Astyanax It was a remark over the US Navy, not NASA (currently there are weld issues on your new subs, and there is a hell of a backlog for work at drydocks and the toilet issue on a craft that cost millions was funny (though a really shitty situation for the crew, on the flip side we don’t use cheese cloth air filters anymore on our subs so its progress of a sort).
As for the Webb, it suffered from a number of cost overruns and delays, some from issues found during testing, errors, mishandling and other things. Its up there now and while certainly wasn’t flawless it is providing better data than the Hubble could have. The nice thing is its been working very well, it doesn’t have the optical defects that reduced HST capability. Unfortunately is not serviceable, one hopes it will last through its decade long projected mission and that it will keep running even longer. They have already built part of the next telescope, its smaller being close to the size of the Hubble telescope but will only study objects in infrared wavelengths but will be inserted away from Earth into another Lagrange point for better observation of the Universe.
Anyways I understand why you want HQ in your state, it offers prestige, jobs, economic spinoffs, and as I said might allow them to keep better tabs on the projects which are sent off from there. Having Cleveland in the running is odd, but those senators want it just as much as you do, who knows what sort of side deals they are willing to make to get it.