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NASA Debates How And When To Kill Hubble Telescope
Amy's Robot writes "The Washington Post reports that after 13 years of wear and tear, the Hubble telescope may be on the way out. NASA and some outside scientists have become involved in a heated debate about how and when to end the Hubble telescope program. Keeping Hubble in service until 2020 would require an extra maintenance visit by astronauts at a cost of at least $600 million. Some even worry the batteries could fail by 2010, since the next maintenance visit has been delayed by the Columbia accident and space station priorities. Is it worth maintaining our old friend Hubble, or should NASA let him go out in a blaze of glory?"
Um, that would all be very nice if it were possible to use the scope with an eyepiece. It wasn't designed for such. In fact, AFAIK no research grade telescope built in probably the last 20 years even has the ability to plug an eyepiece into it. Human eyes are just nowhere near as sensitive as CCDs.
Plus, you'd have to remove an instrumentation pack and let people crawl inside it. This would not only endanger surrounding equipment greatly, it would require at least a couple of days of downtime afterwards to recalibrate the inertial guidance.
You could probably see your house as a speck, but you wouldn't be able to resolve it. The Hubble is only a 2.4 meter telescope after all.
death ray... yeah... OK, obviously no grasp of optics here. I'm starting to think this article should be moderated "Funny" but I've already responded, so no moderating for me.