Hubble Turns 10

frinsore writes "Hubble turns 10! Seems like just yesterday that there was a flaw in the mirror, and it couldn't see. Now it's seen black holes, birth of stars, shoemaker-levy and the surface of Pluto. NASA can come back from mistakes." Not only that, but it survived a crash with the Satellite of Love in Mystery Science Theater 3000 : The Movie. Update: 04/25 01:30 by E : Hey, check out HubbleSite, too.

Comments

Hubble the Paperweight?

[Soldier(R)]

I remember the initial fallout with the space program after Hubble. You would have thought NASA would be defunded.

Hopefully, the recent success with Hubble will be a rallying cry for greater investment in space.

However, the problem with Hubble and a lot of other space programs is that they are government-run beurocracies.

Who wouldn't want to buy a piece of NASA on the market should the government privatize it? A new board of directors could be voted in and it would be come a leaner, meaner corporation.

Thought it would suck, admittedly, if AOL bought it out.


Soldier(R)

Re:Hubble the Paperweight?

[jchawk]

Who wouldn't want to buy a piece of NASA on the market should the government privatize it? Only fools, at least until it can show signs of turning a profit. Hopefully the days of mindless investing in pipe dream companies is over with the recent crash of the stock market.

Re:Hubble the Paperweight?

[DeepPurple]

The problem with private companes is they almost always look at the short term and try to make the most profit.

NASA has been forced to do this kind of thing in the past and what happened? The Challenger disaster.

Challenger blew up happened because the sub contractor for the solid fuel boosters decided to make them in several pieces instead of one like they had been before. The seals between the sections failed and the main fuel tank blew up.

This is what happens when private companys are involved on space, people die.

-dp

Re:Hubble the Paperweight?

[Morrigu]

No, I'd have to disagree.

Look at the Skunk Works arm of Lockheed Martin. Regardless of LM's corporate problems over the years, Kelly Johnson and Ben Rich managed to produce aerospace (the SR-71 Blackbird was as much a spacecraft as an airplane) products second to none in performance and reliability.

And it'll take another fifty years for all the documents on the US ballistic missile program to become unclassified, for the public to find out the tremendous engineering achievements that happened under the tightest security imaginable.

The problem with the Challenger disaster is that NASA either was forced or chose to accept (depending on your viewpoint, I'd recommend Richard Feynman's myself :) shoddy work from a cheap contractor, and did nothing to rectify the situation. More money does not always solve problems, but when you add a tight budget, an urgency to perform or risk dissolving the program, and government bureaucracy together, you won't get good results.

Good aerospace engineering, like any other endeavor, takes time, money, and experience to do correctly. It can be done by either a private company or a government agency. When it's done right, it works wonders and accomplishes the impossible. When it's done wrong (unlike a personal computer losing a day's worth of work) people die, programs are cancelled, and billions of dollars are lost.

It's that strict need for quality that makes good engineering so incredible, and bad engineering so tragic.

------------------

Re:Hubble the Paperweight?

[frantzdb]

That's a very simplified explanation. My understanding is that the boosters were manufactured in pieces from different states for political reasons and that dispite the engineres saying unanimously that it was too cold to launch, the higher ups went through with it with spectacular results.

Re:Hubble the Paperweight?

[ostrich2]

As I remember, didn't the engineers of the O-rings know that they weren't reliable under a certain temperature? The problem was that NASA decided that shuttle was going up, and wouldn't listen when the engineers said it might not.

Re:Hubble the Paperweight?

[K8Fan]

Challenger blew up happened because the sub contractor for the solid fuel boosters decided to make them in several pieces instead of one like they had been before. The seals between the sections failed and the main fuel tank blew up.

Challenger blew up because a powerful US Senator from Utah decided that he wanted the contract to build the boosters awarded to one of his friends, Morton Thiokol. Anyone with an ounce of sense would have seen the value of building the boosters as a single section, but that would have required building them on the Atlantic or Gulf coasts and towing the sections by barge. Instead, to provide pork to Utah, the fatally flawed multiple section design was chosen.

It was a going to happen at some point, and may well happen again. The boosters should be a single unit, or welded sections.

Another government screw up!!!

[Glowing Fish]

Well, here is just further proof that NASA can't do anything right, is full of beaurcracy and too expensive. Oh wait...it has been working for ten years.

Well, I tell you, that post office...

Re:Another government screw up!!!

[NaughtyEddie]

Well, if you ask me, the NASA problems lately are a result of too little beauracracy, not too much.

NASA's operations are military in nature - I don't mean they are about killing people, I mean they require military precision - and this precision can only be had by wrapping the whole process up in yards and yards of red tape, process and protocol.

If they did it right, there never would be an "oops" of the magnitude found in early Hubble and recent Mars landers. The beauracracy just isn't doing it's job - that's the problem, and you don't solve it by getting rid of beauracracy altogether!

Re:Another government screw up!!!

[xcedrinod]

I'm with you dude. The problem is, normally the top graduates out of MIT and Caltech would be working for NASA. Nowadays, everyone from interns on up to the Head of JPL Microcomputing are gunning for ground-floor opportunities in the Internet biz. NASA's losing it's edge to brain drain.

Re:Another government screw up!!!

[craw]

You have it partially correct, IMHO. Top grads may perhaps go into private industry, including IPO hungry companies. However, NASA is much more of a contracting agency (versus in-house engineers), than it was back 30 years ago; this is also true for DoD. NASA then contracts out much of the work, and in many cases, this work goes out to companies that employ the best and the brightest. The key thing to remember is that this problem was not created overnight but is a process that start many, many years ago.

However, the problem is one of oversight. Without the in-house expertise to properly review the work that is being performed by the contractor, then there is the potential for problems. Additionally, governmental cutbacks in personnel (in-house expertise) make matters worse.

But I'll like to say that this lack of in-house technical expertise at the upper/middle management level is one that is not unique to NASA or other government agencies. This also affects the high-tech industries when MBA have more power than engineers and computer scientists.

Also remember that the Internet biz is relatively new. The smart grads that you allude to are therefore recent grads. I do not believe that they would have that much impact (i.e., managerial decision making) in so short of a time.

Re:Another government screw up!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If they did it right, there never would be an "oops" of the magnitude found in early Hubble and recent Mars landers. The beauracracy just isn't doing it's job - that's the problem, and you don't solve it by getting rid of beauracracy altogether!

Actually if you research NASA and it's current philosophy at all, you'll come up with faster, smaller, cheaper... These are the bywords describing it's way of doing a whole bunch of little projects (instead of one real big one), that will keep it in funding.

The problem is that they are using successively older parts off the shelf (so they don't have to build or bye anythintg new... that would cost more money...) and they are running schedules that are getting silly (and don't allow time for simply things... er, like QAing the use of the same unit of measure between geographically diverse contributors.)

The results are, that our probes are suffering a litany of foulups, some disappearing from view forever. If you go to JPL lately, you get the feeling, it seems to be a miracle when any of the recent probes work at all.

This isn't a function of the beauracracy, it is a function of the fundamental method by which this beauracracy runs. Wise up... ad a little QUALITY to faster, smaller, cheaper... it's still millions of dollars you're pitching up there, and some of the events you want to record are a one time show. Let's get it right on the first take???

Anne Marie Tobias
mariet@scruznet.com

Re:Another government screw up!!!

[xcedrinod]

Okay, now take into account cases of middle-management at these government scientific agencies going into business for themselves. I know of one JPL manager that left to head up a firm that specializes in commercializing technologies originally developed for the space program.

NASA

[Splitzy]

You know, everybody has been bitching latley about NASA's screw ups and lack of funding, but this is one thing that everyone can be proud of. Hubble has given us beautiful pictures and given us a greater look at our universe in action for a decade now.

Thank you NASA, for giving the human race such a wonderful tool to explore the galaxy.

------------------------

"To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin." -- Cardinal Bellarmine, 1615, during the trial of Galileo

Re:NASA

[b_pretender]

Not to mention Donna Shirley's management of the other Mars exploration mission. Remember? The one that was a huge success.

Donna Shirley and her team produced that little robot that lasted longer then it was designed for, and the whole project ended up UNDER BUDGET.

Shirley also wrote a book (online version) called Managing Creativity full of ...you guessed it... strategies for managing groups of creative researchers and developers. Although I haven't read the book, based upon a NPR interview, I believe to be quite interesting.

If NASA continues to tap into resources such as Donna Shirley, then I believe that they will many successful projects ahead.

--

Re:NASA

[jheinen]

My question is, why doesn't NASA *reuse* the things that work? Pathfinder was a blazing success, yet the very next lander used a totally different landing mechanism. I understand the one that crashed was already in development and it would have been costly to reengineer it, but now they should be basing subsequent science missions on the proven design. Launch the exact same lander with some different instruments. Build ten of them and send them to different locations. You could reuse all that engineering in making things that work. Every probe we've sent has been a one-off design. If they really want "faster, better, cheaper, then start cranking out spacecraft assembly-line fashion.

Re:NASA

[decaym]

The landing method used for Pathfinder can't be used for all types of landers. Many types of instruments wouldn't survive the bounce shocks. Also, the powered landers tend to be a lot heavier than Pathfinder. The beach ball certainly was successful, and should be used more, but it takes a variety of types of landers to do everything needed.

NASA does resuse technology. The 2001 Lander was going to use the same basic platform as the Polar Lander. That was part of the reason for scrubbing the mission.

Face it, the screwups over the last couple of years have pushed back any chance for a human Mars landing by at least five years.

kida off topic but sorta on topic....

[Leibherk]

Besides the crash with the Satellite of Love, Eek the cat struck Hubble quite a few times.

If anyone remembers Eek the cat....

Realistic Space Exploration

[gunner800]

I think the whole Hubble story could serve as a dose of realism for some of the extreme NASA-naysayers. Space exploration (be it hubble or that unlucky Mars robot thing) is difficult and expensive Put the two together, and you've got the possibility of failure.

We shouldn't be surprised that cutting edge technology fails on its way to another planet once in awhile. It would be downright freaky if every NASA project worked perfectly, on time and underbudget.


---
Dammit, my mom is not a Karma whore!

Edwin Hubble would be proud.

[mrdlinux]

Not bad for a satellite... many are destroyed by the time they reach 10 years, or are almost completely useless thanks to all the dust and junk out there. Produced some great pictures, and aided science in a great way. Personally, I'm looking forward to the massive arrays of telescopes they're planning, that can take pictures of Earth-size planets... now hows that for dreaming:)
Interesting how reliable its been, despite having those troubles at first. One patch and it goes? Wish I could say the same for all software..

There was a telescope called Hubble
That had a tendency to see double
Sent over some men,
Who fixed it, and then
The creationists were in deep trouble.

And still kicking...

[MAXOMENOS]

In Hubble's lifetime, we've gathered data from several Mars probes and one highly successful Jupiter probe, discovered new planets, re-written our hypotheses on alien life, located fountains of antimatter spewing out of the centers of galaxies, brought the search for alien life to millions of home computers, and discovered an orientation for the Cosmos. Cosmology has arguably replaced High Energy Physics as the hotest research field, and NASA is still launching interesting missions. Coolest of all, once troubled Hubble may outlive the once bleeding edge Iridium sattelites.

Happy birthday Hubble.

Re:And still kicking...

[craw]

Nice perspective on recent history. I think that you agree with me as to what a good pair of "eyeglasses" can do with respect to Hubble. The other discoveries that you mentioned took place despite the bumbling of NASA. A /. cynic would say, if NASA was competent, we would have made even more discoveries. Failure is more sexy than success.

But this is /. so I must nitpick and disagree.;) You are so right in terms of the "decline" of high energy physiscs. That is soooo 20th century research. Much of this is political, while the additional component is economical. The higher energy levels needed to reach the next level are very expensive. Ane why couldn't there be more quarks to find? Top, bottom, and middle quarks. Up, bottom, and sideways quarks, Strange, charm, and nerd quarks. Woops, Strange and nerd are the same quarks. But ultimately, the decline of high energy physics is due to the success of the 20th century. A scientific resolution provides the impetus for much research. When a better understanding is obtained, then the advances become incremental and not major events.

But, I disgress. Happy birthday Hubble.

The Hubble Telescope VIOLATES ALIENS' PRIVACY

[Yu Suzuki]

I am continually outraged at how the Slashdot community -- a community which supposedly embraces privacy -- has turned a blind eye to the gross privacy violation of the Hubble Space Telescope. Imagine you're some three-eyed space alien living on some distant planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. You're living a happy life; everything seems cool. But what you don't know is that the watchful eye of the United States government has been staring you for the past ten years, taking pictures of you and gathering data on your life like some interplanetary version of The Truman Show. Or suppose you're some big-headed gray alien orbiting the Earth in your UFO, ready to abduct some cattle. You lean out the airlock to take a piss, when suddenly -- BAM! -- the Hubble Space Telescope captures you on film. Talk about humiliating.

Oh, sure, you might say that it doesn't matter what we do to aliens; that it's them, not us. But remember, a violation of anyone's privacy hurts us all. We never how soon it will be before Uncle Sam decides to turn his giant eye towards the Earth. The next thing you know, pictures of you, your family, and your house are being downloaded into NASA's computers. Echelon is nothing compared to the horrific spying power of this insidious machine.

Dismantle the Hubble Space Telescope -- because space aliens have rights too!

Yu Suzuki

Re:The Hubble Telescope VIOLATES ALIENS' PRIVACY

[1337d00d]

because space aliens have rights too!

This violation of privacy is blatent and outrageous. But it seems that the aliens are threatening to take drastic measures if we don't cut it out. See the recent story on this issue for further details into the dangers to humanity in general that our spying might cause.

Re:The Hubble Telescope VIOLATES ALIENS' PRIVACY

[Chuan-kai Lin]

Or suppose you're some big-headed gray alien orbiting the Earth in your UFO, ready to abduct some cattle. You lean out the airlock to take a piss, when suddenly -- BAM! -- the Hubble Space Telescope captures you on film. Talk about humiliating.

Yeah, especially considering that they might have just nailed SETI's Rand Wilson Telescope in South Africa.

Old-School Space Exploration...

[Zipo Bibrok 5e8]

I consider this proof that the "faster, cheaper" philosophy that has taken hold at NASA has to go. Hubble took forever to design and build, was expensive as hell, and now it's indestructible and infinitely productive.

Of course, it's all irrelevant anyway, since we only see what the aliens want us to see. Between ours and Russia's, how many Terran probes have the Martians shot down? Maybe it's time to armor the Hubble so they can't blind us.


Disclaimer: The previous post does not reflect the opinion of my employer, my family, my associates, or even myself, as I haven't taken my medication today.

--

Space Privatization

[HydroCarbon10]

I agree with your point on privatization of space. If no money is to be made then there will be no advancement, and NASA being a goverenment agency isn't out to make money. While there are many in NASA who would like to explore just for explorations sake (and I must say, some good advancements have come out of NASA), they must go to NASA to explore because they are the only place to go. Privatization of space would lead to greater interest as space started making more money and this would inspire more people to space as opposed to a corporate office.

Re:Space Privatization

[jayhawk88]

If no money is to be made then there will be no advancement...Privatization of space would lead to greater interest as space started making more money and this would inspire more people to space....

Your right, there IS money (heli-jack) to be made in space, if not right now then in the near future. Most asteroids are filled with precious minerals (gold, platnium, etc); space tourism will one day be a booming buisiness; zero-G research and manufacturing environments would be beneficial to many industries. The privatization of space will be like the privatization of the internet. Goverment will setup the ground work, such as space/moon/Mars stations, transport shuttles, etc... Once these are in place, and can be achieved at a relatively low cost, the corporate world will be all over it.

Re:old news

[kwsNI]

But ten years ago, you didn't know if they would ever get it working.

IIRC, Hubble was lanched and in space before they realized that there was a manufacturing error in its main mirror. They had to send up a rescue mission to replace it in 1993.

kwsNI

hmm

[bartyboy]

When does this thing get decomissionned? I'd like to buy out some time on it.

I'd turn it around, align it with my place, go outside, look up and wave, and have a really nice picture.

Bart

Re:hmm

[DeepPurple]

Wouldn't work.

Turning hubble towards earth would blind it. The instuments on board are so sensitive that the astronomers have to be very careful they don't look at either the earth or the sun.

-p

Re:hmm

[anticypher]

If you go and read "the cuckoo's egg" by Cliff Stoll, find the part where he mentions the cracker is looking for something called KeyHole 11.

The NSA guy goes pale when he hears that. Cliff asks him what it means, and the guy says that KH11 is the same as the Hubble, only it points at the earth. Cliff does the math for what the optical properties would be (badly, he later admitted, because he didn't take into account adaptive optics and a dozen other well known tricks), and comes up with the resolution for what a Hubble sized telescope could see on the ground, 8-15 cms.

Over on sci.military and alt.conspiracy the story maintains that in the 60's, the NRO had brought in some astronomers to create a telescope that could spy on the earth with great precision. The astronomers created at least 12 of them, each bigger and better than the last. But the optics and communications packages were made for looking downwards, and the astronomers were dying to point it at stars. They carefully leaked a lot of the design specs to others starting in the 70's. This got turned into congressional funding, and eventually the single Hubble was created. Rumour has it the hubble and keyhole satellites share an almost identical design, only the sensor packages and civilian communication packages are different.

the AC

Re:hmm

[Cramer]

"We" already have hardware in orbit capable of sub-millimeter imaging. The problem is all this damned atmosphere in the way. Refraction from the atmosphere seriously limits resolution -- there are corrective methods, but the atmosphere doesn't have a uniform density.

[Microscopes have the same refractive problems at high magnification -- around 800x.]

Re:hmm

[mph]

What do we have in orbit that could do sub-millimeter imaging of the earth? A Hubble-sized (2.2m) mirror at 200 km operating at about 4000 angstroms has a diffraction limit in excess of 40mm.

Do you propose that we have a 90-meter telescope in orbit? Or one that's orbiting low enough to collide with a small mountain?

Space Exploration

[1337d00d]

The Hubble Telescope has been able to see Uranus, but we haven't gotten a probe onto the surface of Uranus yet. What good is it if you can only look at it?

Re:Space Exploration

[rodgerd]

We haven't gotten to the surface of Uranus for much the same reason we haven't gotten to the surface of Saturn.

I remember Eek (slightly off topic, hehe =)

[The Evil Beaver]

That cat with psychotic owners, and a fat girlfriend who lived next door, and there was Sharky the Shark Dog. And Eek was always getting injured. Since Fox stopped showing it Saturday mornings, I haven't watched morning cartoons since.
Let's start a crusade to bring back Eek!

EvilBeaver, God of IRC

Re:I remember Eek (slightly off topic, hehe =)

[Pxtl]

Heh, I preferred its sister show, Terrible Thunder Lizards. That kicked ass. And yah, this is off-topic too.

Re:I remember Eek (slightly off topic, hehe =)

[D Fens]

Let's start a crusade to bring back Eek!

I only watched Eek! because it was on next to my favorite Fox cartoon (...drumroll)

The Tick!

Now that is a cartoon worth a crusade.

Are we off-topic yet?

Freaky...

[ryan360]

I was just watching MST3K The Movie as I was hitting "refresh"

"'Hull Breach, All Die', even had it underlined."

Re:Freaky...

[jorbettis]

I love that movie.

My favorite line is "It's the best weather Earth has ever had" on the opening when the Earth is shown with no clouds. I still say that whenever I see an old Universal film with the earth and no clouds.

Re:Freaky...

[kasnj]

Heading off topic? Maybe...but if you miss MST3K (I do!) and want to see what the ex-MST folks are up to, visit: http://www.timmybighands.com/

Important Links

[1337d00d]

This is actually ontopic. The above post addresses an important topic. Some very reputable Open Source advocates have spoken their mind on this issue here.

More upgrades on the way...

[bjtuna]

Here at my school, Johns Hopkins, the Physics and Astronomy department is developing the Hubble Advanced Camera. The AdCam will increase the power of the Hubble by 10x.

http://adcam.pha.jhu.edu is the link for more info.

Hubble Haiku

[hypergeek]

Once it was broken
Then the astronauts fixed it
Put more Geeks In Space

Re:AOL-Space

[1337d00d]

thousand tons of explosives to your back and propel yourself to space with none of the hassle of education or intelligence!

Click on the star system, and you're off! Of course, it costs extra to download fuel and oxygen. It could eliminate the entire AOL user base in one swoop. (Of course, you need to think about the impression the average 1337 AOLer would give to extraterrestrials..)

It's older than that

[/]

Remember, it was grounded and mothballed for several years before it got launched. (Can anyone say "Engineering difficulties and the Challenger explosion"?) According to this timeline on Nasa's website, "spacecraft integration" was completed in 1985. By my math, that would make Hubble 15 years old today, not 10, although obviously the resolution wasn't too good before it got launched (though some would say the same about after it was launched and before the subsequent repairs).

Re:It's older than that

[mattorb]

True, but it'd be damn hard to pinpoint a "birthday" apart from the time it actually went up. :-) The time you set the last bolt? The time the main mirror was polished for the last time? Who knows. In any case, HST was in planning for a number of years before the 1985 integration you mention.

BTW, people may not realize just how long the life cycle on this sort of project is ... for instance, the first meeting regarding the *Next Generation* Space Telescope (ie, the successor to HST) was held in, I think, 1989. NGST won't go up for another, oh, seven to ten years. :-)

Re:It's older than that

[/]

I figured that since people are using a silly word like "born", they might as well make a proper analogy. It was born when it was finally all put together, version 1.0. Sometime after it was "conceived" and before it got its booster shots, got its tonsils taken out, had radial keratotomy to fix its myopia, etc. :-)

Hubble The PR Machine

[Hrunting]

Have you ever noticed how when NASA gets in a funk, it's always the Hubble Telescope that saves the day? I mean, think about it, the first real important mission after the Challenger accident was the launch of the telescope. When the telescope was defective, NASA used it to show just how expertly astronauts can work in outer space (can we say 'space station' anyone?). NASA gets in a bit of trouble with the Mars missions and, whoa, Hubble turns ten (and re-releases some pretty pictures to boot). Hubble has done a wonderful job of generating PR for NASA. In fact, tonight on ABC World News, I saw a report on how the only pictures scientists ever release from Hubble are the really pretty one (they have a gallery at their web site, although I haven't checked it out yet).

Hubble's a PR machine, especially when you consider that the real brunt work is done by other space telescopes like Chandra. In fact, Hubble gets the most attention because its imagery is the most 'real' to the layman (read: Congressman .. or woman .. but not person).

So here's to ten more years of Hubble. Hopefully, it can keep NASA around long enough for it to get the next big PR booster it needs, the space station.

Re:Hubble The PR Machine

[Anonymous Coward]

bit of trouble with the Mars missions and, whoa, Hubble turns ten

Yes, hubble turning ten was all part of the conspiracy. You see, hubble didn't actually turn ten, but NASA wants to make you think it did.

This post is important, so I shall alert everybody on Slashdot to that fact:
SMP LINUX DISTRO
BEOWULF CLUSTER
PERL PROGRAMMING IPO OPEN SOURCED UNDER THE GPL
BSD LISCENSE BOUGHT OUT BY LINUX CRYPTO HACKERS TO PREVENT MICROSOFT TOKEN RING ETHERNETS!

Re:Hubble The PR Machine

[zCyl]

NASA isn't that good at running a conspiracy then. :) The Hubble had it's problems. I trust you remember the "Ooo, look, we just put up this great new telescope, now look at the... uh... damn... why is the picture so fuzzy?"

jet engine boosters

[jab]

Clearly this is off topic, but I want to know anyway. The shuttle has solid rocket boosters, that only fire for a little bit then break off. Why can't it have jet engine boosters, that do exactly the same thing. (But get more bang for the buck since they don't have to carry an oxidizer along with the fuel?)

Re:jet engine boosters

[cvincent]

one of the many reasons is because jet engines require oxygen....

you dont find much of that in the ionosphere :)

Re:Futurama

[Drone-X]

Um, I always thought Ally McBeal was human? I could be wrong though.

Re:Futurama

[MattXVI]

Nope. Preying Mantis. Look it up.

Re:3,300,000 pounds of thrust (Each!)

[Money__]

1) Take a brick.
2) Weigh the brick to make sure it ways one pound at sea level.
3) Make a pile of bricks 3,300,000 big.
4) Twice.
5) Throw both piles of bricks into orbit.
6) Acuratly.

These 2 candle sticks provide over 70% of the lift required to get the shuttle to jump off the pad.

I haven't kept up with recent developments on jet engine design, but I can assure you that there is no way to get this kind of thrust/weight ratio in any other reusable device. http://spaceflig ht.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shutref/srb/srb.html has more info.
___

Re:old news

[frinkster]

But ten years ago, you didn't know if they would ever get it working

Yeah, I remember that all too well. My Grandfather was an engineer on the Hubble team at (then) Martin Marietta. I can remember telling everyone that would listen about my super-human Grandfather (hey, I was a geek, proud, and 11) only to find out that it had a defective mirror. Needless to say, I got made fun of and picked on even more at recess. Nobody seemed to care that it was the fault of some subcontractor that they bought the mirror from...

sure, but also good science

[mattorb]

You raise some good points, but I'd strongly disagree with the contention that the "real brunt work" is done by other satellites -- in fact, HST has contributed more (IMHO) to astronomy than *any* other satellite, ever. The pretty pictures are great (and you might be surprised how much science can be gleaned from such pictures), but there's also a lot of awfully hard-core stuff going on behind them. With Hubble, we've refined our notions of what goes on in supernovae (via SN 1987a), we've studied the environments in which stars form (O'Dell, Bally, etc's work on the Orion nebula), and we've gotten some strong hints as to the structure of the Universe as well as its ultimate fate. (Think of the "Key Project"'s determinations of H_0, or the various supernovae groups' determinations that there may have to be a "cosmological constant.")

I guess my point is this: sure, there are areas Hubble will never be able to probe, questions it will never be able to answer, pictures it will never be able to take. And other satellites have been designed to probe those areas, answer those questions, take those pictures. But Hubble has done what it was *designed* to do, extremely well. We'll all be sorry when it's gone. ;-)

Just my 2 cents.

Re:sure, but also good science

[wholesomegrits]

astronomy than *any* other satellite, ever

Not really. Think about Sputnik: worthless little orb not even fit for a christmas tree topper. It did more for astronomy, indirectly, than Hubble could ever do. Seriously.

Re:sure, but also good science

[Bryan K. Feir]

HST has contributed more (IMHO) to astronomy than *any* other satellite, ever.

Well, there are challengers to that, though they don't get anywhere near the level of media support... The Japanese HALCA satellite, part of the VSOP project, is a radio telescope up in orbit. While putting a radio telescope up in orbit doesn't get you the same sort of improvement as you get for optical wavelengths, what it does give you is much longer baselines for VLBI.

In VLBI, you take the signals from two or more radio telescopes watching the same object, correlate the signals, and check for interference patterns. The resolution you can get is based on the distance between the telescopes: effectively, you get the resolution you'd get if you have a telescope as big as the longest distance between sites. And when you have a satellite in high orbit, that can be a long distance. Combining HALCA with dozens of radio telescopes all over the world has produced radio images that have hundreds of times the resolution of the Hubble.

The Russians were supposed to be doing this with their RadioAstron satellite five years ago, but I'm sure everybody knows what the Russian space program has been like lately. RadioAstron may still launch, and there are already plans for a next-generation space VLBI mission...

-- Bryan Feir

It could always see..

[Ermit]

> Seems like just yesterday that there was a flaw in the mirror, and it couldn't see.

Actually, Hubble has always been able to see. The flaw in the mirror only held it from performing as well as NASA had expected it to.

Cheaper?

[jabber]

Standard disclaimer: I am not a space cadet.

IIRC, solid rocket boosters are a lot less complicated and a lot cheaper. They have few moving parts, unlike a jet engine, and so there's less engine and more fuel.

Re:3,300,000 pounds of thrust (Each!)

[Detritus]

70 tons of aluminum oxide? Oh my God, we're all going to die!

Don't forget about the vast quantities of dihydrogen monoxide produced by the main engines.

NASA must be stopped before they destroy the planet!

And there's a birthday party, too!

[Medievalist]

NASA HST crew partez this weekend, and I managed to luck into an invite! Hoo-AH! Now to figure out how to get around the tie-or-tux "black-tie optional" requirement... maybe I can dust off that old Universal Life Church Ministries' certificate and dummy up a clerical collar...
-Charlie

Re:Space Privatization -> Scarcity value

[StrawberryFrog]

> Most asteroids are filled with precious minerals (gold, platnium, etc);

Gold is not valuable. I mean, it is not widely used in industry. It gets dug out of one hole in the ground (a mine) and put in another one (a vault) so people can pretend that its presence there influences the price of money. If there were more of it around, that notion would run into trouble, which some think would be a Bad Thing.

Telescope on the ISS

[Criwi]

What about attaching a Space telescope to the ISS? Maintainace would be much easier and it'll be a lot easier to extend it.

New Hubble Website & Slashbox!

[HyPeR_aCtIvE]

Also in celebration of the 10th anniversary, STScI (the people who run the Hubble), have released a newly designed website hubble.site Plus Cowboyneal made a slashbox for hubble.site to show the most current pictures from Hubble!

Re:3,300,000 pounds of thrust (Each!)

[rc-flyer]

I wonder how many people will realize that dihydrogen monoxide is nothing more than water?

Offtopic?

[HydroCarbon10]

Perhaps someone should read the moderator rules. I was cleary replying to the last line of the comment stating that AOL owning space would be bad. In fact, if you don't believe me, I will quote here: Thought it would suck, admittedly, if AOL bought it out. And also, I quote from the moderator guidelines: If you can't be deep, be funny

NASA mixed success

[peter303]

Two steps forward, one step back ....

The Galileo probe, hobbled by a broken attenna,
was a "success" too. Even though it only has
2% of its planned data transmission capacity,
it has lasted three times longer than planned
and still returns fantastic pictures of Jupiter's
moons.

Ditto, for Mars. Three of the last five probes
blew up. However, the little pathfinder robot
and the current surveyor orbitor are returning
great pictures.

What ever happened to the International Space Station?
Russia squandered the billions NASA contracted
out for their modules. The space shuttle is
launching this week to keep the tiny piece already
in ordit from falling into the atmosphere.

Re:Space Privatization -> Scarcity value

[CSG_SurferDude]

That's probably a troll, but I'll bite anyways...

Gold is used in the Semiconductor industry... It's those little wires to connect chips to pins.

Gold is used as a plating on pins, in order to reduce corrosion (And loss of signal/power) on pins also.

Gold is pretty. Ask my wife. As long as gold is pretty, it will be used for jewelry.

BTW: The USA (and other countries) don't use the gold standard anymore. Haven't for years. Gold is only used as a method of storing "value" by people who are willing to trade it for cash to other people who believe it holds value.

Hubble's corrective lenses

[Eric Hillman]

Shortly before the Hubble was launched, some science magazine -- I think it was probably "Discover" -- ran a big article about the process of making the main mirror. The article went on about the amazing technology and mind-blowing accuracy of the project. According to the article, if the mirror was blown up to the size of Lake Erie, there wouldn't be a ripple on the surface of more than a centimeter. In fact, they had *exceeded* NASA's accuracy requirements by a considerable amount.

As it later turned out, there was a miscalculation in the system that was responsible for calculating the accuracy of the mirror. In other words, what happened was that the main mirror was built to bad specifications, but followed those specifications *precisely* Two other systems used for testing the mirror had indicated that the mirror was warped, but weren't considered as trustworthy or sensitive as the one that turned out to be broken.

Luckily for NASA, they were able to go back and determine, with micron-level accuracy, the exact flawedness of the mirror. Then, they calculated the exact counter-deformation necessary to fix the Hubble's vision and so pulled off one of the greatest technical and PR coups of their history.

Which just goes to show... something. Anyways, I always thought that was a neat story.

--
perl -e '$_="06fde129ae54c1b4c8152374c00";
s/(.)/printf "%c",(10,32,65,67,69,72,

3 Words:

[kwsNI]

Mars Polar Lander...

kwsNI

Re:Futurama

[Drone-X]

Um, ok. Dictionary.com has proven its value again.

Correcting Emmit

[ComradePenguin]

Uhh...If you had watched MST3K the Movie you'd remember the Hubble was destroyed by Mike J. Nelson.He riped it open with the SOL's(Shit Out'a Luck?) manipulator arm,and when he released it,Tom and Crow look out the window,Crow wishes it luck,The Hubble crashes,and the botss taunt Mike as they enter the theater...."Mike broke the Hubble!".NASA had to replace the telescope,so the HST isn't really 10 years old,it's just a front to cover-up Mike's screwup.

I KNOW IT'S OFFTOPIC,but I felt the need to correct Emmit's horible mistake.Thank you.

Re:Space Privatization -> Scarcity value

[jayhawk88]

Gold is not valuable.

I guess that's why it sells for $300 an ounce, huh? Probably not much use for it in electronics either (RAM, connectors, etc).

Enemy of the State

[setecastronomy]

The most recent keyhole satellites can get resolutions in the vicinity of 5 cm, with computer enhancement (and therefore not realtime). If you want an idea of the kind of things the government can turn on you, go see the movie 'Enemy of the State.' They don't get everything right (for instance, the real-time resolution of the keyhole satellites), but in general they do a good job. That's one movie that will send a chill down your spine...

Oh, and Cuckoo's Nest was a great book; I don't remember the part mentioning the keyhole satellite, though...