilaterally by us. So in terms of the degree of
    communication and coordination, it is exceptionally high. And
    NASA holds us to that transparency standard, that they do not
    want us unilaterally making decisions. And it is important that
    we be able to work hand-in-hand as we go through it simply due
    to the complexity.
        NASA has extraordinary people who have great experience
    working on so many different things. Their experience applies
    to this program, just as the experience of our scientists and
    engineers apply to the program. We have to have both, and so we
    have to be able to make decisions on it together and it is a
    daily interaction. It's not just, you know, sending letters
    back and forth. It is daily communication, daily interaction so
    that the best decisions can get made together.
        Mrs. Lesko. And so, Mr. Chair, either one of you can
    answer--so NASA gave you the okay at every step of the way for
    this extra cost, this extra time delay? Is that what you're
    saying?
        Mr. Bush. We would only take actions that NASA approves in
    that regard.
        Mr. Young. If I could add to your question, which also I
    think is very good, I think Wes' comments were right on. Space
    is not an awful lot different than what you described form your
    building experience. The most important thing I suspect in your
    business was to get the first bid correct, to get the price
    correct. I think if you look back through the history of this
    program and if you look at an earlier review group called the
    Casani team that reported out in 2010 I think or '11, they
    highlighted that NASA had done an incredibly poor job of cost
    estimating on this program, and I think that's true. So if--
    again, in your business, if you don't start out with a good
    estimate, you're in trouble from day one.
        The second thing is that your customers I'm sure, as was
    mentioned, decide they want to remodel the kitchen, it's very
    important when that's done that that be costed, priced, and be
    added to the budget so--and it should not be--which it's easy
    to do. We're just going to add this requirement and we won't
    worry about what it costs, and then it's obviously going to
    cause a problem down the stream.
        The third thing is I suspect that you probably--I don't
    know the nature of the kind of stuff you were involved with,
    but you could envision that there was a very, very unusual
    staircase and that got underestimated as a cost to do it or the
    people who were doing it, it was stretching their ability to do
    it, so they ran into problems. So I think the analogy you're
    talking about--I'm really trying to just encourage you--is
    really quite good and it's not different than this. It's just
    that the multiplier is so much higher in doing this. And I'm
    not trying to excuse any of it, so don't read that into it. But
    the process is--just because it's a space activity, the process
    in my view is not a mystery. It's not significantly different
    than I'm sure your experience in the construction world.
        Chairman Smith. Okay. Does the gentlewoman yield back?
    Thank you, Mrs. Lesko.
        The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Beyer, is recognized.
        Mr. Beyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Bush, thank you for coming to be with us today.
        Mr. Young, thank you for bravely showing up the second day.
        I want to take issue with the, I think, overstated
    allegations of poor management. I mean, it's always easy to be
    a Monday-morning quarterback. I've been managing businesses,
    organizations, even an embassy over 45 years, and I just--
    management is much like golf or baseball or bridge that it's
    not a game of perfect, that we make the best decisions we can
    on a minute-by-minute basis with the best advice we have, and
    sometimes, we're still going to get it wrong.
        So let me--I think it's really important to put the total
    cost of James Webb in perspective. So first, Administrator
    Bridenstine yesterday said the lifecycle cost of James Webb is
    $9.66 billion, so I added up the NASA budgets from 1996, when
    this was first suggested, through 2020, which is a little
    before launch, and that's $396.357 billion. Quick math, 2.4
    percent of the total NASA budget over the lifespan of JW is 2.4
    percent, and that's an understatement because that assumes JW
    Webb falls out of the sky in 2020 and it will actually be up
    there for a long, long time. So we're talking maybe one percent
    of NASA's budget.
        The second point, Mr. Bush, you were just a young systems
    engineer in 1996, but can you tell us how different the
    expectations of James Webb were in 1996 versus what NASA and
    the American public expects today before dark energy, before
    dark matter, before gravitational waves, before the state of
    science and cosmology is so very different? Is this even the
    same James Webb Telescope?
        Mr. Bush. Well, thank you, Congressman. It is a great
    question. When we originally conceived the telescope, we had no
    idea of all these discoveries that would occur in the time that
    has elapsed since then. And those discoveries themselves--and
    this is part of the great thing about space science--those
    discoveries set our ambitions a bit higher because we now know
    that there's a lot more we don't know and that we need to find
    out.
        So as we went through that process really over the course
    of the last decade, the period from around 2002 through the
    Casani report that Mr. Young mentioned, the vision for the
    mission continued to expand appropriately because if we are
    going to make this magnitude of investment, we ought to be able
    to get the most return for our Nation that we can through this
    investment.
        And while the original mission was very focused on sort of
    origins, you know, looking backwards in time, we did not know
    at that time about exoplanets, and now we've discovered
    thousands of these things. Your reference to dark matter and
    dark energy has really transformed the thinking around what the
    potential for scientific discovery might be with a system like
    Webb. And it is incredibly inspiring because if we can solve
    some of these tougher problems in physics, hopefully, we'll be
    able to translate that knowledge back into the engineering on
    Earth to make life a lot better for all of us humans. So this
    growth and the view of it is very, very important to understand
    because I think it goes to the real value of this program.
        Mr. Beyer. Which tees up my next question to Mr. Bush is
    $9.6 billion, is there any way to measure the value to humanity
    of what we will learn compared to that $9 billion investment?
        Mr. Bush. I have no idea how to do that. I wish I could.
    But I can give you a couple of reflections in that regard. You
    know, the work that our Nation did to put us ahead decades ago
    in physics where we were able to gain a better understanding of
    things like quantum mechanics, if we had not done that work,
    had we not really understood how things operate at the quantum
    level, this silly little device we all carry around with
    ourselves and rely on constantly throughout the day to know
    what's going on in the world and communicate with each other,
    we wouldn't have been able to do that. And if you think about
    value in that regard, the multiple of return is extraordinary.
    Those are the types of discoveries in physics that we hope are
    still in front of us, and we believe they are based on the
    insights we've been able to gain from Hubble. And it's really
    just, I think, beginning to tickle the imagination what Webb is
    going to enable us to do. So it's a very exciting potential.
        Mr. Beyer. I saved my hardest question for last. Both of
    you are MIT graduates I think, so do you guys believe in string
    theory?
        Mr. Bush. I'll let Mr. Young answer that.
        Mr. Young. I'll pass.
        Mr. Beyer. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Beyer.
        The gentleman from California, Mr. Knight, is recognized.
        Mr. Knight. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the
    gentlemen for being here today.
        I got to sit down with Scott Willoughby last week and ask
    him a lot of questions and kind of understand where Northrop is
    going and what his vision was. He was extremely excited. He was
    passionate about the future and passionate about when there are
    issues of how we get through these issues and how we move
    forward. And I think that's very important because what we're
    trying to do here is a mankind-changing event. I've said that a
    couple times, but I think that is exactly what we're trying to
    do.
        As I tell my son, we will be smarter in 100 years than we
    are today, whether we have faster computers or we have just
    attained more knowledge or we are able to do more things by our
    engineering knowledge and our knowledge of just academics. And
    so some of the things that we try and do, we find problems.
        Now, my question is how do you think that the IRB's report
    is? Do you agree with that, Mr. Bush? And I think I've heard
    all of the questions and all of the kind of what are we going
    to do, how do you do this, and all of that, I've heard all of
    that, but I want to hear if you agree with the IRB's report and
    if you think that that was a good, solid report on this issue.
        Mr. Bush. I absolutely believe that the IRB in many ways is
    a gift to this program. What the Independent Review Board did
    was, in addition to being very clear about specific matters and
    recommendations, which we fully agree with and which we are
    fully implemented in, what the IRB did I would say at a higher
    level was it was the big reminder that, as we make incremental
    decisions in this program, it all has to be about mission
    success.
        We all feel the intensity of cost, we all feel the
    intensity of schedule. We've had teams working on this program
    seven days a week for a long period of time. And with their--
    this great reminder that everything is about mission success,
    it caused us to step back and ask were we doing everything the
    way we really needed to do in that regard? And we did make
    changes not just in terms of the specifics of the
    recommendations but with that broader perspective in mind.
        So I think it was an outstanding thing that NASA did to
    commission the Independent Review Board. I'm grateful to the
    members who participated on it. And we are fully supportive of
    implementing all of their recommendations.
        Mr. Knight. And I think it's another part in what we're
    trying to achieve. If we only know what we know or if we only
    do what we know how to do, we never achieve. And that's what
    happens when we try and take leaps.
        Administrator Bridenstine yesterday was trying to explain
    how the shield unfolds, how big it is, what it does, how it
    lowers the temperature so that it could get to the right
    temperature so that they could get the readings. And it went
    over my head. I'm sure it went over others or I would be
    ashamed that it only went over mine. But it really started you
    thinking how impressive this is and how important it is to get
    it right. Obviously, this is a fire and forget. This is a
    telescope that goes away and our--well, we don't have space
    shuttle anymore, but if we did, we can't go up and service it.
    We can't do those things.
         We have another telescope through NASA called SOFIA. It's
    on the back of a 747. It comes down, lands after a 10-hour
    flight. They do different things, they put things on it, and
    they do different experiments. James Webb is not that. James
    Webb is going to be a million miles away, and it's going to be
    looking at maybe the beginning of time, other galaxies, things
    that we have never even thought of.
        So that is my kind of one minute on this of how we do have
    to get this right, and when there are problems, how quickly we
    can get to the solution. And that's everything. That's no
    matter if you're doing something that is game-changing or just
    a new product that we're trying to improve on, it's how quickly
    we fix the problems. It's not the problem, it's how fast do we
    get from A to B.
        So thank you very much for being here today, and I look
    forward to the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.
        Mr. Bush. Thank you.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Knight.
        The gentleman from New York, Mr. Tonko, is recognized.
        Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and welcome to our guests.
    Welcome, Mr. Bush, and welcome back, Mr. Young.
        Yesterday, I shared how inspired I was by the years leading
    up to the moon landing, and I want to express the same
    sentiment to you, Mr. Bush. I was in high school as we competed
    in the space race against the Soviet Union for spaceflight
    supremacy. And we had a passionate resolve to use science and
    engineering to beat our rivals and, after years of investing
    and innovating, we won. America led the world in this endeavor,
    and our nation was the first to land on the moon.
        The memories from that day will forever linger in my mind.
    It inspired me to believe that, with the will and necessary
    resources, America would lead the way in continued exploration,
    research, and development. It also inspired me to embrace an
    education in science and engineering. I'm excited by the James
    Webb Space Telescope and, even more so, I'm excited by the
    potential impact that this work and related discoveries can
    have on engaging the public and inspiring our next generation
    of scientists and engineers.
        Yesterday, I was asking the Administrator how NASA is
    utilizing Webb to engage the public and to build our next
    generation of scientists and engineers. Mr. Bush, you put it
    well in your testimony when you referred to this project as an
    incredible engineering feat. I have told students in the
    capital region of New York that I represent that, through STEM,
    you can be the scientist who learns new secrets about our
    universe, you can be that astronaut who lands on Mars, you can
    be that doctor or researcher who discovers the path to better
    ensure healthy passage on long spaceflights, or you can be that
    engineer who designs or invents a new technology or the
    spaceship that will take us far past our own galaxy.
        So, Mr. Bush, what is Northrop Grumman working on to engage
    the public at large on the inspirational undertakings?
        Mr. Bush. I really appreciate your perspective. You and I
    share a common motivation. The Apollo program is what inspired
    me to enter our industry and dedicate my career to this. And I
    know it has--it was the same way for so many others. And we
    want to continue to replicate that. We need that STEM talent.
    We need the innovators in our Nation to continue to focus on
    moving us ahead.
        So we've done many things with the space telescope to help
    support that. We have a large model of the space telescope that
    we utilize to take to a variety of different organizations and
    gatherings to enable scientists to have something in front of
    them to talk about as they work to inspire youth.
        We also sponsored the development of a film. It's called
    ``Into the Unknown,'' and I would commend it to you if you have
    the opportunity and the interest in looking at it. We have
    played this film not only around the United States but around
    the world to let folks know what James Webb will be able to do,
    to expose them to some of the people who are working on it so
    they can see what real engineers and scientists do because
    oftentimes that's a challenge for those considering entering
    the STEM field. They don't actually know what engineers and
    scientists do. And when they're able to see it in the context
    of something that's so inspirational, our hope is that it will
    create more folks interested in pursuing these STEM careers as
    we go forward.
        And I have to give NASA a lot of credit here. NASA has I
    think probably the very best approach to using what it's doing
    to inspire our youth. And James Webb needs to continue to be a
    part of that. I think they've done a fabulous job of
    communicating effectively. The website, if you want to learn
    about it, you can go on that website and learn about it.
        I talk to a lot of the interns in our company, and part of
    the reason they're interested in coming to work with us and
    being a part of the things that we're doing is because they've
    heard about James Webb and they're inspired by it. So I think
    this is a fabulous opportunity for our Nation as we go forward
    to help us with much of the work that we need to do in
    motivating and leveraging STEM.
        Mr. Tonko. Thank you very much. I appreciate that approach.
    Anything in general that you're doing in the youngest of the
    student population in those great schools to engage them early
    on?
        Mr. Bush. Yes, and we've all I think come to realize that
    we unfortunately lose too many folks who could otherwise be
    interested in STEM actually in middle school, so your point is
    right on. We have to hit them in grade school early on, and so
    we have a whole variety of grade school programs across our
    nation largely leveraging our employees. Our employees are very
    motivated to engage in the STEM efforts whether it's at science
    fairs or actually taking the movie that I talked about ``Into
    the Unknown'' or even--we have little paper models that we use
    where students can actually try and go through the paper model
    build-up of what James Webb will be. So there's a variety of
    activities. NASA as well, as I said. It's not just us. NASA has
    been very proactive in this.
        Mr. Tonko. Thank you, gentlemen. And with that, Mr. Chair,
    I yield back.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Tonko.
        And the gentleman from California, Mr. Rohrabacher, is
    recognized.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, and I'm sorry that I
    cannot join you in this uplifting testimony that you've given
    today. Mr. Bush, I don't think that we should look to our young
    people and give them an example of being eight times over
    budget and twice as long in cost overruns. That's not what you
    tell our young people and encourage them to get involved in
    your industry.
        Let me just note--and again, this isn't your fault, okay?
    This is your--whoever was handling this in your company failed.
    They failed us and they failed the American people. And you can
    say ``is the Jim Webb telescope going to be worth all that
    money?'' That's not what the question is. The question is, ``is
    it worth all those other projects that we have been unable to
    fund in this Committee because you have failed your job?''
    That's the question.
        Yes, I have supported telescopes and astronomy, and I think
    that deep space astronomy is a good thing. You've done a
    disservice to achieving those goals by not being able to do
    your job. Now, let me ask you, did Northrop make a profit last
    year, Northrop Grumman Corporation?
        Mr. Bush. You can read our Securities and Exchange
    Commission filings and see exactly how we did. We're very
    transparent in that regard.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. I didn't hear. Did you make a profit last
    year?
        Mr. Bush. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. How much was your profit last year?
        Mr. Bush. It's filed in our Securities and Exchange
    Commission filings. I don't remember the exact number off the
    top of my head.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. Is it hundreds of millions or billions?
    What is it in?
        Mr. Bush. It's a very large number.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. You had a profit last year, and you
    have spent money acquiring things like Orbital ATK?
        Mr. Bush. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. So Northrop really hasn't suffered
    at all from the fact that we now have billions of dollars being
    spent that we were not told we were going to have to spend, and
    thus, those other science projects are now not even being
    considered here. But Northrop, by putting us in that spot, went
    ahead and made a profit.
        Did they make any loss--obviously, your profit would have
    been higher had you been handling this project better--is there
    any loss at all that your company made by not being able to do
    this job as you contracted?
        Mr. Bush. So when we think about the economics of this
    project--and I've been clear about this before--this is not a
    particularly attractive economic proposition for our company,
    but that is not the objective for us at this point. We are
    focused on mission success. And clearly, you know, you can do
    the math a lot of different ways, but if you look at the
    resource we have invested in this program, both the capital
    resource and more importantly the human resource, our
    expectation is when we make that kind of investment on this
    magnitude of activity, that we would achieve a nice return.
    That will not be the case here.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. I understand you're not making a profit on
    this project now, and I think that is a factor that is going to
    try to influence people to try to make the right decisions and
    be tough on doing the right thing even though there's a lot of
    conflict going on over some decision among engineers or
    whatever. But the fact is that Northrop hasn't had to suffer a
    penalty. The fact is that it's not just Northrop, Mr. Chairman,
    that's our system. And I'm not deriding Northrop because what
    Northrop is doing is exactly like the rest of the aerospace
    industry when we get involved in these projects. Hubble was
    that way, as we noted yesterday.
        Mr. Young, is there something that we can do fundamentally
    to the process that's going to prevent that from happening? Is
    there some penalty that a company should have to pay if indeed
    they go way over budget and spend all this time? Otherwise,
    we're losing our ability to use that money on other projects,
    whether it's STEM projects or whatever projects they are. Mr.
    Young, what can we do?
        Mr. Young. Well, we talked about that a little bit. And I
    think that companies measure return on their programs in
    different ways. Financial is one. Reputation is an
    extraordinary motivator. And I think the people who are
    involved in these enterprises are clearly motivated by
    reputation, and that is the intent is to do a good job.
        If I could span my comments--and I don't want to talk you
    out of your comments, and I know I wouldn't be able to anyway,
    but----
        Mr. Rohrabacher. You know me.
        Mr. Young. But I think it's--there's no question in my mind
    being appropriately critical of events that have happened is
    appropriate, so I don't think there's an issue. I do think that
    it's important for all of us to recognize that there's a lot of
    work in front of us on JWST, and there's an extraordinary
    opportunity for a success that is almost mind-boggling as to
    what it is that we can learn. So what I'm really trying to do
    is I'm really trying--I'm probably speaking to myself as well
    as to you, but I'm really saying that being appropriately
    critical, tough love is a very important part of this--let me
    just finish--a very important part of this. But equally
    important is a recognition that we've kind of all got to pull
    together and make this thing an enormous success because the
    worst thing that could happen on top of where we are now is not
    to have a success. So I'm an advocate for being self-critical,
    I'm an advocate for tough love, but I'm also an advocate for
    saying today's the first day of the rest of our lives----
        Mr. Rohrabacher. I agree with you.
        Mr. Young. --and let's make this a success.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. I agree with you on that, but we should be
    changing the policy so that this doesn't happen like this
    again. And perhaps a company that does not meet its goals or
    what it said it could do, perhaps we shouldn't be giving them
    the next contract that comes down the line, whatever their bid
    is. Anyway, that's just a thought. Thank you very much, Mr.
    Chairman.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher.
        The gentlewoman from Connecticut, Ms. Esty, is recognized
    for her questions.
        Ms. Esty. Thank you very much, both of you, for joining us
    here today and, Mr. Young, for your return visit.
        And I have to say, with a son who pursued astrophysics as
    his major who was inspired--had rocketry models in his room
    from the time he was about three and use that Hubble space data
    to develop a program working with folks at Yale to allow high
    school students to access the Hubble data to do exoplanet
    research, to make that data available for young people across
    the country, I can see just enormous opportunities with the
    James Webb Telescope.
        And I think we cannot forget, as you have both mentioned,
    the value proposition. We've had a lot of discussion about
    cost, and the cost matters, but I will tell you, taxpayers and
    all of us are way more concerned about value than cost at the
    end of the day.
        And I do think one of the big challenges we have is, given
    the rapid development and discoveries, as my colleague Mr.
    Beyer outlined from the first conception of the James Webb to
    where we are now, was unprecedented and not anticipated, those
    new avenues we would want to use this extraordinary device to
    research.
        So I do think--and my dad was in construction, too. This is
    not like building a home. It's not like building a bridge. It's
    not like building a brand-new bridge either because every
    aspect of this is changing, and what we're looking for is
    changing, too. So I think some of what we have to think about
    is for the value proposition, we absolutely want to include
    those new elements. For the mission success, we want to do
    that, too, and we need to make sure we have safety.
        So--but we do need to look at what we do to more
    appropriately cost because that is fair and proper, and that
    allows NASA and allows this Committee to do its work in terms
    of allocating, prioritizing other projects and that's what you
    hear concern about that.
        Mr. Bush, yesterday, Mr. Young suggested that maybe it
    would be wise for the Committee to look to the--or for Congress
    to insist that all the remaining dollars are aggregated and are
    not paid until after we have, you know, a full and complete
    checklist through mission success, so that's one question I'd
    like to add--ask.
        And another is, you know, how do we incentivize, identify,
    and correcting errors early? I mean, it's an ongoing problem in
    industry, but it's an issue in science, too. People don't like
    to come forward and say this isn't working. So we need to
    figure out ways to incentivize that.
        And the last thing I'll put out there is I think it would
    make sense for us to work some with folks both in Silicon
    Valley, as well as in the business community to think about how
    to structure contracts in a way that would better perhaps share
    that risk of identifying problems early, correcting,
    minimizing, taking ownership of human error. So maybe there's
    cost-sharing when there's human error or overruns. There would
    be cost-sharing of those, not just cost-plus, but there would
    be cost-sharing to provide an incentive to more appropriately--
    and Mr. Young talked about how these contracts are bid and how
    they're incentivized. Everyone wants to get it on the cheap,
    but then we want it to be first-class when it's deployed. So we
    need to find a different way of, I think, structuring those
    contracts to enforce as much as possible honesty and
    anticipation and then tight controls and everyone taking
    ownership. So a few simple questions out there. Thank you.
        Mr. Bush. Well, thank you, Congresswoman. And let me just
    reiterate what I said in response to Chairman Smith's request
    along the same lines with respect to what Mr. Young mentioned
    yesterday. And we do believe it is an appropriate mechanism to
    make sure that we are all aligned on mission success.
        And we've been talking with NASA just recently about this,
    that we are willing to place all of the fee that is in front of
    us, as well as the fee we've already earned, into the mission
    success pool that will have that determination to make sure
    that it works. So we're all in on mission success and just want
    to confirm that again for you.
        With respect to this question about catching errors early,
    it goes back to, in my mind, the approach that is taken on
    programs to actually mitigate risk. How do you identify and
    quantify and then mitigate risk? So some of this is in the
    design process, but also it is in the testing programs.
        And I will just say broadly that in the rush oftentimes to
    go faster, there is an opportunity to make decisions to not
    test along the way, to wait until you have more things to
    together and test. And if you turn the clock back in the space
    industry, we didn't used to do that. We tended to test
    everything we possibly could at the lowest level of assembly.
    There was some criticism of that, particularly back in the
    1990s, that that was somehow unnecessary, that it was wasteful,
    and that it attributed--or created more cost on programs than
    perhaps was necessary. But--and that may be the case for some
    more simple types of designs where we've done the same thing
    many times over and we're not exploring or discovering new
    things.
        But a program of this complexity, I think if there are some
    important lessons learned on error discovery, it is reinforcing
    that more traditional approach of testing at the lowest level
    that you can and trying your best to break it at the lowest
    level that you possibly can so that the propagation of a later-
    discovered error is not as significant.
        And back to the question about the independent review team
    and their work, that was a lot of their suggestion, to go back
    and look at what they were calling the embedded issues to make
    sure there wasn't something else that was skipped at a lower
    level that could come back and haunt the program later on. So
    we're well underway in that regard.
        I see we're just about out of time, so I'll limit my
    comments to that.
        Ms. Esty. Thank you. And, Mr. Chairman, since I wasn't able
    to ask yesterday, if Mr. Young could----
        Chairman Smith. Okay.
        Ms. Esty. --ask that same--answer that same question,
    whether we should rethink that testing at a lower level because
    that would be a time frame and a cost issue.
        Chairman Smith. Without objection, Mr. Young is going to be
    recognized to answer that question, although this is the first
    time I've ever heard of a carryover from one day to the next.
        Ms. Esty. No, I was noting how far over my colleagues were
    going, 2.5, 1 and 2 and 3 minutes over yesterday, so I never--I
    missed my five minutes being able to say. Thank you. I
    appreciate your indulgence.
        Chairman Smith. Please, Mr. Young, feel free to answer the
    question.
        Mr. Young. The--one of the things that struck us in our
    review process is the small problems can have such big
    implications for a system as complex and challenging as James
    Webb. And what that really says--and I'm kind of following what
    Wes said--is that it's important to know the pedigree of the
    hardware all the way through the process. And what that really
    means is that when the piece of hardware is first built, from
    that point on, each step of the process there's an appropriate
    test to make sure that you know the pedigree of the hardware.
    And if you do that all the way through the final assembly of
    this observatory, then you can be pretty confident that you
    don't have embedded problem.
        If I use the sunshield as an example, the sunshield was not
    tested as an individual item prior to being integrated with the
    spacecraft. Now, I don't know the full details of that, but I
    think that was a joint decision by NASA and Northrop Grumman,
    and I think it was derived primarily because there's only one
    sunshield, and that's the one that's going to fly, and so you
    don't want to wear it out so to speak. But had that test been
    done, my guess is that this fastener problem would have been
    found and the implication would have been much less.
        So only as an example that that was an embedded problem
    that went forward so we kind of lost the pedigree of the
    hardware, and then it got to a higher level of integration when
    the problem was discovered, and therefore, the implication is
    much larger. So there really is a process of knowing this
    pedigree all the way through that results in when the final
    observatory is assembled and tested, you could have pretty good
    confidence that you don't have embedded problems. And that's a
    great question, by the way.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Esty.
        Ms. Esty. Thank you. I appreciate it.
        Chairman Smith. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Cloud, is
    recognized for his questions.
        Mr. Cloud. Thanks for being here. First of all, it's
    certainly not lost on me or I think anybody here that you're
    literally dealing with rocket science, and that's way beyond my
    pay grade. Our job, though, is to manage the checkbook, and I'm
    curious about the process, because we all agree that mission
    success is critical, also the scientific, humanitarian,
    national security implications, but we're presented with
    thousands of good ideas every day, and we have to manage that
    on a budget.
        So I'm curious about the bidding process, because it seems
    almost like it's a normal process in business that we bid a
    project, it gets approved, but we know that we'll actually be
    able to spend as much money as we want on it. You mentioned
    that everything went back to NASA and was approved, so does
    NASA think they have the right to spend more money on projects
    that Congress approves? It seems like that rebidding process or
    that extra work order, change order process that Mrs. Lesko
    talked about, should come back to Congress. Has that not
    happened?
        And I understand it seems like part of the low-bid process
    is part of the problem in the sense that we put a low-bid
    project and then we take on these great, awesome projects and
    try to move them forward. Is there anything we can do in the
    bidding process to remedy that?
        Mr. Bush. So I think that is a really good question and Mr.
    Young talked about this a little bit earlier. I would simply
    reinforce what he said. We have found that the customer
    communities that implement an independent cost estimating
    process as a part of their source selection activities tend to
    end up with budgetary strategies and management strategies that
    are a bit more robust against the inevitable variability of
    some of these complex programs.
        And we can turn the clock way back because we're talking
    about Webb. you know, where a contract decision was made I
    believe it was in 2002, but a lot has changed in acquisition
    strategies since then both at NASA, as well as some other
    customer communities. And the use of independent cost
    estimating, when done well, often results in contractors being
    selected who did not bid the lowest cost because the customer
    community then has the opportunity to evaluate bids against
    this broader analytic of what it should cost to do a job. And I
    think that's a healthy practice. I endorse its use.
        And, Mr. Young, I would defer to you if you have some other
    things to add to it.
        Mr. Young. No, I don't. I mean, I think that's really what
    I would advocate. I don't mean this quite the way it sounds,
    but I would recommend that cost proposals or cost-plus
    contracts never be opened. I mean, I think they only, you know,
    confuse the situations. Independent cost estimating is really
    the quality of the process--
        Mr. Cloud. It seems to me, too, like putting together some
    sort of system where we could rate government contractors based
    on past performance of on-time delivery and on budget might be
    something to work into that project.
        One other question, you testified that the sunshield was
    more difficult than was thought, and I can appreciate that.
    Maybe Mr. Young touched on this in the last question, but in
    the original bid, my understanding is that the sunshield was
    promoted as existing technology, yet we're finding out that a
    lot of the cost overruns had to do with them not being existing
    technology. Could you clarify?
        Mr. Bush. I can't speak to what may have been written some
    many years ago, but I would be very clear that the sunshield is
    a new invention and a new development, and as we've gone
    through it, it has been exciting to see how those developments
    have occurred. If you look at each of the levels of the
    sunshield, the membranes, they're about the thickness of a
    human hair, Kapton, silicon-coated. It is a phenomenal class of
    technology. It will have a lot of other applications over time,
    but this has clearly been a new development.
        Mr. Young. I think if I would add, you know--
        Mr. Cloud. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Smith. Mr. Cloud, if you will, will you yield the
    balance----
        Mr. Cloud. Yes.
        Chairman Smith. --of your time to me?
        Mr. Cloud. Yes.
        Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you. I've thought of another
    question, Mr. Bush, for you. In Mr. Young's report, there were
    several instances of preventable human error that were
    pinpointed that led to millions of dollars of cost overruns.
    I'm just curious if those employees are still employed by
    Northrop Grumman.
        Mr. Bush. So we look very carefully each time we have an
    error to make sure we understand what the challenge is and what
    the issue is. And given the complexity--and yes, there have
    some--been some mistakes. But to answer your question very
    directly, with respect to the mistakes, we have not found
    instances of the type of behavior that were contributory to
    those mistakes that were deemed----
        Chairman Smith. I mean, you had a situation----
        Mr. Bush. --to be willful conduct.
        Chairman Smith. --where a solvent was used that was the
    wrong solvent that cost $100 million more of overruns. There
    had to be some actual human individual that applied that
    solvent. My question is are those types of individuals who
    committed the preventable human error still employed by
    Northrop Grumman?
        Mr. Bush. If we find issues with conduct that we think is
    willful misconduct, we act on it.
        Chairman Smith. Okay. But----
        Mr. Bush. In the cases where the individuals make honest
    errors----
        Chairman Smith. Right. So no one has lost----
        Mr. Bush. --then we want----
        Chairman Smith. No one has lost their----
        Mr. Bush. --we want them to learn.
        Chairman Smith. No one has lost their job because of any
    cost overrun to date?
        Mr. Bush. I would not say that.
        Chairman Smith. Okay.
        Mr. Bush. I'm talking about these individuals
    specifically----
        Chairman Smith. Okay. Well, how many people have lost their
    job?
        Mr. Bush. Are you talking specifically to this program?
        Chairman Smith. Yes, JWST.
        Mr. Bush. I don't have a number off the top of my head.
        Chairman Smith. It's more than zero?
        Mr. Bush. I can't confirm that for you here today. I'm
    simply telling you how we approach assessing what----
        Chairman Smith. No, no, I know. Of course, that wasn't
    responsive, but my question is--you do not know as CEO whether
    any employees lost their job because of the human errors?
        Mr. Bush. With respect to the mistakes that we're talking
    about here today, I do not recall any losing their jobs.
        Chairman Smith. Okay. And then going back to the question
    about profit, what was Northrop's profit last year in 2017,
    just to the nearest tenth of a billion?
        Mr. Bush. We can get you that for the record.
        Chairman Smith. I'm sorry?
        Mr. Bush. We can provide that to you for the record.
        Chairman Smith. Okay.
        Mr. Bush. I don't want to make a financial mistake----
        Chairman Smith. Isn't it----
        Mr. Bush. --by not recalling something exactly.
        Chairman Smith. Isn't it a matter of public record?
        Mr. Bush. Yes, sir. That's why we can easily get it to you
    for the record.
        Chairman Smith. Okay. But why won't you tell us today what
    it is?
        Mr. Bush. I don't have it in front of me.
        Chairman Smith. Well, do you not? How could a CEO not know
    what the profit of his company was last year?
        Mr. Bush. We will provide that to you for the record.
        Chairman Smith. And you say it's public information but you
    won't----
        Mr. Bush. Yes, sir.
        Chairman Smith. --tell us today? You just don't want to say
    what the figure is?
        Mr. Bush. No, I just want to make sure I get it right.
        Chairman Smith. Well, could it have been $6 billion in
    2017?
        Mr. Bush. If that's what the filing says, then it will be
    exactly accurate.
        Chairman Smith. Okay. But why would you not tell us? I just
    don't understand. You've talked about transparency. You've
    talked about willingness to give us information. Why wouldn't
    you be willing to tell us what the profit is or what----
        Mr. Bush. I'm perfectly willing to tell you. I just want to
    make sure we get it exactly right.
        Chairman Smith. But you as CEO----
        Mr. Bush. I'm very careful about financial reporting----
        Chairman Smith. You--okay. How about this? You as CEO, what
    was the profit last year to the nearest billion? Do you know
    that, and are you willing to say it?
        Mr. Bush. Mr. Chairman, as I said, I would be happy to
    provide that to you with----
        Chairman Smith. Okay.
        Mr. Bush. --high precision.
        Chairman Smith. But you--okay. And you admitted it's public
    record, but you will not say the figure in front of us today,
    is that right, even to the nearest billion? And you're CEO?
        Mr. Bush. I'm happy to provide it and----
        Chairman Smith. Okay.
        Mr. Bush. --make it very, very public.
        Chairman Smith. All right. Thank you all for being here
    today, and we stand adjourned.
        Mr. Bush. Thank you.
        [Whereupon, at 11:37 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

                                   Appendix I

                                  ----------

                       Additional Material for the Record

                           Document submitted by NASA

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                     Document submitted by Northrop Grumman

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]