Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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'm certain that it would have brain-dead simple to convince GM or Ford or DuPont to spend billions of dollars to build, launch, and maintain something which produces pictures of objects in space. In fact, I seem to recall that NASA had to sue a number of such companies to keep them from launching several other pure science satellites which had no commercial value. Stockholders in those companies were outraged that the attempts of their management to dump billions of dollars into altruistic enterprises were thwarted by evil bureaucrats. Idiot. Get a clue as to what private companies do and why and how they do it.
We spent so much time, money and effort fixing it, why not spend some more and upgrade it for another decade of use?
Same reason many people will junk an old car which they've spent lots of time, money, and effort fixing. It's nearly the same cost to just buy a new one as to fix the old one, and the new one comes with more features.
Drastic and sorry failures? Do you have any evidence to back your claims that all of these programs are failures?
Let us imagine for a moment what things would be like without public education.
For one, a lot of children would receive *no* education. Either because their parents could not afford it, or because their parents did not believe that education is a necessary component of a democratic society.
Secondly, many high school graduates (of private high schools) would not be able to attend college. Even public college tuition is expensive these days.
Another interesting thing about publicly funded research is that it benefits everyone. The goal of publicly funded programs is to benefit our society as a whole. The goal of privately funded programs is to make money for the company. If something isn't ultimately profitable, it won't get funded, even if it is beneficial in other ways.
I'm not sure about your list (I'm not an expert on any of these), but I do remember that Medicare and Medicaid beat the pants out of any private medical insurance in terms of what percentage of money going in actually went to pay medical bills (it was not even close). Private health care has turned into a bloated inneficient non-working mess. It's actually a good argument as to why large government programs are a good thing (this has to be rediscovered every couple of decades, it seems).
... (except reduce the "leveling" of education). Private schools look better overall because they can just decide not to take or drop problem students, unlike public schools. If education were to be made private, we'd have the same administrators and teachers except now working for bosses interested in a bottom line. I can't imagine how this wouldn't be disastrous.
I think there might be some merit to what you say, but the mantra "private business is better" just doesn't apply uniformly and universally (in fact, in some cases it just doesn't work compared to government programs).
I'm also curious how you think that privatizing education would change anything
I would be curious to hear your whys -- since I personally don't subscribe anymore to the "private business is better" mantra (and, thus far, medical coverage is actually a good counter-argument to this).
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
> 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
I find myself wondering whether you've every had a job. Surely even the most casual observation reveals that private enterprise doesn't have all the magical properties commonly attributed to it. Failed or discontinued projects in the private sector are a dime a dozen, as are pet projects that get funded on the basis of which manager is the best suck-up rather than on the basis of which best satisfies some other requirement (even if that requirement has no higher social goals than raking more gold into corporate coffers). Waste and "dumbsizing" of good projects seem to be the rule in the private sector as much as in the public sector; you're just less likely to see them in the news or hear them harped on for political exploitation by radio talkjox.
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
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
Yeah, but considering that it is NOT YET BUILT (and knowing the individuals who are building it), there is no way in hell that the JWST be launched by 2011 or 2013. More likely 2020 if we are lucky (my money is on 2025).
This is why astronomers and astrophysicists are voicing opinions to keep the HST running beyond 2010. Maybe til 2015 or so (when most instruments on board would likely be dead or defunct).
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.
Actually, awhile ago - I renember reading of how a group of private investors were looking into buying extra atlas missles to finance a private space program. NASA did everything they could to squish it. If you really want to help space research, let space be profitable and watch what happens.
Because it becomes obsolete and eventually unusably old technology even to the most diehard fans. Then, it is just space junk, succumbing to a cascade effect of breaking down into smaller and smaller (and faster and faster) pieces that pose a huge threat to manned travel. Orbital space needs to be cleaned up not filled up, thus satellites are now brought down one way or another.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Sure, add billions more fragments of space junk that will have to be tracked.
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"
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!
-AD
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
If NASA was really honest about how much it costs to fly a shuttle, it would be obvious to everyone that for the cost of a shuttle flight to "push" the hubble, they could launch a brand spanking new telescope aboard an unmanned rocket into orbit.
It really doesn't make sense economically to send a repair mission to fix/push the hubble when you can replace it outright. Of course NASA doesn't want this to be widely known because NASA's primary mission has been to justify the space shuttle at all costs, instead of doing real science.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Indeed. And a fine Canadarm it is...
A wee bit touchy on the subject, though - take a chill pill, eh?
I, for one, am glad that every friggin' part on the shuttle isn't named after the country from which it came...
- CP
I wonder what kind of deodorant they use on that thing?