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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!
No registration required
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;
Thanks, Google.
"Mike broke the Hubble! Mike broke the Hubble!"
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!
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.
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
*Mission Impossible theme*
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
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.
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.
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
Hubble = rubble!
Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaaaaahaw.
I crack myself up.
When it was decided that all shuttle missions must go to the space station to justify the space station's funding. It's a two or three year old mandate. The last mission that didn't go to the space station ran into trouble, furthur justifying the justification of the space station's budget. Yea it makes no sense and it's pointless, but NASA doesn't like bad PR like when re-entering there is really no escape if something goes wrong.
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.
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.
%gt;I was just thinking, what happened to the space program is a classic example of why it's better for things to be privatized.
You've seen Bowling for Columbine, right? The private welfare thing seems to work *really* well. Don't forget that private companies are rarely, if ever, altrusitic. They have no morality - no sense of common good. They serve only to turn a profit for their shareholders/owners. The pure science that the Hubble facilitates is not usually profitable (what good does it do GM to know the true age of the universe?) and thus unfundable by private companies. You could argue that if scientists/organizations were charged enough, such a telescope could be profitable, but I highly doubt it.
>it becomes an entrenched bureauocracy (sic)... The moon race isn't the only example
The moon race was typical, American posturing in action. And if it did become an "entrenched bureaucracy," why aren't we still sending people there?
>public education
Yeah, it's always been a bad idea to give away an education. It's not like technology (developed by people with free public educations) has been the one thing that really drove the US to the top of the heap.
One last thing: Ayn Rand was a whore.
It's going to need a bit of polishing, a space telescope isn't exactly suited for that kind of rough re-entry.
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).
The moon race isn't the only example, SSI, public education, medicade/medicare are all drastic and sorry failures.
Yeah, not like the shining examples of Amtrak, Worldcom, and Enron.
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
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
> I'm also curious how you think that privatizing education would change anything
This is what bothers me about the push to privatize education, even more than the obvious exploit of using tax money to fund private schools to brainwash kids with creationism and other such nonsense.
The need for profit means that privatized schools will only be interested in accepting those students that produce the most bang for the buck. That means the students that require more attention will be left in the husk of the public school system. But since funding for public schools will be drained off by the privatization, public schools will - if they are lucky - be stuck with the same $/student they have now, but they'll also be stuck with all the students that need the most attention, so their chances of succeeding will be even worse than they are now. (And of course, that will be taken by the advocates of privatization as "proof" that privatization is a better solution to the challenge of educating the public.)
Basically, a broad swath of our population - and their descendents - is going to be even more screwed than they are now, all for the purpose of funnelling public money into private coffers and giving the upper and middle classes even more of an educational (=economic) leg-up than they're already getting.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The point I was trying to make was where private companies have taken over previously public institutions, there has not been the success foreseen by the original poster.
I agree that basing arguments on the work on Michael Moore can be dangerous, but I don't think his characterization of Americans as paranoid gun nuts was too far off the mark.
What's wrong with these?
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.
Hey man, just run that piece of junk space station into the Hubble and get rid of two problems.
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`
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?
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.
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.
Actually, there is lots of evidence. First look at census data and rate how much teachers are getting paid vs how high test scores are - you will see almost an opposite coorlation. Also, I don't know about your state, but here in CA the average per student cost of a public education is at least 7000, while if you price the private schools in the area- it's not only less expensive, but has a much larger success rate. Also, what you say simply didn't happen in countries like Hong Kong - which didn't have public education for a long time.
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!"
That is simply not true, especially for the vast majority of private schools which are catholic schools. Many are chartered for the sole purpose of public good, are chariatable, and very biology/evolution theory orientated. Yeah, if some student's a bastard they're going to get kicked out, but that's the way it should be.
unless you read it at a public library
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
I've had more then my fair share of jobs at very big companies, I've seen alot of crap, alot of money outright wasted, and I hated it. But, more or less, at least they don't have the eternal power to coerce money from the people that support them. At least people have the option of avoiding doing business with them, which is much easier than avoiding doing business with the IRS.
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?
Because public schools have to provide an education to everyone. Mentally/physically handicap, etc. Private schools can kick people out who have low test scores, or not accept people in at all.
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.
Your superb grammar and spelling indicate that you have not been subjected to the public education which you characterize as a "sorry failure". In fact, it appears that you have been subjected to no education whatsoever.
Remember, that without public education you'd probably know less than you do now (hard though that is to believe) and without SSI and public healthcare your grandma would be living in what used to be your bedroom and your parents would be working two jobs each to pay for her medicine.
Actually, I attribute my bad spelling more to ignoring my spelling classes - and fiddeling arround with computers, which hardly anyone else my class had at the time. Somehow, I'm not sorry that things worked out that way, but even so my spelling and grammer scores still outtested most of the state of california. Also at the time, I seem to renember my parents paying arround $2500/yr to send me to a high rated private school while the state was paying about $3300/yr per student to send other kids to gettho high. Somehow, I don't think I was more deprived then they were, bad spelling or not.
PS: knowing how to spell doesn't help you much if you don't know how to think. Hint, think about pyramid schemes and why they always fail, and then think a little about SSI. Think about accountability and efficiency, and then think a little about medicare.
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
The point I was trying to make was where private companies have taken over previously public institutions, there has not been the success foreseen by the original poster.
This is largely nonsense. Many things enter the public sector silently, and make leaps and bounds in their progress and commercial success.
NASA has contracts for the leads of certain types of projects to bring them into the private sector. You know the tempurpedic pillows? Those are based off the seats in space shuttles. A lot of parallel computing systems that are in the public market started from government research.
Privatizing something as large as "Space" is similar to saying, "We should privatize police." There already is some, in limited capacity. There should be a public market for satellite launches, and other things in a regulated capacity. I don't think anybody is saying that NASA should be replaced, just expended on by public companies.
Besides which, there is a lot of public companies mingling with NASA. Go take a trip out to Ames RC, half the workers there are contracted to NASA from private companies.
but I don't think his characterization of Americans as paranoid gun nuts was too far off the mark.
Paranoid? That's off the mark. Taking a select minority sample of people and trying to make it seem that's the majority is misleading and unethical. Basing an argument off of anything Moore says is more than dangerous, it's like kissing a rattle snake.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
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
Because public schools have to provide an education to everyone. Mentally/physically handicap, etc. Private schools can kick people out who have low test scores, or not accept people in at all.
I hear that all the time, and I think it's bunk. First, I challenge you to find a private school that will refuse a kid with any but the most difficult handicap's. Sorry it just won't happen. Second, lets assume a tuition difference of $1100 between private and public and that 5% of the students have some kind of shortfall. (which I think are extremely generous assumptions). Well fine, that means those 5 extra kids per 100 would half to cost over $100,000 per year to be worth it. Bullshit, if it's that expensive - then I'm sorry someone should half to go without. ( ther real numbers are probably more like 2% and $3000)
Have you had much experience with large corporations? Bureaucracy is not limited to the government. The media just makes more money advertising waste and inefficiency in the government than they do airing their own dirty laundry. I don't even want to think what Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, or the executives at GE and Clear Channel waste their money on.
For all the distrust I have towards the government bureaucracies, especially education, I am still alive and productive despite many lapses in my judgment skills. Think in terms of principles. A government is like a co-op, we each buy in, and the expected result is a lowered price on goods and services for members. Now consider a private company managing something such as schools or health care. I do not want (part of) my child's education to be sacrificed because it isn't cost effective just like I don't want my doctor to skip something because it isn't economically viable. Despite its many problems, we still have much more control over the government than a private company. I will fall in rank-and-file behind our mentally disabled, hedonist president before I ever consider entrusting my, or my family's, well-being to a corporation.
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.
I'd bet that the correlation is largely because you have to pay a teacher more to accept a job at a crappy school in a dangerous neighborhood teaching kids who are "damaged goods" than you have to pay a teacher to accept a job at a distinguished school in a good neighborhood teaching kids with motivated parents.
Private != Christian. Quit making assumptions.
The need for profit means that privatized schools will only be interested in accepting those students that produce the most bang for the buck.
How do you think colleges and universities work? Can you imagine if all public colleges had to accept everyone in a specific geographic region like a high school?
I don't know how long ago you graduated from high school, but when I was in, all students were pushed to attend college. This is an extremely bad idea. Everyone is different, with differing skill sets and talents. Your description of students being "left in the husk of the public school system" may be just what these students need (and society in general) to come to the realization that a college-prep course is not for all students. A plethora of US industries would kill to have kids graduating from high school knowing how to frame a house, machine tool parts, or wire a building.
Public schools need a wake up to realize that they're not doing students - or the country in general - any good by sticking with the same old one-for-all system. It's beginning to happen with "magnet schools," where kids can target their education. The schools are so sought after that parents camp out for days to get their kids on the rolls.
Am I saying public schools should totally go away? Not necessarily. But a move toward privatization could end up doing some real good.
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
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 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/
"Half to go without it"? "Countries like Hong Kong"? If you went to a public school, your dazzling stupidity alone is the best argument you've put forward so far for public school failure.
I'll repeat a point already made. The group going to public schools is not the same as the group going to private schools. Care for retarded students, BD students etc. is more exepensive than average because of a greater need for personal attention, special treatment, etc.
Furthermore, the notion that 'the more you pay teachers, the worse students do' dosen't prove what you hope it will. Yes, the highest paying teaching jobs are in tough neighiborhoods like inner city Chicago. These are areas where students parents are often poor and where children often test poorly. Teacher turnover in these areas is especially high, so they offer what they can to bring in new teachers. I've had friends who have worked in schools like that. Two years is enough to burn out some teachers. Half of their time was spent trying to convince their students that they actually needed an education and couldn't just go through life with the auto repair skills that they already had.
The student demographic in public and private schools is very different. Broken families and poverty are not problems that public schools create, but they have to deal with them far more than private schools do.
You can talk your ideology as long as it makes you feel happy. Private schools won't be a success until they accomodate the most difficult students, which is the burden imposed on 'universal education'.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Yeah, not like the shining examples of Amtrak, Worldcom, and Enron.
Heh, Amtrack is a government project...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Even though SOME think so, Enron and Worldcom are not government programs.
I forgot one thing. Please don't complain about your property taxes if you are so worried about public education. Next time you see a teacher, no matter who it is, thank them for devoting their life to a meager income and bureaucratic system in order to educate your child on how to further reduce their pay and insult them when they can't do more with less, when they grow up. I find it odd that the people educating our children are also among the lowest paid people in the public sector.
My old roommate from college knew math like he knew English. He could have very well have been a Nobel laurite one day because of his amazing ability to hear or see it once, and remember it forever; not to mention he also knew exactly how to apply that knowledge. Instead, he has chosen to live below the poverty line in order to teach some inner-city high school kids algebra and geometry. He could have been teaching graduate physics students if that were his choice, but he feels that doing a thankless job for your children is more socially important. You should have heard all the shit his well-to-do upper class parents gave him. My favorite was his father asking him why in the hell he wants to throw away his well-being for some "common, middle class trash". His parents are now ashamed of his decision and rarely talk. He now makes in one year about one eighth of what his father spends on a new car every year. The poor bastard never lost his principals and ideals. I wonder what it's like to not be a jaded bastard like most of us cynical slashdotters.
I also saw someone complaining about how inner-city schools are not producing. First we take control away from teachers because of BS law suits, and then we complain about them being unable to correct the damages done by the society and environment around them. Would someone please walk around a Beverly Hills public high school and then an LA inner-city school and then post the differences in appearance, technology, teacher's salary, education materials, and school rules and policies. Tying a teachers hands and then berating them when they fail is like kicking a dead hoarse. Yea it's popular mindless social conversation, but it's stupid and useless. Stop letting the media be your education you fools.
PS: knowing how to spell doesn't help you much if you don't know how to think. Hint, think about pyramid schemes and why they always fail, and then think a little about SSI. Think about accountability and efficiency, and then think a little about Medicare.
If you really did know how to 'think' you'd understand why SSI is not the same thing is a pyramid scheme. (I'm not going to defend SSI, because it's stupid, but none the less, it's not a pyramid scheme)
And 'gettho'? Geez man, my spelling isn't so hot either but I at least try to use a spellchecker when I'm trying to sound intelligent.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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.
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.
In the private sector, failure of a commercial project is the way that the consumer decides that it either is too expensive, isn't desireable--or something similar--and doesn't support it by not buying it.
In the government sector, failure is caused by not spending enough on the project to date, if you really look at any proposed "remedy". Since there isn't a method for the average person to have any effect on this, the First Ammendment guarentees that at least we can talk about it, publicize it, rail against it, and maybe even be harped on by the press.
This unnatural lack of true failure is the root of most government problems.
Usually, failed government programs are also associated with forced adoption/participation (public education == mandatory attendance laws).
Prime examples of this are public education, medicare/medicaid and even NASA to a great extent.
Private sector: More productivity with less money input over time (higher efficiency, higher ROI), government sector: less productivity with more money input over time.
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
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.
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.
Most of the problems with inner city schools have to do with broken homes and lack of strong parental figures. Inner city schools will not succeed until the inner city communities come together and decide to do for themselves what government cannot.
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
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
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
...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
I propose that NASA auction off Hubble on Ebay, and let who ever want to buy it worry about it.
No so far fetched. A spare Sputnik was on sale on Ebay about a month ago. I saw the actual Ebay entry when it was live.
Table-ized A.I.
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/
You must be a public school teacher. So typical to obsess about the form while ignoring the blazing facts in front of your face. If that is so, then how come the private school teachers in the poor areas of Chicago are kicking your butt with half the pay.
The student demographic in public and private schools is very different. Broken families and poverty are not problems that public schools create, but they have to deal with them far more than private schools do.
The hell public schools don't create social problems, but you are right in that smart parents who give a shit avoid public schools like the plague. A very different demographic indeed, but one of choice and not situation.
(sorry, I used the "p" word)
-AD
Nothing like a capitalist who loves to privatize everything :) I'm just wondering when they are going to privatize the police and the military...
KoalaBear33
......The worst thing in my life happened when the stock market started mattering more than the economy
How do you think colleges and universities work? Can you imagine if all public colleges had to accept everyone in a specific geographic region like a high school?
Universities are elitist institutions. That's why they accept only a small number of people and attempt to pass only a select few (ever hear of bell-curving?). High schools, middle schools, and kintergarden are egalitarian. That's why they attempt to graduate everyone.
One day, universities will graduate everyone. Not because people are smarter or anything (since smartness is never a consideration for the university) but because they have become more egalitarian...
KoalaBear33
......The worst thing in my life happened when the stock market started mattering more than the economy
Private sector: More productivity with less money input over time (higher efficiency, higher ROI), government sector: less productivity with more money input over time.
ROI? That is the most idiotic way of comparing governments to corporations. Governments are NOT profit-maximizing institutions, you know that right? Then why the hell are you even mentioning ROI? ROI for any govt project is always infinity (because retuns are close to zero eg. what's the return of providing welfare to people? zero)
KoalaBear33
......The worst thing in my life happened when the stock market started mattering more than the economy
...knowing how to spell doesn't help you much if you don't know how to think. Hint, think about pyramid schemes and why they always fail, and then think a little about SSI. Think about accountability and efficiency, and then think a little about medicare.
I'm not an American so I don't know that much about SSI but I can't help lauging at you... SSI is a pyramid scheme? Nice thinking there indeed... I glad that people can spell better than you while "thinking" worse than you.
KoalaBear33
......The worst thing in my life happened when the stock market started mattering more than the economy
But what he failed to realize was that the primary goal of government (at least, of democratic government) was not efficiency but rather fairness. One assessment of the government's purpose is that it exists to protect the weak from being oppressed by the strong. Why shouldn't we have entirely privatized law enforcement? After all, those who have more to lose (more money, resources, etc.) would be able to pay more to have it protected. The problem, of course, is that the poor would be left undefended, having no resources with which to protect what little they have (not to mention their lives).
The upshot is that some things should be handled by the government because the goal is fairness, not efficiency, and private enterprise will absolutely not ensure fairness where it matters. The role of government is to provide some minimum standard of living, and those with resources can provide themselves a better standard. (Whether this SHOULD be the role of government is another debate entirely.)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
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
Private sector: More productivity with less money input over time (higher efficiency, higher ROI), government sector: less productivity with more money input over time.
It's true that private enterprise, in most cases, spends less money to fill the same function. Sometimes, they also get a better product. Sometimes they yield a worse product.
But when people talk about "efficiency" and "government waste" they often quote impressive aggregate figures, without any actual information about where the differences lie. I work in a government agency, a big one... the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and I'll tell you where some of it comes from.
On average, 66% of the operating cost of a bus system (and Los Angeles transit is primarily bus) is labor. Unlike smaller, privately-operated transit properties, MTA cannot fill its driver and mechanic positions relying on non-union labor. So their drivers make more money (a whole $10.93 an hour to start... to drive through South Central Los Angeles at midnight) and have better benefits. They have frivolities like tuition reimbursement, pension plans, and so forth. Some of these are union mandates, some are state law, and some are agency policy for other reasons.
One place where I thoroughly agree that a goverment agency should act more like a private company is in how they work with vendors. It is astonishing how blatantly contractors will take advantage of the "deep pockets" of a government contract. I've seen consultants flat-out ignore contract specifications to make numbers look better, and I've spent hours and hours analyzing invoices for months in which almost no work was done, but plenty was billed... and the cost estimate kept going up and up and up.
Government is blamed when large projects go over budget and are finished late, but the problem is that they are not in a position to put their foot down. Unlike a private company, a large government agency cannot say "I don't like doing business with you. You haven't made a good-faith effort to fulfill this contract. We'll take our business elsewhere." For one thing, they are more likely to be sued... I'm not sure exactly why that is, but people love taking government agencies to court (those "deep pockets" again I guess). For another thing, there are all kinds of legal requirements on how they have to solicit and accept bids, to limit the reach of corruption. That makes the process of "taking ones business elsewhere" a bit more complicated. There's a contractor in this area that has been involved in every major infrastructure scandal in the last two decades and is still getting government contracts (they're building something on our campus right now), even though their business model seems to be to cheat taxpayers out of their money.
What it all comes down to is that government costs more to run than private enterprise because we pay for accountability. A publicly-held firm can be held legally responsible for taking actions that are contrary to the interests of its shareholders. Government is the same... except that EVERYONE is a shareholder. There is no one to take advantage of. There are no interests that it doesn't have to protect. It isn't free from competition... we have that as often as twice a year at the polling place. It has *more* competition than any private company. If you don't like the way McDonald's does business, you don't walk into the next board meeting and give them a piece of your mind. The most leverage that consumers can wield against a private company is a boycott, and that happens a lot less often than political campaigning.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Let us imagine for a moment what things would be like without public education.
For one, a lot of children would receive *no* education.
The reason that there are no cheap, low standard private schools is because the government provides a free alternative. If public schools disappeared, commercially viable schools would emerge to offer education to people of all means.
echo 'Header append X-HD-DVD "0x09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0"' >>
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.
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.
Or, alternatively, you could live in a better country. One where the leader doesn't favour corporate collapses to proplerly funded public education etc. But I'll be flamed by the closed minded Americans for saying that, so I won't.
I don't know, but Australia's public education seems to be not too bad, if a little underfunded. Just because it doesn't work well in America, doesn't mean it is a bad idea.
Just like my argument that just because communism didn't work well in Russia doesn't mean communism is a fundamentally flawed idea.
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.
Yea... they are just government official's programs... {cough... cheney... cough)
Gag me with a fucking spoon. The penalty for treason should be a hanging.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
Ever heard of an illegal monopoly? Or even an immoral monopoly? At least the government programs are checked by media and new versions of senators every 4 years. At a corporation, if shit hits the fan, its an internal memo. Especially if its a monopolly.
And if its a monopoly, you ARE forced to use their good or service. Period. And you gotta pay for it if you aren't going to break the law.
Its this little thing they forgot to teach you in right wing business 101.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
Lied about what? Are you saying he faked the interviews? If not, I would lay low on the whole "lied" thing.
Speaking of lies, George W. Bush's office released a statement admitting to bending the truth on Iraq's nuclear weapons.. But since it was just the state of the union address... then its OK to do it.
Why don't you take your bullshit and shove it. The "moore's myths" is one load of bullshit.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
Nice fake trying to pose as another person. idiot.
Your bullshit has given us enough to laff at for a fucking year.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
"Taking a select minority sample of people and trying to make it seem that's the majority is misleading and unethical.
Wow, your right about that... Something you should be proud of.
Paranoid? That's off the mark.
oops, you fumbled here. try again.
You see, when you are in that group that is labeled by someone, you don't much like it. That doesn't mean the labeler is a liar. And this is where you have the miniblinds turned at the wrong angle.
idiot.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
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.
Common reasoning but, have you had much first hand experience as a disadvantaged, inner-city youth? There is something much worse that affects many kids no matter how many parents they have. Broken homes and weak parental figures are just contemporary rhetoric that are contributing factors at best. Simply put, we are dealing with the end of the classic American dream. Having no hope at a better life than your parents, or friends did, tears some people up emotionally. You are forced to go to a school where they teach you about how your government, your society, is supposed to behave according to centuries old principals. Then you leave the building only to realize that the reality of the world can make you think that everything they teach is some utopian fantasy. Every day you see a country that kills people in order to prevent death, a biased justice system with the odds against you, and corporations spending billions trying to separate you from what money you have. You know there are people who you will never meet, who will never know you beyond a statistic, deciding your fate based on what the media can exploit for profit. You try to escape a system that you know will consume you one way or another, but become branded a trouble maker.
In order to escape you need money. To get money you have to feed the machine you are running from. Any way of making money without feeding said machine is illegal by criminal or tax laws.
Our generation doesn't have our own great communist enemy to unify against. We see that we only won the cold war because the soviets went bankrupt before we did. We are supposed to buy into systems, like social security, that we know probably won't be there to help us when we need it. We are playing a fixed game, and our failures are being used as evidence against us. What's the most common question asked by people who quit, or want to quit school? "What's the point?" The question isn't "Why have they failed", it is "Why have we continued to fail so much of our future?" Someday when the boomers are all retired, they are going to depend on us. How is the government going to help support the elderly while it also supports what could have been such a large, productive portion of society? One third of us cannot support the other two thirds.
Some interesting listening for all of you: Sage Francis - Makeshift Patriot
I suggest you find the recording, it's rather good.
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
And your Hardylaw site isn't biased? Ever consider his movie wasn't supposed to be a 100% pure, unbiased documentary? If I recall an over hyped movie named Blair witch was shot in a documentary style; are we to believe it was a true story because of the cinematography? Maybe it was supposed to stir political debate. What was the last movie you saw that had you contemplating pressing social issues without using popular rhetoric or cliché? Maybe he wanted some people to form their own opinions instead of thinking along party lines. If there is one thing his production should have showed you is that you shouldn't trust information form one source. Maybe he felt like embellishing some half truths was acceptable in order to get people to notice things, and educate themselves on the subject, instead of going about business as usual.
As far as the Heston interview is concerned: I did not see or hear any cutwork putting together words or sentences. Maybe a half hour did go by, and only a few minutes were showed. Do you think that when the news airs a 24 minute interview that they sat there for exactly 24 minutes and ran straight through? Moore is no more guilty than 20/20, Dateline, and 60 Minutes. The NRA is still the master manipulator. Remember when they funded a republican congress into office after the Brady Bill fiasco, just to make life hard on the president. Or do you remember when they ran a staged picture of fully armed federal agents as a full page anti-government ad in newspapers and magazines? If I recall, that convinced the first Bush to withdraw his lifetime membership in the NRA.
Did you actually read the whole Hardylaw site? When a film wins awards for Best Documentary, it should contain 100% truth, 0% lies. Embellishing half-truths is lying , plain and simple. 20/20, Dateline, 60 Minutes, etc., all cut things out of interviews and speeches because of time limitations. Michael Moore did it to change the nature, content, and appearance of Charlton Heston's speeches. Hell, he combined two separate speeches so that they appear to be the same speech.
I'm not a member of the NRA, nor am I a huge Charlton Heston fan, but if Michael Moore really just wanted people to think for themselves instead of along party lines, he would have presented both sides of the issue with no distortion, left it at that, and let people decide for themselves. Instead, he leads the viewer along, using trickery to try and have viewers come to the conclusions Mr Moore wants them to reach.
huh?!?!?
Let me get this straight...
If the item is 'surplus' then your tax dollars have already been spent.
If it is 'surplus' then it is just simply lying around somewhere.
You would rather the government either destroy it or let it sit rather then having a private individual, company or non-profit give the government some of it's cash back for said product and put it to good use?
Wow.
You are dumb.
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
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.
I can confirm, having been physically present at some of thse events, that the Hardylaw site is a damn sight closer to the truth than Moore's flic.
Yes. He manufactured situations, constructed speeches out of things that happened months apart and put them into contexts in which they didn't belong. As I just said to someone else, I was physically present at some of these events and can confirm that the Hardylaw site is correct where Moore's flic isn't.
If you can't cope with that, perhaps you need to get out of the kitchen.
I agree that basing arguments on the work on Michael Moore can be dangerous, but I don't think his characterization of Americans as paranoid gun nuts was too far off the mark.
Smile when you say that, partner.
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.
Cheney was the head of Halliburton, not Enron or Worldcom. Come on, if you are going to grasp for straws at least make an good attempt.
And please explain how any of this is treason????
No, I didn't attend an inner-city school. But my school had the exact same problems; the only difference was geography. You may not hear about drugs, crime, and societal pressures bearing down on rural/suburban schools on the nightly news, but it happens.
The difference isn't money. The difference is parents, teachers, administrators, and community leaders expecting more from you, and being involved in your life to help you succeed.
Ask yourself why a crack house won't hold up for very long in a suburban neighborhood: the neighborhood won't put up with it. And when an inner-city neighborhood gets together to determine they want change they usually get it.
The day when inner-city leaders stop looking only to the outside world for monetary support, and start taking the reigns of their community to actually lead their people in internal growth, is the day success begins.
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
Did you actually read the whole Hardylaw site? When a film wins awards for Best Documentary, it should contain 100% truth, 0% lies.
... he would have presented both sides of the issue with no distortion, left it at that, and let people decide for themselves. Instead, he leads the viewer along, using trickery to try and have viewers come to the conclusions Mr. Moore wants them to reach.
That is the fault of the Academy for choosing to nominate and award him.
20/20, Dateline, 60 Minutes, etc., all cut things out of interviews and speeches because of time limitations.
I hope you don't actually believe that. Sure, I know sometimes they do cut things out because of time, but they have been proven guilty time and again cutting a single sentence completely out of context for a sound bite. A concert promoter in my area was intervened by Dateline about the rise of non-commercial music. They spent almost 2 hours interviewing him. He was asked if he knew of any drugs present. He replied "Yea, there are drugs here. If I had to guess, I'd say just as much as any run of the mill rock concert. I'm confident in the abilities of our security which also happens to be mostly off duty cops." 10 seconds of it got aired. Guess which part got aired? "Yea, there are drugs here."
Michael Moore did it to change the nature, content, and appearance of Charlton Hesston's speeches.
Just like the popular media. The splitting Moore did wasn't nearly as ruthless as the Medias common tricks, though. Besides, we all know the nature of his speeches; you don't need any cutwork for that. We all know the content of the speeches; it's the same stuff he's been spouting for decades. And why does the appearance matter? This isn't a presidential debate between Kennedy and a flu-ridden Nixon. Hesston needs little help to be seen as the nut he is. He isn't a smart or wise man, he's an actor. That is actors get elected to head positions, because they are charismatic and know how to manipulate people.
Hell, he combined two separate speeches so that they appear to be the same speech.
If I remember right, he cut from an on stage sermon to a back stage Q&A with Hesston about how the NRA tries to help kids. Who cares if one took place in Colorado and the other outside a McDonalds or something? Does he need a specific time or place to lie or tell the truth? He said it, plain and simple. Location matters not.
If that even had a shot of working you would see the 6PM news doing it too. The one thing that motivates people the best is shock value. Never once did he say that what he was showing was the pure truth. Anyone who considers one source credible enough is a fool. Only an idiot would trust something they've seen or heard in one place. I've done a bit or research myself and found that his part about the welfare to work program is right on the money. Unfortunately, you probably think he's lying again since Hardylaw says so. That site is written by gun nuts and Hesston lovers who would discredit the entire films underlying message because he made them look like slack jawed troglodytes. What about Nichols interview? Any opinions on him? What about when he said he got caught with a lot of fertilizer and he said it was for his farm, shortly after he says he grows organic soy. For those who don't know organic means no pesticides, herbicides, or inorganic fertilizer. How about the militia interview or the Kmart interview? Sometimes people just need a swift kick in their preconceived notions in order to think. Anyone who believes the whole story is foolish, just like people who dismiss all of it because they can't find a deeper message.
The difference isn't money. The difference is parents, teachers, administrators, and community leaders expecting more from you, and being involved in your life to help you succeed.
But more attention requires more people and more work. Since we live in a society where money is everything, more of it is going to be an expected requirement. People can expect more from you all they want, it doesn't make someone try harder. They have to want to buy into the system. How is putting more pressure on someone to be somebody they don't want to be going to accomplish anything? We still live in a country where minorities are more likely to go to jail than college.
Ask yourself why a crack house won't hold up for very long in a suburban neighborhood: the neighborhood won't put up with it. And when an inner-city neighborhood gets together to determine they want change they usually get it.
Suburban police don't have nearly as much to do as inner-city cops. I'm sure they have all the time to spare to operate on the fringes of the law in order to drive a crack house out. Besides, that probably just another good white Christian man helping another out. Why do cops in the inner city ignore crack houses even know they know exactly what's going on? That is a legal issue and should concern the cops more than the community.
The day when inner-city leaders stop looking only to the outside world for monetary support, and start taking the reigns of their community to actually lead their people in internal growth, is the day success begins.
Put some reigns on a cat and see how far you can make it go. In order to lead people you need to be leading them in a direction they want to go. Maybe some people think that the political solution isn't the right answer. Who knows? Maybe society has failed them. We did do their fathers and grandfathers wrong by placing them at the bottom of the social ladder for a long time. You can't really expect a couple decades of improved civil liberties to undo centuries of social, political, and economic damage.
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.
Um... I'm not a public school teacher. I create web based training for private companies, if you're really curious. But thanks for playing. Try again next time.
As long as public schools cost money for entrance and are selective in their entrance criteria, the question of who gets in is going to be more than simple "choice". You do understand what a random sample is, don't you? The population of private schools does not constitute a random sample.
As for me, the district where I went to High school a little less than a decade ago (district 203 of Illinois) came in first in math and 4th in science in the world for standardized test scores. When I was there, our math team beat IMSA, the private magnet school that took many of our best students.
Because I went to a public school where students had reasobly well off parents who gave a damn about their kids' education, I know what a difference these things can make in making a public school successful.
I realize that not all people have this opportunity. If I lived in a neighiborhood that was for shit and didn't support it's public schools, I'd send my (hypothetical) kids to a private school. Or more likely, I'd move. But you'd still have kids in public schools who couldn't get into private ones. Private schools don't solve problems. They just provide gated communities where people can escape from them.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Damn, looks like you really CAN buy anything on eBay. Isn't there some kind of health issue with the Hubble, though? I'm sure that having it out in space for all these years can't make it healthy to be around.
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.
I hate to burst your bubble, but I don't particularly care for Charlton Heston. He makes sane gun owners (such as myself) look bad. And he's not that great of an actor. BTW, I'm not an NRA member. Nor am I what most people would consider right wing (agnostic, strong dislike and distrust of Dubya and his Good Ol' Boys Club, etc.)
That is the fault of the Academy for choosing to nominate and award him.
Yeah, because Michael Moore never presented the film as an unbiased documentary, did he? And when he won the award, did he get up and say, "I can't accept this award because I didn't intend this film to be a documentary"? No. He instead got up there and whined about the Democratic party losing the 2000 presidential election. The only thing I hate more than all these people who follow Bush blindly is a sore loser who still whines about the 2000 presidential election.
I hope you don't actually believe that.
Having known someone who was a news producer for a local TV station, I understand better than many people just how much the news media distorts things. But the level of distortion seen in Bowling For Columbine is, from what I've seen, rare in the news media. That isn't to say they don't do it, just that they don't do it as blatantly or with as much intent to deceive.
Sure, I know sometimes they do cut things out because of time, but they have been proven guilty time and again cutting a single sentence completely out of context for a sound bite. A concert promoter in my area was intervened by Dateline about the rise of non-commercial music. They spent almost 2 hours interviewing him. He was asked if he knew of any drugs present. He replied "Yea, there are drugs here. If I had to guess, I'd say just as much as any run of the mill rock concert. I'm confident in the abilities of our security which also happens to be mostly off duty cops." 10 seconds of it got aired. Guess which part got aired? "Yea, there are drugs here."
Did they show your friend saying, "Yeah, there are drugs here," cut to some stock footage, and then back to him (at another place/time) saying, "and I think it's just great!" so that it appears that he said it all at once? Because that's basically what Moore did to Heston's speeches.
Distorting what someone else says to further your own agenda is deceitful, regardless of whether you like/agree with that person.
Of course, that seems to be what your precious Michael Moore is all about. I wholeheartedly disagree with your presumption that Mr Moore is just a caring bystander who simply wants people to think for themselves. Bowling For Columbine is so obviously a carefully crafted attempt to lead viewers by the hand to what Moore wants them to think, that I really don't see how you can say otherwise.
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.
Bowling For Columbine is so obviously a carefully crafted attempt to lead viewers by the hand to what Moore wants them to think, that I really don't see how you can say otherwise.
Well, that would be the fault of foolish people who are either too lazy or unintelligent to research the matters themselves; and in the end, their opinion is unimportant anyway because they cannot backup their claims with more than one source. I would not trust someone who said that BfC was their source, but I would trust someone who said BfC made them want to research the subject at hand. Besides, the only complaints I hear about the film involve the NRA. Does anyone have a bone to pick about his welfare to work segment? I thought that part was rather well done.
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/