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Clock Ticking for Hubble
DoraLives writes "Ok then, what are we going to do with Hubble? Eventually, it MUST come down. The New York Times has a piece that addresses this less than pleasant (at least for the astronomical community) subject. Additionally "The decision about what happens then has been complicated by the breakup of the Columbia." Read all about it."
Why would that complicate things? All the incident proved was what we know already. Besides, Hubble's done some great things, and of course it'll have to come down eventually. We just have to move on and produce a successor.
Bash script for FP whores
Why not just shove it into a bit higher orbit?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Of course, Taco Bell will put a big floating bullseye in the ocean and if some titanium part of hubble hits it everyone in the US wins a Taco!
Wooo Hoooo!
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Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
Why don't we get some other country
to foot the bill on boosting it
into a sustainable orbit and paying
for the initial maintenance after
2010. I'm sure that an India or
Taiwan would be willing to take it on
for less than $500 million.
Click here
Reality has a liberal bias
Cant we just strap some rockets and launch it into deep space for our decedents to find?:)
What about the idea of just leaving it up there? Maybe send it towards the sun to be destroyed, if that's possible, rather than just leaving it to float and potentially get in the way later.
Implications?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Well they might retrieve it or they'll let it crash, mmm free tacos :)~ Then they'll just put another one up with more toys.. you know it will happen.
According to the Beeb, ground-based telescopes are catching up, referring to the Gemini observatory.
Hubble is the biggest bang for the buck NASA has done in decades. It's one of the few shuttle missions actually doing productive science. Give it a boost and keep it operating.
Thanks, Google.
"Mike broke the Hubble! Mike broke the Hubble!"
Send it to mars, maybe we could get some good pics of the place that way...
Linux is to the internet as Duct Tape is to the Universe.
Not that 're-deployment' would be easy, mind you, but unless there's some kind of fuel issue, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible (bearing in mind I'm far from an expert on the subject).
On one hand, it would develop skills for astronauts that would be needed on the Space Stations, on the other, it's not cheap and doesn't provide advancement in deployed equipment.
Then again, maybe in 50 years, retrofitting sattelites for technology upgrades by Space Station personnel might become a regular thing.
"Gotta do an EVA to install an upgrade on the Hubble, back in about half an hour. Want me to pick up anything while I'm out?"
How difficult would it be for us to use some other craft to boost the hubble into a higher orbit? it's not as if it's any secret what coupling mechanism it has, it should be easy (relatively speaking) to have something unmanned do it.
In terms of maintenance of the Hubble, why don't they consider a structure that allows them to completely envelop and grapple to the telescope, so that they can work without nearly as serious a risk of losing parts while it's disassembled? Whatever they would employ wouldn't have to enclose an atmosphere, but it would provide a room-like feel for astronauts, rather than the current unsurrounded feel. If they drifted away, they would make contact with a wall, and then rebound. Parts that drift would be easily found.
If they felt really adventurous, they could build a module that would be self-contained with an atmosphere that the Hubble could be brought into for service, complete with a personnel airlock, and when not in use be placed into a convenient orbit or else brought down in pieces for later use...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
We spent so much time, money and effort fixing it, why not spend some more and upgrade it for another decade of use?
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
NASA has long planned to end Hubble's spectacular run and bring it down in 2010 to make way in the budget for the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to be launched in 2011.
Theres a gap there in time where we wont have a telescope up there. this will be the end of the world, as we wont be able to see the asteroid comming at earth in time to send our best deep crust drillers to drop a nuke in it and split it up!
I was just thinking, what happened to the space program is a classic example of why it's better for things to be privatized. I mean, one of the worst possible things that can happen to a government program is ..... that is becomes successfull. At that point it becomes an entrenched bureauocracy that sucks the air out ofanything else that might have been a viable or healthy alternative. The moon race isn't the only example, SSI, public education, medicade/medicare are all drastic and sorry failures. I really feel sorry for the prople who truely believe in them.
If would have been nice if the article explained why it costs so much to maintain and why we have to periodically spacewalk to it. Does it need new batteries? Does it have to get cleaned? Can it not correct it's own orbital decay?
What's the deal? Anyone know? Seems like if it was mostly self-maintaining, it should cose a whole lot to just keep it up there.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
Technology exist to design a heat shield. Make one to fit over the end of it just like the Mercury or Apollo capsules.
make a head resistant cone out of fabric to wrap around the rest of it. Have it over a simple frame.
Package a parachute inside the fabric cone.
Fire retro rockets at the right time and land it anywhere you wish. Score one for the Space Museum
!!
He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obsta
If sending up a Shuttle to re-establish a fresh orbit for Hubble would be cheaper than building a new and improved Hubble and launching it?
Development cost of Hubble: $2 billion
Cost of one space shuttle launch: $600 million
So you can get in excess of three launches for the same cost of the Hubble.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I just find is pathetic that the U.S. can't find $600m to refurb the HST. We're spending about twice that EVERY DAY on operations in Iraq.
Just pull the troops out two days earlier and there you have it... enough cash to service the Hubble twice!
My opinion is that the HST should be retrofitted with a small nuclear power source (like those on the Voyager series) and send out of the solar system. But unlike previous missions were the probes were sent past the outer planets, we should send HST perpendicular to the Earth's orbit, so we can look back "down" on ourselves and surrounding stars/planets.
I can't recall if the solar system plane is about parallel to the galactic plane, but if so this would also give us a tremendous perspective on the galaxy that we haven'y had before. Yea, yea it would take a decade or two to get to a distance that would mean anything astronomically, but it has to happen some time, why not now.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
I've got my catcher's mit ready but is it going to be enough? Well I'll figure that out when I get there.
I dont get it. Fixing Hubble is okay, but picking it up is not okay because then they will be in an unsafe orbit without access to the ISS? Do the Orbits change? Of whom? ISS? Hubble?
Its not the speed that kills you. Its the sudden stop.
I've been an avid avid amateur telescope maker since I was twelve years old. It led to me studying astronomy for a time at Caltech. While I'm a programmer now, it's still a very enjoyable and intellectually stimulating hobby.
While a basic newtonian is a straightforward instrument that can be built by anyone who's good with their hands, telescope making can get as complicated as you want if you're really looking for a challenge. Optical design is still a wide open area of research in mathematics, software engineering, and physics, and some of the more interesting designs take quite a bit of skill to fabricate. That means anyone can make a satisfying telescope, but the hobby will yield a lifetime of interest because there's always new things to learn.
You can construct your own telescope with a primary mirror of 8 inches in diameter for less than $200. It will take quite a bit of work, but it is enjoyable and meditative work. Grinding mirrors is one of the things I do to relax and relieve the strain of coding all day.
A good place to start looking for information is the ATM FAQ. The procedures for grinding, polishing and figuring are pretty involved - you should buy one of the books from astronomy publisher Willman-Bell.
There are a number of people and business who sell inexpensive mirror grinding kits. They will come with a glass mirror blank and an assortment of different sizes of abrasive grits. I would recommend asking on the ATM mailing list (that you can find in the FAQ) when you're ready to order your first kit.
The 8" plate glass kit I bought from Dan Cassaro for my current project set me back $64. When I get done working on the mirror, it will cost me about $35 to have a vacuum coating laboratory aluminize it. Good quality eyepieces cost about $50 - just one will do to start with but it helps to have more.
While fancy equatorial mountings can be expensive to make, it's possible to make a quite servicable altazimuth mount out of common materials like plywood and a few hand tools.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
if maybe NASA leaks these tidbits just so the bright folks on /. can brainstorm and solve all their problems? It's the thinktank of thinktanks, after all. Or maybe they just like to tease the fiscal conservatives. Silly rocket scientists.
"What the hell is that thing?"
"It appears to be the mothership."
"Then what did we just blow up?"
"The Hubble Telescope."
"You tried your best and failed miserably. The lesson is...never try. Heh!" -Homer
complicated by the breakup of the Columbia.
When did Columbia break up? I didn't hear anything about it. But that's probably because it's such a small country compaired to the former USSR. Wow, such is the times.
Hubble = rubble!
Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaaaaahaw.
I crack myself up.
For everything Hubble has done to further astronomy (and since it was practically the only bright spot of the otherwise maligned space program), they owe it a better end than what they are proposing. To deorbit it and let it burn up with as much thought as one would give to flushing a dead goldfish is just plain wrong.
It should definitely be retrieved and become a piece in the Air & Space Museum's collection.
Hubble can be part of an observatory on Mars!
I don't know exactly how much of my tax money goes toward funding Hubble, but even apart from the science I get a pretty good entertainment value from the the pictures it has produced, such as the wonderful picture of NGC 7742 on the APOD page for today.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Why is everyone so firmly opposed to registering with NYTimes.com? Not only is it free and easy, but they provide useful services. They aren't going to track you down and accuse you of downloading illegal warez. Just register once for heaven's sake and never think about it again.
o
This neither qualifies as free-as-in-beer nor free-as-in-speech, but rather free-because-I-won't-let-anyone-tell-me-what-to-d
Hubble is an overgrown version of a digital camera. As CCDs improve, you eventually want to replace the ones up there with better ones. This has already been done a couple of times, but electronics keeps improving.
It also has batteries and solar cells that provide power, and these wear out and have to be replaced.
Hubble needs to point itself at things, and it does so using heavy spinning rotors, which are
turned one way, and by Newton's Law, Hubble
turns the other way. There are 5 of these
"Control Moment Gyros", or CMGs. Being mechanical devices, they wear out and break over time.
You need 3 out of 5 to be working to point Hubble, and if they have an MTBF of 12.5 years (which is pretty good for a mechanical device), then you need to visit every 5 years and replace 2 to keep Hubble running.
Hubble has no propulsion and you don't want any until you are ready to kill it. Fluids sloshing in tanks will mess up your pointing of the telescope, and any exhaust from a rocket will contaminate the optical surfaces. When the Shuttle visits, the thrusters are 50-75 feet away, which is much less of a problem than if your booster pack is on the back end of the telescope only 2 feet from the science instruments.
And yes, IAARS, in fact the first group I worked at at Boeing back in 1981 supplied the graphite/epoxy frame that holds Hubble's mirrors in place.
Daniel
It's partly down to privacy - if you're registered - the New York Times could (in theory) check on which stories you're looking at. You don't have to register to view the offline version so why should you to read the online version? Of course the NYT would say that it helps them find out how many readers are looking at their online edition which their advertisers would like to know....
Video Game cheats, hints a
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and then use it to take pictures of barbara steisand's house.
even better, they could keep it around to take pictures of their damaged shuttles.
Well, Hubble has been a brilliant program. The big problem with keeping it going is political and economic. If NASA tries to extend the life of Hubble, this will put pressure on delaying the NGST (Next Generation Space Telescope). Plus, operating two separate programs at once is expensive. NASA would probably like a lot of the same people now running Hubble to run NGST. With Hubble still operating, that's hard to do.
Then there's the question of whether someone else could run it. This could either be a public institution taking it over completely (think JPL, or a major research university), selling it to a foreign country (Europeans?) to run it, or letting a private company run it for profit. The problem w/ #2 is national pride & national security-- could Hubble be a really good spy camera? The problem w/ #3 is assuring public access. Of course, with NGST allowing free access for researchers, it would be tough to compete. A private company would have a tough time getting enough revenues to run it. Which leaves #1-- but they'd need to be given a sizable budget to run it, since with the free NGST how would it be run?
I think the best option would be for 10-20 major institutes to collectively run it and pay for it, using it 50-90% of the time and selling the rest. But will these institutes have the $500,000,000 to pay NASA for the necessary servicing missions?
As for disposal, I still think NASA should go up, grab it & bring it back to earth. It would be a phenomenal exhibit and a great piece of history. As far as not going b/c of post-Columbia stuff, that's overblown. I think NASA will require good contingency for non-Space Station missions, but to rule out Hubble missions would be seriously misguided. NASA could equip the shuttle with repair capabilities, have another shuttle ready to launch, or have a set of emergency supplied ready to be delivered aboard an Atlas V or Delta IV. I'm sure this has been proposed, and I think the final recommendations won't rule out a Hubble recovery mission.
Sure hubble has done great things for astronomy but it is just a hunk of metal (and other materials).
I am sure that I still have my first computer somewhere in the loft but that didn't cost me $600 M to keep.
Wouldn't be much better and more respectfull to the exsisting peice of metal to spend the money you would use preserving it to build a bigger better teliscope. (what happened to the idea of building arrays of teliscopes in orbit?)
A lot of the things in the air and space museam are replicas anyway, one more won't hurt.
Maybe it's time for the US to test some of their cool new weaponry. They must have SOMETHING neat that was designed to take out high altitude stuff. What better chance to prove it's effectiveness? I mean, the Hubble has to come down anyway, so why not give us all a show?
Here the the correct link.
Video Game cheats, hints a
They need to just point the Hubble back to earth and create the worlds best voyeur porn site. They could fund all their other missions with that money.
Why not rename it the Hubbard Space Telescope? Then you can get Hollywood Scientology types to pay big bucks to keep it in the air.
`which fortune`
Okay, although that will most likely be practically true, it's a bit of a logical fallacy.
Technically we could keep boosting it indefinitely, and given that "it must come down" is being stated with the reference frame of Earth in mind, we could kick it up out of earth orbit entirely just to screw with the prediction :)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Call the replacement to the Hubble Telescope the Matlock Telescope!
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
As much as I hate saying anything against ANY part of our space exploration, I would have to say that STScI is right behind NASA in being the cause of ossification of science. Thanks to the bureaucracy, the average astronomer has NO chance of receiving observing time on the Hubble, but the members of STScI have gained fame and fortune, thanks to the taxpayers' largesse. They've tied their fortunes to the Hubble, and if it stops, they may have to actually produce! "Faster, better, cheaper" is a good motto. High-end astronomy is a good thing, but when a program starts drawing resources from other programs it should be ended. Wouldn't you rather see more planetary probes, maybe a Mars colony? I am an amateur astronomer, and personally I don't care WHEN the universe began or ends. We've got a whole Solar system out there in our backyard. let's go explore!
Amtrak is a government operation. Worldcom and Enron are insignificant compared to the great mass of successful, productive businesses. And at least Worldcom and Enron go OUT of business when they fail, unlike failed government operations which go on, and on, and on, and on, and on.
There is no reason why we'd need to bring the hubble telescope back to earth. There is a ton of debris in space, there is no reason to bring all of that down, why should we bring the hubble back?
http://www.pornstarguru.com/page.php?x=319680& m=1
From there, my firewall blocked it, and consequently got the plain old white page. Your results may vary.
it's called.
With a 2.4 m mirror I'm sure would some astronauts could put it to good use with an el-cheapo ccd at 25,000 or so and a large cardboard tube. I'm a bit of a purest and prefer visual only, it would be pretty incredible to
It's alot of weight and a terrible waste to lose some manufactured materials if you concider how much it cost per pound to get something in low earth orbit.
I just find is pathetic that the U.S. can't find $600m to refurb the HST. We're spending about twice that EVERY DAY on operations in Iraq.
Just pull the troops out two days earlier and there you have it... enough cash to service the Hubble twice!
I'm getting so sick of you cry-babies I'm almost starting to LIKE Bush.
Hippy.
Wouldn't it be better to have something like Hubble as a part of the ISS? That way people could be on-hand to repair/upgrade it as necessary, and would save having to have separate missions to both.
Or is the relatively low orbit of the ISS a problem? I know the Hubble is a lot higher than the ISS.
You have to pay to read the offline version.
Why not just move Hubble up into Sun orbit rather than earth orbit.
It fit in the Shuttle to begin with. I mean, what complications can possibly accompany such a choice? After all, this isn't Mir or Skylab.
The problem is whether the Webb is really going to happen on time. And unlike that old 386, we can't leave the Hubble in the space closet running some appliance application under linux, because it will fall back sooner or later, and that needs to be controlled.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
This has already been done! (at the request of Carl Sagan in the early 90's)
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
The best replacement I've heard of was something outside of jupiters orbit. I forget the name but it's design had the potential surface area equivalency of a square kilometer (gotta love technology) and (best discript) accumulative imaging.
I'd do it myself if i had points. This is way too amusing, in a sad kind of way.
unless you read it at a public library
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
For the same reason you don't put an 80GB ATA133 in that old 486.
Sometimes it's better to just to get a new machine.
It *will* be sad when Hubbble burns up. (And don't think that it's ever going to come down nicely. That opportunity was lost with Columbia as others have pointed out.)
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Off by a factor of two, give or take. 8 km/sec for a typical LEO velocity would be better.
The Earth orbits the sun at around 30KM/S, give or take.
This one's right where it ought to be.
The fastest any object has left the earth is around 8KM/S for the interplanetary probes
8 miles per second it is. Chalk it up to a conversion error.
Otherwise your post is on the money. Yeah yeah, I know I know, it's a damnable bit of persnickityness, but no sense in giving folks bad numbers when good ones are just as cheap, eh?
Is it fascism yet?
Build yourself a Dobsonion scope and buy the pre-ground optics.
Years ago I made a fantastic 10" Dobsonion mount and had joined the Toronto astronomy club to start grinding a mirror. Well, time went on as grinding these things takes a *lot* of time and along the way I went off to Japan. Whilst I was away the my parents moved and asked what to do with the scope which was taking up space at their house. I had them take it over to the astronomy club for safekeeping. Shortly thereafter the club ran into trouble and shut down. My dobsonion and mirror disappeared and the scope was never completed.
In hindsite I should have just ordered the optics as they aren't that expensive.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
If Webb is going to be a literal replacement for Hubble, it could be in a similar orbit as Hubble. If so you could kill two birds with one stone--shuttle up with Webb in it, deploy it, then retrieve Hubble on the same trip.
Ya, that introduces a ton of logistical problems--three massive objects in close proximity (shuttle, Webb, Hubble), or fuel to shift orbit, tech crew has to be trained in deployment and capture of different satellite, etc; and I suppose Hubble wasn't meant to be returned to Earth to begin with.
But it sure wouldn't cost an additional $600M (the cost of a typical shuttle launch), and an important piece of space history could be preserved.
or a B&N
De sig boss de sig
I call dibs!
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Point it towards the earth. Buy pictures of you picking your nose!
you will see almost an opposite coorlation.
Coorlation?
Is that, like, the relationship between how much beer I've drank and um, you know, like how bad my english on Slashdot becomes?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
for my glasses, dammit to hell I am blind. I'll also be needing a huge frame as well.
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
IMHO the HST should be retired, but only if we THINK that the new telescope program is well funded. But I dont know exactly how the new program is funded.
Anyway, with Hubble out of the way it will motivate private and public reasearch $ into the telescope arena. Something we could use.
Using adaptive optics, Astronomers have been able to take pictures from earth that rival Hubble article. A newer space telescope could probably do better, but for now hubble isn't really that important.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Plans exist to orbit a replacement telescope, but I don't recall if that project is actually funded.
In point of fact, however, this illustrates the fundamental unsoundness of U.S. space policy since the premature close of the Apollo project during the Nixon administraton. The shuttle was justified as a way to get to the space statoin amd the space station was justified as a place for the shuttle to go.
The failure of every administration since Nixon's to provide leadership and a coherent space policy is the reason we are in this mess. The White House should be making space policy and assigning goals to NASA. No one has one that since Kennedy, and it shows.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The world needs some real villains, well real Bond style villains. A gaint space based laser, not one of those stupid Anti-Missile LASRERs, but a large scale anit-structural LASER in geosyncrhonis orbit with favroite slashdot targets, like RIAA headquarters, Redmond Washington, or other places that cannot be mentioned because of NSA watchdogs and software that likes to catalogue such references.
The number is 4B per month.
Colmmacc was trying to be helpful and save us a bit of searching, so he took the time to format up a link and post it, deriving no benefit for himself. And what happens? Smacked with bad moderation. Twice!
If I were tasked with metamoderating my parent, I would check the moderation as "unfair".
There are way too many perfectly good insightful comments that got no recognition so that one guy that tried to be helpful gets hammered. Please, check your timestamps! And please save your negative mods for people who really deserve it, not people who tried to be helpful.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I propose that NASA auction off Hubble on Ebay, and let who ever want to buy it worry about it.
I haven't seen this suggestion here, maybe I missed it.
The HST does have attitude control jets. Generally those are used just to rotate the HST in various axes. They could be reprogrammed to thrust in pairs on the same side of the system, and thus accelerate rather than rotate it. This would slightly alter the orbit each time. Done at the proper points in the orbit it could gradually 'leapfrog' into a higher orbit with minimal effect on the system or usage.
This would take much more thruster fuel than it presently carries, so on the next Shuttle visit, they could bring a larger fuel tank and adapters to mount it to the HST. (They might even be able to develop a remote refueling port that could be used by a robotic tender, but that's more complicated.) This would require some research on how to do so without unduly disturbing the center of mass and reprogramming to deal with the different moment of inertia, but it seems not much more complicated than things they've done before like replacing the mirror, or doing the upgrade a couple of years ago. I think (but I'm not an astronomer) that in between thrust events most observations could continue with updated ephemera.
Another way would be to add a small ion thruster and reaction 'fuel' to the end of the HST and use a small continuous thrust to move it to higher orbit - perhaps even to one of the LaGrange points (L5?). This method would make many types of observations difficult during the entire thrust period of perhaps a year. I speculate that the solar panels would provide enough electrical power to drive the ion thruster(s).
Either of these methods would be stressing the HST at the same order of magnitude as the existing stabilization systems, and it would seem to me that engineering either of these mods is doable in the time frame for the next Shuttle visit, thereby avoiding a separate, expensive visit.
While the Web telescope is anticipated to be much better, there are good reasons to have HST still available. The fact that it is such a piece of science history, I would dearly like to see it moved to a place where it is safe from total destruction, like one of the LaGrange points. It might even become a popular sightseeing "flyby" for tourists on the way to the moon. There it could rest and continue to be used until a means of, for example, safely bringing it down to a museum on the moon could be developed in 50 years or so. Letting it burn up in the atmosphere would be too bad.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Who said its in trouble, the mighty hubble, as I scratch my stubble, blowing a bubble, am I seeing double?... he,he...
It's actually worse than that. Orbits at altitudes reachable by the Shuttle decay rapidly, because the atmosphere's a little too thick up there - satellites like the Hubble, with big solar arrays, are particularly vulnerable.
The most important thing that happens on Hubble servicing missions has nothing to do with fixing hardware. The Shuttle catches the Hubble, then fires its maneuvering engines and carries the Hubble up to a higher orbit.
I know this because my company did some computer modeling for NASA to help them predict how often these reboosts would be needed. The amount of atmospheric drag varies with sunspot activity - increased solar output makes the atmosphere "puff up" and makes orbits decay faster.
And guess what? The Space Station is in an orbit reachable by the Shuttle, and also has big solar panels, so it needs reboosting by the Shuttle too.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I'm not sure if you realize it, but that web site (goatse.cx) doesn't have any pictures pertaining to bestiality. It just seems to be a picture of some guy stretching his asshole.
Thought you might like to know
-- A guy that likes sex with goats.
If www.theregister.co.uk required registration, I probably would, because I read it often enough. I read stuff on the NYT once in a blue moon. It's absurd I should have to remember some account on it which offers no benefit to me.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
>> and if some titanium part of hubble hits it
Yet one more reason to go sustainable!
Why not a bamboo sattelite telescope?
Let's spare those poor titanium mines!
I can read the paper version completely anonymously, but I have to go through the hassle of registering, and remembering passwords etc, so that NYT's marketing department can collect entirely bogus statistics on usage. They'd be better off creating a "My NYT" and assuming anyone who doesn't register with that is a casual visitor.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It would be a lot cheaper to give it the occasional boost to maintain it in LEO than to trash it. Let's keep it up there and get a FULL RETURN on our investment. The HST should be good for another 15-25 years. There is nothing wrong with having TWO space telescopes up there!
Well, the NYT thinks I'm a 70 year old woman, living in Afghanistan, who is the CE0 of a company, and that I make less than $US20000/year.
Somehow I don't think that's helping their demographic DB one bit.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
...but it's a telescope, right?
:-p
Why not just weld it (not literally) to the Space Station? I mean... it could be maintained, and, still used. We've got some damned interesting information from that thing in the past, IIRC. Upgrades and fixes would be a lot freaking easier if we didn't have to yank it out of orbit every time. I mean, if it's attached to the station, we know right where it is. Parts could be delivered via shuttle to the space station, so repairs could be done through airlocks there. Wouldn't add TOO much mass to the equation - I mean, the Hubble is no bigger than any of the other modules (it fit in the shuttle...). Also, the downlink and power requirements are easily met.
So, go ahead, debunk my idea? I know Slashdot is chock-full of certified NASA Engineers.
Informatus Technologicus
That is quite possibly the most tortuous analogy I have ever seen in my life, not least because of the fact that only a tiny minority of 386s were socketed and the concept of running even an original pentium on a 386 mb is ludicrous.
-AD
So when Hubble is no longer in active astronomical service, give it a boost over to the ISS. Then attach a real-time video camera to it and rent it out to TV stations for millions of dollars. It can start paying for itself eventually. Or loan out "missions" and time slots to paying customers.
Hubble requires an absolutely still environment to work. Any attempt to connect it to the ISS would transmit too much vibration from various motors and the crew bumping around. Parking it in a nearby orbit would avoid the vibration but might gum up other systems, like the infra-red systems that don't like vented atmosphere or space junk.
Hubble doesn't need constant maintenance, so don't park it near the ISS. Humans will have cheap transport to orbit once the X-prize contest is over.
-AD
Ground-based alternatives to Hubble do exist. Using optical aperture synthesis, with a baseline of upto 100m, the *resolving power* of the telsecope can be 50 times better than Hubble. But, Hubble is far superior in sensitivity - due to the lack of a glowing, distorting atmosphere. COAST is the Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope: http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/telescopes/coast/
Is this the beginning of the end of NASA, and US space research in general? I think so! Folks, the show is over. Regardless of how you look at it, space exploration is too expensive. Even for the imperialist superpower, it is too costly. The only reason there was anything done 30 or 40 years ago was to battle the Communists--it had nothing to do with science. There is little interest and the neo-cons running USA can't possibly garner enough support. So instead of spending on space, they will be spending it all on the missile shield.
Once USA cuts back their space program (circa 2010, with the downing of the Hubble), I think space exploration will decrease. Russia is practically out of the space equation. India and China are simply in it for political reasons (not scientific). I don't see too much activity happening beyond 2010. Sure, there will be more commercial activity. But they will all be money-making schemes to send people into orbits, put up advertising in space, and such things.
I guess one country or a small number of countries simply can't carry on space programs anymore. The ISS alone is too expensive. Note how the member countries don't want to spend much money on the ISS. As I--as well as many others--have been predicting for a long time, humans need to unite or else kiss goodbye to space...
NOTE: I do not count militarization of space (which USA will attempt in 10-15 years) as space exploration
KoalaBear33
......The worst thing in my life happened when the stock market started mattering more than the economy
Title says it all. Just sell it before it falls.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Similarly, with Hubble all you'd have to do is reach escape velocity in a suitable direction and let it go. The Sun is really a very small target, so why bother with Sun disposal for anything? Is there anything on Earth so dangerous that we need worry about what it might hit in a million years? Maybe life... ;)
None of this is intended as a practical solution to Hubble, just a sanity check on the Sun proposal.
Been to the smithsonian in DC recently? They already have what i believe is a full-size Hubble mockup on the main floor on display. I doubt they're desperate enough for the real hubble to do what you're proposing.
besides, maybe they'll tape the deorbiting. Give it a spectacular last Hurrah like the original enterprise in ST 3.
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
hmmmm.... maybe Saddam hid the WMD in the Hubble?
best to check soon.
-pyrrho
But theoretically, you don't have to mount it so that all vibrations are propagated... you could mount it in a big-ass vibration damper cage, which would (supposedly) eliminate all vibes from small movements on the station, and then only lock it down for the big bangs (like docking)?
Wouldn't that be a possible option?
(While there are women who make telescopes, some of them very skilled telescope makers, the ATM hobby is likely even more predominantly male than programming is.)
When I was grinding a mirror during high school, my mom came out to the garage to find me up to my armpits in grit slurry, and said "I don't understand how you can live like this".
These days my wife has a great deal of difficulty in understanding how I can find any pleasure in making telescopes, and refuses to ever set foot at a star party again. However, she realizes that it gets me away from the computer and I do seem to find real joy in it, so she encourages it.
She just says I can't boil pitch (used in polishing) on the kitchen stove. I had to buy a hot plate so I can cook it in the garage.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I was also reading those old telescope making books, which were written from the 1920s through the 50s, and while they discussed vacuum aluminization, I had no idea that you could send a mirror away to a commercial lab to have it coated inexpensively. I thought I'd have to build my own vacuum chamber if I wanted an aluminized mirror. So I figured I'd have to coat it myself.
I ground my first mirror in complete isolation. I never even discovered Sky and Telescope magazine until I ground my second, a 10 inch, a couple years later. One of the great things about the Internet is that young geeks don't have to be isolated from each other the way I was back in 1976 when I was 12.
The way I got my first kit is that it was among the effects of a chemistry graduate student named David Denny, who was drafted and killed in the Vietnam War. His parents were friends of my grandparents. Years later, when they heard I was into science, they gave me all of his old chemicals and glassware. Included was the mirror kit that hadn't been touched before he had to go to war.
Anyway, I got all my chemicals from the University of Idaho chemistry stockroom, where my dad was a E.E. graduate student. My dad came with me when I bought the chemicals, which was helpful because one of them was the fuming nitric acid required to clean the glass before silvering. Fuming nitric acid might be harder to get this days because it's needed to make such explosives as nitroglycerine and TNT.
Silvering a mirror is very difficult to get right. The slightest impurity or incorrect chemical proportions will ruin the coat. The temperature has to be just right, and you have to let the mirror soak for just the right amount of time. I think I tried a half dozen times before I had a coat I was willing to accept, and I was never really happy with it.
Here's a fun factoid for you: the spent chemical solution that's left after silvering a mirror is hazardous waste. Potently hazardous waste. Not simply because it is toxic, but if left to sit it will spontaneously explode. It can form fulminating silver, which is similar to the fulminating mercury that's used to detonate bullets, except that fulminating silver will explode spontaneously, without any heat or agitation.
One of the amateur telescope making books has a picture of someone's grinding shop that blew up after the owner left some silvering solution lying around.
There are people these days who still silver mirrors. There are certain advantages to silver if you don't mind having to recoat it after it tarnishes ever six months or so. It is very expensive to vacuum coat large mirrors, and there aren't many labs that have big enough vacuum chambers, so some of the people who make big scopes silver their mirrors.
In modern times, their has been quite a bit of success with applying the solutions from two different spray bottles, so that the silver starts to form when the two solutions mix. With some practice, you can get a better coat this way than by soaking the mirror in a basin like I did.
They talk about silvering quite a bit on the ATM list.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
True but There are plenty of Astromimors that are trying to get scope time even when replaced there will be no lack of jobs for it
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
How about the Starwebb concept 10,000 1 meter mirrors flying free and linked by data channels to work togeather . Your effictive arpiture could be kilometers wide.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
I think that demographic is getting crowded.
The NYT thinks I'm a 70 year old woman, living in Afghanistan, and works as a janitor, but I make a lot more money than you do as CEO.
An actual reactor would have too many parts (moving, and otherwise) to be reliable in the environment and over the lifespan of a Voyager-type mission. And lets not even get into the complexities involved with the liquid coolent of a reactor.
Rathar, an RTG is simply a source of heat in a decay much slower than that in a reactor. Said heat is then converted into electricity by a thermocouple (Actually, a battery of many thermocouples, but who's counting?) And while there's no danger of the plutonium ceasing to give off heat anytime soon, even the best thermocouples wear out. And in the hostile environment of space, and under bombardment of particle radiation (from the plutonium, and the solar wind) they wear out even faster.
Incidently:
> These things have a half-life of several thousand years.
Nope.
Plutonium 238, the radioisotope used in the Cassini space probe (I'm not sure about Voyager.), does not have a half-life of "several thousand years". Pu-238's half-life is 87 years. Strontium 90, another radioisotope commonly used in RTGs has a half-life of 28 years. A half-life in the range of "several thousand years" would actually be a *BAD* thing in these applications. You WANT a significant amount of decay to take place. That's where the HEAT comes from!
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
I say let it fall and hold a lottery as to where it will hit. Pony up $5 to buy a chance of winning and with your $5 you get a free blast shield that will keep the thing from killing you when it hits. This would be the ultimate office pool....
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
That galaxy unfortunately reminds me of that horrible picture everyone knows about.
I don't know about you, but I guess I have a little Slashdot shellshock - I can't help having a little fear of what I'm going to see, everytime I click on a link..
..........FULL STOP.
Has anybody thought about using solar sails to put this bad boy in a higher orbit? Seems to me a simple frame and harness could be assembled, then a huge mylar sail could be attached to yank that puppy up a couple hundred extra miles...
Of course this won't make any contractors extra billions of dollars, but it's a thought...
Genda Bendte
I got tired of registering as a 70 year old afghani woman, so I am now a 60-year old Senegalese woman making $100k doing agricultural research. Go NYT!
wtf are you talking about 'Natalie's Hot Grits'?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Fucking slashdot, the hid the post you replied to, and made it seem like you were replying to me... bleh.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I'm sick of it telling me I need to register; I've done it once and promptly forgot about it. The next time I used a nytimes link, it told me to log in/register again. Their site isn't valuable enough for me to bother looking up what username/password I ended up using, so I just close the browser window and move on.
NASA is legally obligated to have a disposal plan. Hubble has no, count'em *0* rockets of its own. There is currently (and I'm sure ever was) a retro package. It would seem the favored plan has always been retrieval by shuttle. NASM will probably get it, when all is said and done.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
Hubble is basically a modified "Keyhole" class military satellite... But Hubble costs a lot more...Why? Because it was built to be serviced by people. As Richard Muller said in Technology Review: "True, Hubble was defective, and required repair by Shuttle astronauts. But the military loses its spy telescopes too, and its response is to launch a replacement. Launching two completely new Hubble telescopes--the original and a replacement, with neither qualified for human servicing (and therefore cheaper)-- would arguably have been less expensive in the long run. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_muller 021003.asp?p=2
Essentially, the Shuttle was built on the premise of servicing satellites. And Hubble was built to justify that premise. But the cost is enormous when compared to building satellites that aren't intended to be serviced.
Hubble, which is already old as dirt, should be allowed to fall. In its place, NASA should design and launch a cheaper, unservicable, Keyhole based telescope. This new space telescope would be simply the first of a series- NASA would build and have ready a new space telescope when the previous one croaked. Not only would this still be cheaper than building Hubbles in the long run...it would also allow incremental technological improvements to be made with each new satelite.
I ground my own mirror and made an amazing discovery.
The Moon is actually football-shaped, and slightly blurred at the ends!
Those fools in the mainstream science community just refuse to believe me though.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
RTGs are a magic bullet, most of the problems (political mostly) with previous implementations were caused by the radio active material used at the core: plutonium. Old RTGs used Plutonium because it produces photons which can be picked up easily by thermocouples or PVCs and converted into electrical power. Many people including myself are actively working on capturing energy from alternative, less dangerous radio active sources, such as uranium. Easy to obtain (Ebay), easy to manage (except in powder form [oxide form]), it produces alfa radiation mostly (2 protons & 2 neutrons) which isn't very disruptive and only travels a few centimeters in open air. Alfa radiation can be converted to electrical energy by 2 means: By using the ionising properties of alfa radiation on gases, or by using the momentum of the alfa particles to knock of electron off of other molecules (proxy effect). This is the point where I have to shut off or risk losing my grant (Metropolitan University, Aguadilla, PR), but this technology has the potential of producing electrical energy out of nuclear reactor byproducts (or natural uranium ore) in a safe way w/ minimun shielding. Image a cellphone that doesn't need recharging, remote controls or PDAs that work forever. Small amounts of current, but lasts a lifetime.
Since no landing is going to be done, there will be no need for a lunar lander, jeeps, whatnot.
Technology has evolved (thanks, greatly, to the space programs) and everything is more powerful, lighter and more compact than it was a third of a century ago. Not to mention : really safer.
This is probably well within carryng capacity of an Energya for a 2 man crew and some tools. At least. Smaller launchers could send the hardware on ahead to the rendevous (oops ! "encounter" >:> ) point.
If "deep sea" oil-work robots were used, the astronauts would have to get near enough to reduce signal time-lag to acceptable levels. Training for the mission is going to happen anyway. So...
And, if the astronauts aren't up to it. Why, just use the oil workers that already operate those robots. Why, even Brazil has those. And they do actually work.
And then they could use the expertise gained to "tele-build" or "tele-maintain" new stuff in orbit or "far-orbit". And, the moon-taboo (that turns aerospace bowels to jelly, at the mere mention of the "luna" word) notwithstanding, the same could be done for the moon.
The Chinese could have made the "great navigations" centuries before the Europeans. They had technology, mathematics, navies, money, advanced economic institutions and framework (banks, paper money, etc.), law, 1000yearold civil service, the compass, social organization, gunpowder (rockets, arrow-throwing blunderbusslike contraptions), the printing press, advanced mettalurgy, paddlewheels, clocks, and a host of other choice advantages.
But the emperor said "no", after the few great navigations, and all of them did so (er, not). A few hundred years later. When the Europeans finally got the same resources. You know how the rest works out.
Seems top me the space thing is in the same situation. Someone or something said "no", and their vassals refuse to do the doable. As far as this one insignificant point-of-view is concerned, that is treason against humanity.
Since there doesn't seem to be a middle-road, there is still always the middle-finger (until they are genetically engineered out of the populace, probably).
Great idea(s) !
And, later on, just send it on its way to the nearest star. With just enough "AI" to scan any pieces of rock, or gas, it finds on the way there, or once it gets there. Doable today. If those with the power and responsibility to do it didn't have bowels with the consistency of lukewarm seaweed gellatin, regarding space exploration.
The moon needs liberating.
;>
It actively supports pagans, witches, all sorts of oriental sects, poets, and all sorts of unpatriotic folk. And lunatics. In case you haven't noticed. At least, that's what my advisors tell me.
And, no, it has nothing to do with either tides or global warming.
KM/S = kelvinmegas/siemens
km/s = kilometers/second
Reference 1
Reference 2
You claim to have a grant, yet you can't even spell Alpha? Somehow, I'm a little skeptical...
I have to say, I think it's silly to de-orbit it if it's still doing good science. The argument that a service visit is comparable to a new launch at a fraction the cost is compelling. Though I like the idea of it eventually going into the Smithsonian too. If NASA really doesn't want to do it just because they can't get to the space station from there, then NASA's gotten too timid to be in space in the first place, especially if they have to take out the docking adapter to make room for Hubble anyway.
Just a commentary on how everyone will start blaming all the problems with the space program on the Columbia disaster even though the loss of the shuttle didn't render the other 3 unable to fly, NASA did, by requiring checks, but once those are completed and the schedule restarted, aside from a backlog, why the problem? ... Just as airlines (and everyone else) blame everything on September 11th ("that's why your plane took off late sir" / "that's why we can't change your ticket" / "that's why you need to strip and bend over before you fly").
And yes, this is looking at it simplistically, but there ya go.
and I suppose Hubble wasn't meant to be returned to Earth to begin with
Actually it was. It was deployed aboard Discovery, and they'd intended to try to bring it back down in the cargo bay of Columbia, since the other 3 remaining orbiters have now been fitted with a special airlock to allow them to mate with the ISS, and that makes not enough room left in their cargo bays to fit Hubble. Now it would require a retrofitting of one of the remaining orbiters to remove that airlock assembly. That would be very expensive and time consuming for such a special dedicated mission. There are also some arguments that the extra weight of Hubble in the cargo bay of any orbiter would make re-entry and landing too dangerous to even attempt.
I would really like to see the Hubble brought back safely down to be kept in the Smithsonion. Perhaps if enough people would voice this dream, there could be enough publicity generated around the world to raise the money necessary for the very complicated and expensive retrieval project. There's still many years to go before the Hubble has to come down, perhaps even a special shuttle could even be quickly built, that would be completely remote controlled, and need no human life support systems at all, to send up and retrieve hubble so that no astronauts' lives would be at risk in case the re-entry and landing fail.
You don't have to register to view the offline version so why should you to read the online version?
Some of the possible reasons:
- You like headlines delivered to your inbox
- You wish to participate in online forums
- You feel you can at least in some way compensate them for a great free service they offer
- If you have to see the ads, at least you can see the interesting ones
- You're not a paranoid freak
Those fools in the mainstream science community just refuse to believe me though.
Perhaps they can't reproduce your results. Maybe the cold-fusion power cell that you are using is throwing them?
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
"I'm going to play Nintendo, Mom's gonna be pissed when she finds out you're spying on the neighbors with a space telescope."
"Have it your way bro, I'll be sure to snap some pictures so you can look later if you change your mind."
Eat at Joe's.
I hate idiots that can't get sarcasm ( no I am not the original poster )
1 Billion a week(!!) fighting in IRAQ, i.e., Bush's folly!!, versus 600 million to keep the Hubble flying for a lot longer. Hmm, are you LISTENING Mr. President?? I voted for you in 2000, but NOT in 2004!!!
You're right, I learned about HST's use of flywheels shortly after posting. I stand corrected on that point.
However the approach of adding a very low thrust thruster is still doable. During the orbital transition process the system can be 'tucked in' to prevent contamination. The only time when there would be issues of contamination by the thruster exhaust would be during any necessary braking manoeuvers, which might be done using paired off-axis thrusts sending the exhaust sufficiently away from the line of flight to avoid risk of contamination.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Hey, no fair!! Slashdot postings are supposed to contain speculation, whimsy, unbacked opinion, ad hominem attacks and innuendo, not actual facts and knowledge!! :O)
I will desperately hang on to two things:
1) We got the dang thing up there in fhe first place, so despite the fact that some assembly was done after arrival, it's within the realm of possibility to move it - the issue is cost, complexity and risk
2) For every objection there is a potential solution.
For instance, to avoid contamination maybe (in essence) re-seal the various bits that were sealed for launch, or put the whole thing in a 'baggie' (not really - plastic emits a lot of plasticizer and other junk, but that's the idea). Cover the solar panels with a protective shield. Partially disassemble, removing panels, antennas - even back to the arrangement for launch in the Shuttle.
Thruster - as noted they got the thing up there in the first place. Therefore, the original 'hard points' that were used to mount the HST in the shuttle still exist. So, with 'some (dis)assembly required' there's a place to mount a thrusting system.
Hmmm. I've always agreed with those who think that we shouldn't be burning up the external tanks - you've no doubt seen some of the engineering studies. One design for the ISS was based on using a starter pack of seven external tanks, packed together.
IIRC one of those is big enough to enclose the entire HST, possibly excepting the solar panels and external attenna. Yes, I'm speculating wildly...
This is all difficult to figure out and do, complex, challenging, maybe even expensive. NASA scientists & engineers used to be famous for their ability to figure out ingenious solutions to impossible situations. Before giving up, I'm glad that they're at least having a conference about it.
I think of the problem this way, in brief: Two telescopes are better than one, and there's ample demand to make use of both. If the cost of building and launching another replacement system is more than the cost of moving the HST, then there is a residual value for the HST even with the new one operational. The risk of moving HST is in the same scale as the launch risk for the new Webb system, so keeping it as an option is a good idea at least until the Webb is up and running.
Therefore the argument is really down to 'can it be done' and is this project of more value than other projects. It might even be possible to lobby Congress for additional funding, to make this the first 'Historical Landmark' that isn't on the planet. Make it an international Heritage Site, and transfer ownership to the National Park Service (retaining operational management) I can hear the dedication speeches already...
Example in point - the "Spruce Goose" is now resting in a museum near where I live. To get here it had to be partily disassembled and shipped here in pieces on barges, then moved via huge housemoving-type trucks for a ways, then a building had to be build around it, then finally it was reassembled. HST is a bigger problem but not impossible.
Anyway, thanks for your excellent points of fact. I think that saving the HST could be a key idea for re-orienting NASA toward a new, better way of doing things that doesn't depend so completely on disposability. It's as much of an engineering challenge as getting there in the first place.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/