Terrible news indeed, that there is a serious chance that the James Webb Telescope, the successor to the Hubble space telescope, will be cancelled by the House of Representatives. I myself am horrified watching this country voluntarily give up its leadership in one scientific field after another, killing projects that are not even a drop in the bucket of our yearly debt, and for which we have already paid a significant fraction of the bill. I can’t describe the benefits of this telescope nearly as well as my astronomy colleagues, so please read what they have to say. Here is a post by my former colleague at the University of Washington, Julianne Dalcanton.