Is the $10B James Webb Space Telescope worth the price tag?

Ask again in 30 years.

https://www.aps.org/policy/analysis/innovation.cfm

Did anybody have alternate places to orbit this? L2 was known to be rocky, I gather, but I'm wondering what the other tradeoffs were. Where would we put the next 2 or 5 of these if we decided to build some more right quick? (handwaving "this one was expensive and tetchy")

Edit: more info:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/webb/about/L2.html

https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-observatory-characteristics...

Definitely. $10 billion is a rounding error.

“CBO projects that annual interest costs will rise from $399 billion in 2022 to $1.2 trillion in 2032.”

https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2022/05/interest-costs-on-the-nati...

We should have put that money towards the F-35.