NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched billions of dollars over budget and over a decade late. The National Science Foundation’s Thirty Meter Telescope, currently entangled in controversy over its proposed site on Mauna Kea, is projected to cost $ 2.65 billion. Certainly, we will learn much about the universe with those instruments. But nothing comes without a cost, and bigger does not always mean better. Giant projects crowd out funding for smaller ones. JWST’s delays didn’t just push back that instrument, but every subsequent launch after that.

Astronomy has always had an abundant and lively tradition of small-scale observations making big impacts, and that tradition persists. The Event Horizon Telescope, which released the unforgettably beautiful images of the black hole shadows, received a mere $ 60 million in funding—a relative bargain. Even in the realm of space telescopes, where “cheap” is still half a billion dollars, many instruments have produced enormous scientific outputs for a fraction of JWST’s $ 10 billion price. The Kepler space telescope revolutionized our understanding of exoplanets for only $ 550 million. Bargains, by comparison.

Even within the expensive missions, the most important research is often performed by independent research groups grabbing small slices of time. In one recent paper, a team of astronomers used the Gaia spacecraft’s data to revisit the ages of a small group of young stars. That may not seem like the most critical of astronomical research, but pinpointing those ages is crucial to everything from understanding the start of the planet-formation process to cross-checking the age of the entire universe.

It’s tempting as a discipline to go bigger. Massive investments do indeed lead to science payoffs. But giant projects also require more, and more sustained, funding from government agencies. And they take extremely long times to come to fruition. The academics who benefit most from those arrangements are the permanent faculty, their careers safe regardless of these giant gambles. Meanwhile, young scientists can spend their entire, brief careers preparing for an instrument that won’t get built by the time they’re ready for the next step up the academic career ladder—and if it doesn’t pan out, they’ve got nothing left to stand on.

Smaller projects can be riskier. Young scientists can take more chances. They don’t need to hang an entire career on one. Small projects can look in the unexplored corners and hidden depths. Ironically, small telescopes and projects can find the things that the giant instruments can’t. There can be a lot of small surveys for the cost of a single giant campaign, and with many smaller projects, scientists don’t have to spend their time trying to get a small slice of the observing pie.

There will always be a need for large astronomy projects. But we should be careful that we don’t overbalance, and always keep in mind that in astronomy we have to allow ourselves to be surprised by the unexpected.

The author holds that large astronomy projects