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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?"
Why? Its up there, lets use it till gravity takes its course. (Or it fails mechanically)
~ Maintainer of the Skajake Projects
seems fairly cheap to me, compared to what it would cost to build and launch a new one
Give the "hunk-of-junk" to me... I'm sure I can find many... uses, for it... **cough** SETI@HOME **cough**
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
Hubble couldn't crash into the sun without getting a signifant boost to get it out of Earth orbit.
I wonder if they can keep things going for a while by auctioning off time of the telescope? I doubt they could raise 600 million, but I'd bet they could keep things going for a while.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I mean in 13 years, how much is it that the Hubble telescope can see that it hasn't done yet? Is it now mostly "humm has anything changed" or is the exposure time so long and the focus so small that only a small part of the sky has been charted?
If it's the former, let it die and make a new, stronger and better one and send up. If it's the latter, fix it up and keep it running so it can continue to do its thing.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Shouldn't this kind of discussion occur before we send Tons of metal/glass into space with the possibility of it comming back down? That said, whoever sent it up on the shuttle should send the shuttle back to retrive it. This whole "let it fall back to earth" way of dealing with our space trash is going to get someone killed. Part of any launch budget should include retrival costs that go in an Escrow until it's time to go get it.
Post: Sigged, for your pleasure.
They already are planning it
The James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2011, is designed to observe the universe in infrared wavelengths required to study the most distant galaxies as they accelerate outward.
But the problem is...It will not produce the spectacular visible wavelength images for which the Hubble is celebrated.
So no more great picutures of the universe like Hubble is famous for. I say that it is well worth the 600 mil to keep it up til at least 2020. As inspiration / backup, Hell that is less than a paltry 60 million a year.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Turn the shuttles over to the USAF, let them launch one of them out of Vandenberg when they have to, and dump the Government-funded civilian space program.
Further work on space propulsion systems should be moved to the Department of Energy.
I think it would be stupid^H^H^H^H^H^Hoverly optimistic to de-orbit Hubble until the new Webb space telescope is launched and fully tested. After all, how dumb would NASA look if it destroyed a perfectly good piece of equipment, and then its replacement fubared because of a mismatched washer or something.
And right now, the plan is to do just that, to bring down Hubble before Webb is even launched, to save a few (million) bucks in Hubble operational costs. And the big debate is that everyone with any sense, and any sense of history, is telling them (NASA penny pinchers) that they're crazy.
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Something NASA should consider before taking penny-wise, pound-foolish steps.
Cheers!
"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
One B-2 Stealth Bomber --> $2.2 Billion USD
15+ more years of Hubble --> $600 Million USD
which would contribute more?
Why does the space station take priority ? they should scrap the ISS and start planning new orbital telescopes. most of the real valid research is done with hubble, and the dmand for time on it is outragous. NASA is a failure because it focuses on money sinks that do nothing.
Now I won't claim that the ISS has produced zero science, but I will claim that it's a mighty expensive way to do science. Humans in space may win congressional votes, but they're a pretty expensive way to do research. Remote control machines such as the space telescope, the Mars landers, Voyager, etc. have produced much more science for much less money.
If we let the ISS drop, there's be plenty of money to keep Hubble running, build its successor, send machines to Pluto, and a ton of other stuff. Unfortunately, the political reality is that Congress and the American public aren't particularly interested in the actual science. But we're willing to spend $2.5 billion per year because we think astronauts are cool!
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Remember Skylab?
Yes, Skylab! It was the first manned space station, and it was american! well, anyway, instead of worrying about TODAY and keeping it operational with TODAY's technology, the pie-in-the-sky nasa engineers decided to wait until tomorrow's technology could save them from poor planning.
Do I see history repeating itself?
MARK MY WORDS: If they allow Hubble to de-orbit, in order to free up cash to build a new replacement, THERE WILL BE NO REPLACEMENT FOR A VERY LONG TIME. Remember, this is Congress, isn't it? And this is a country filled with half-ignoramus who get all their news from Rupert Murdoch.
Cue "Dueling Banjos" - "How come we spend all this money on space monkeys when we don't have no jobs down here?"
Of course, you try to inform these people that NASA has a very small budget - pratically non-existant next to the defense department's big money handout, and that many of the NASA programs are actually at the behest of the Department of Defense, so that their "real budget" for science is very very small.
Cue "Dueling Banjos", again: "But we don't need no science, we need jobs"
Of course, this man is retarded - but he actually represents the majority sentiment.
Now, of course, to you and me, we see the hallmark of a productive society as scientific research. And we are smart enough to know that science for science's sake often has a fantastic impact on everyday lives, etc...
But, this hayseed has a congressman, who also wants to know why you crazy science people want $600 million just to look at the sky.
So, keep in mind - if Hubble fails, their will be no timely replacement.
I appreciate your insistence that the only reason to go into space is for scientific knowledge, but I don't think your premise regarding manned space flight is correct.
All the knowledge we gain (scientific or otherwise) is ultimately tied to the fact that we must eventually leave this world if we are to grow as a species. Eventually, manufacturing, mining, and even our quality of life will depend on this.
I also don't see how burning up an unused/unfinished $13 billion dollar investment is considered a plus for all the people who have paid for it. I also don't see how you can gauge the scientific potential of the ISS before it's finished and has a full crew dedicated to experimentation and science.
I agree that we should find a way to increase NASA's budget. I believe there is no reason to down the Hubble if we can service it and it remains useful. I don't believe the way to accomplish either goal is to abandon manned spaceflight, or cannibalize it for other programs. We spend 400 billion on our military every year, surely we can find a way of cannabalizing THAT boondoggle before picking on any of NASA's current budget?
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
A nice idea, but not really an option. Hubble is in a low earth orbit right now. To get it up to even geosynchronous orbit would require an immense amount of fuel. I'm not *that* kind of rocket scientist, so I don't know how much fuel it would take (relative to it's size). I do know that it would take a lot more fuel (at least one order of magnitude, maybe several) than is required to de-orbit it. NASA would probably have to dig up an old Saturn V to get enough fuel up there to send it towards the moon.
Visible light is important. Not as much for deep sky objects, sure. And probably not even for the next generation or two of space telescopes. But we have not even come close to being able to visually look at even our closest neighboring star systems. We rely on gravity wobbles and visual occultation to find other planets. As our resolving power improves, we will begin to make out these details and it will likely be one of the larger discoveries that have been made this century (assuming it happens this century).
Physicists probably won't care much about other star systems while they're struggling to unify special relativity and general relativity, but plenty of other branches of science will. So don't dismiss visual wavelengths.
Random and weird software I've written.
Why not attach a thruster pack on it using an unmanned robot launched whenever and then have the Hubble pushed into a lunar orbit. That way we can preserve the Hubble (unless something small and fast hits it) and it will be in a great location for potential future use. I can Imagine the first moon base scientists taking on a "restore the Hubble" as a small project as from the moon getting into lunar orbit is so easy to do. yeah you would need to send the spare parts to the moon for such a thing to happen, but with the Hubble parked it would be a do-it-our-own-time kind project. Sure it wouldn't be as good as what we would have at the time, but it would still be very useful. If anything giving universities or other organizations "hubble time" on the cheap could help to pay for it.
I would hate to see something as wonderful as this work of art burned up.
Hubble is one of the VERY FEW things NASA has gotten right! Spend the $600 Million to fix it. Hubble has done more for science than the space station EVER will. It's like shooting a horse simply because it's old, even though it can still win a race.
Objects in low earth orbit lowly lose momentum due to friction with the outer atmosphere. Left on its own, Hubble is going to eventually come down on its own. The ISS, for example, requires a periodic boost in speed to keep it from slowing to the point where it can no longer maintain orbit. The point of guided re-entry and burnup is to make sure the big stuff comes down in a place it can't hurt anything (i.e., the ocean).