Soon enough, reality again asserted itself: the schedule slipped, and costs rose.
Nasa hoped to launch Hubble in 1983, but the schedule slipped.
After its cost doubled and its schedule slipped five years, that project was sundered by the Obama administration.
Mr. Bush's personal assistant, Logan Walters, who is charged with keeping him on schedule, slipped back into his suit jacket each time he entered the Oval Office.
But if the schedule slips much further, it seems less likely that the Southern Company could install planned new reactors of this type, Vogtle 3 and 4, on schedule in 2016 and 2017.
The cost of extending shuttle flights past September has already been covered by Congress, which allocated $600 million to cover potential shuttle operations in the first quarter of fiscal year 2011, in case the schedule slipped.
The Democratic coup did not go unnoticed by the NBC anchor, Tom Brokaw, who seemed to be letting viewers in on the Democrats' move when he declared that with the Democrats' "schedule slipping so much, she was able to get on prime time".
As the schedule slipped, says Turner, some staffers may have felt pressure to hurry up.
"The chip business is a tough business and the schedule slips happen quite often," he says.
Schedule slips and cost overruns are warning signs that the test program will be impacted.
But the difficulty of assembling the intricately shaped parts with millimeter accuracy led to cost hikes and schedule slips.
