What a Tangled Webb We Weave
The James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's flagship astrophysics mission, is years behind schedule and will cost at least 1.5 billion more than its current 5 billion dollar budget. To meet a launch date of 2015 JWST needs an immediate 400 million. In today's budget environment, NASA can not spare such a sum. Delays to JWST will impact other missions, especially WFIRST.
Additional budget pressure comes from the Stratospheric Observatory For Infared Astronomy. SOFIA, a giant telescope mounted in a 747SP, is also far over schedule and budget. JWST, SOFIA and the Hubble Space Telescope consume most of NASA's astrophysics budget. Their huge costs are causing delay or cancellation of other projects. Despite the high priority given WFIRST, it will not fly in this decade, if ever.
The hypothetical acceleration of "dark energy" is caused by something so simple that physicists have overlooked it. Redshifts are proportional to the speed of light c. Rather than the Universe accelerating, we have observed the speed of light slowing down. Long before scientists even get a chance to find their "dark energy," evidence will show a "c change" in physics.