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NASA Cancels Hubble Mission, and Other Space Bits
An anonymous reader writes "NASA Watch is reporting that NASA has cancelled Servicing Mission 4 for the Hubble Space Telescope. The reason given is not for budgets, but for safety." ender81b writes "With all the excitement generated by the Mars Exploration Rovers now is a good time to look at future space exploration missions. One of the most exciting is the Kepler spacecraft which will search for terrestrial planets around nearby stars. Other interesting upcoming missions include the New Horizons mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper belt, Deep Impact which will fire a small impactor into a comet to study the insides, Messenger which will fully photograph Mercury for the first time, and the ESA's Herschel infrared space telescope and Rosetta spacecraft which will land on a comet for the first time. Whew, good time to be invovled in space exploration!" StarWreck writes "Cnet.com is reporting that the Mars Rover uses Java. The same piece of software that lets people around the world play video games on their cell phones is now letting scientists drive the ultimate remote-controlled car across the surface of Mars."
That telescope is awesome!
Making NASA stronger == Kill NASA.
Don't Leave Children Behind == Leave them behind.
Healthy Forests == Cut down the forests.
I'm a space fan. I like manned space programs too. But they are going to wreck what NASA does do well, scientific research, for a program they will also not complete.
-pyrrho
Sir, we've run into a serious problem with the mission. These Nielsen ratings are the lowest ever.
Oh my God! We've been beaten by a "Connie Chung Christmas."
I'm laughing at clouds.
The article states only that Java is being used for the software used to send commands to the rover and process the output.
I'm assuming that the limited amount of power the rover has access to would forbid the use of Java, would that be right? And if everything is controlled from the ground anyways, we're not talking about especially complicated code in any case, so why bother with the overhead?
Then again, if they're sending code to the rover maybe Java does make sense; bytecode tends to be smaller than machine code, so you get better utilization of upstream bandwidth.
(Anybody know what OS the rover uses?)
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
From: rwo@gemini.astro.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Cancellation of SM4
Dear SOC:
You've just heard from Randy, and I just finished a long conversation with Dave Leckrone. O'Keefe decided, apparently almost purely for reasons of Shuttle safety, to cancel SM4. Budget was not a driving concern, nor was the new Bush space initiative. (Only the timing was related to the President's announcement.) Code S opposed the decision and had identified sufficient funding to cover the SM4 slippage.
Basically, the problem was that a Hubble Shuttle mission would require special safety procedures to be developed (inspection, etc) that would not be necessary for an ISS mission. (This point seems to be disputed by people in Houston, who were eager to do SM4.) Only ISS missions will be carried out in the future.
John Grunsfeld, the Chief Scientist, was apparently as surprised as most everybody else at the decision. Dave's first inkling was the email sent out by Rogier yesterday. This has been held very close to the vest.
The decision is such that it looks like there is no recourse.
We have been encouraged to think of other productive ways to use WFC3 and COS---maybe on MIDEX's, etc. Looking for bright ideas to salvage something from these excellent instruments.
If the President's initiative is approved, even in its first phase, there will be significant science involved, in which GSFC hopes to participate.
Despite our own fundamental disappointment, we were on the periphery of the project, and our main concern should be for those who spent the last six years of their careers working on it and doing such a beautiful job.
There are plenty of issues to work through, and we should still plan to hold our February SOC meeting.
Regretfully --- Bob G. Oatse
on cellphones?? MHHH. Why am I not convinced...
;)
Well I guess this is good, it means Java is considered stable enough now for something such a critical (ie, cannot crash) to be used for that...
rebooting the rover prolly isnt an option
Those all sound great.
Except for exploding a comet. Does anyone realize how much destructive force that requires? I don't want NASA firing up rockets that hold that sort of weaponry, considering their current safety record. What happens if it falls back to Earth? That could wipe out a city.
With all those links, you'd think maybe a Hubble link would surface... Here's a couple good ones:
Hubble For General Public
Hubble For Scientists
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For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
And, therefore, make a complete fool of themselves?
I can see the inevitable kneejerk reaction now. "OMG Bush is taking away money from science to fund his reelection he is evil."
Get A GRIP!
This was being considered before Bush's new proposal. It is not the fault of his proposal. And we are going to have a replacement put up. Nothing is being lost here, nothing is being sacrificed on the altar of MTMS, Man To Mars Soonest.
We're spending in the billions for a failure rate that wouldn't be tolerated in any long-term business venture. The program should seek alternative funding, perhaps via advertisement opportunities or by seizing the potential of the universe as a means of solving our garbage crisis, so that we can meet our space exploration goals on a faster timetable and take safety a little more seriously.
All night, waiting for the JVM to start up.
You killed Hubble! You bastard!
Anybody know what OS the rover uses?
MER2004 Mars Rovers use an OS by Wind River. Read about it at that link (press release).
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
BTW, anyone can sign up to have their name put in a CD that will crash into a comet with the Deep Impact spacecraft. Only using the english character set though.
"John Grunsfeld, NASA's chief scientist, said NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe made the decision to cancel the fifth space shuttle service mission to the Hubble when it became clear there was not enough time to conduct it before the shuttle is retired."
"He said the decision was influenced by President Bush's new space initiative, which calls for NASA to start developing the spacecraft and equipment for voyages to the moon and later to Mars. The president's plan also called for the space shuttle to be retired by 2010. Virtually all of the shuttle's remaining flights would be used to complete construction of the International Space Station."
I sure hope Bush follows through on his promise of funding, because NASA is going to be fucked if they start shifting priorities to his ideas and then don't get the money to follow through.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
The same piece of software that lets people around the world play video games on their cell phones is now letting scientists drive the ultimate remote-controlled car across the surface of Mars.
Okay, now I know that it is somewhat of the geek stereotype that "If its not broke, gimme a minute to make it faster", but why does it seem like we are abandoning the HST?
.02, YMMV.
Yes, I know that technically it is coming to the end of its projected life span, but that does not mean we should just let it die. I never cease to be amazed at some of the images (yes I know they are touched up) that the HST has given us.
Yes, NASA and JPL are (and righfully so) basking in the glory of the success of the latest Mars probe. But what about in 6 months when those probes are gone. All I see in these stories are future flights. Why abandon something that is still giving us good results.
With the less than perfect track records of probes sent by *any* space agency, I can't pin my hopes of data (and dreams) on future flights.
I think its only wise to keep the HST working as long as we can, or at least until the Webb (is that correct?) telescope is up and functional.
Just my
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
I've been a fan of the Space program since I was a kid watching guys in bulky suits bounce around on the Moon. I may have been a fan earlier, but I don't remember much about the space program before Apollo.
Hubble was an amazing piece of hardware, designed to be serviced by the then-existant shuttle fleet. Which, as we all know, isn't what it used to be.
NASA's budget is limited. Always has been, always will be. They've got to make decisions on whether to keep servicing an old scope that, admitedly, is still doing good science, or spend their money on new projects that will arguably jump the state of the art as far ahead of Hubble as Hubble did in its day.
With the quality and light gathering abilities of surface based scopes approacing or surpassing Hubble - thanks to advances in adaptive optics and other fields - the decision to discontinue servicing Hubble is understandable. It was a fantastic instrument, and it will be missed when the mission finally ends. Note that the announcement isn't "Turn it off tomorrow." It's "We're not going to do any more servicing, but we'll let run until it dies of natural causes."
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
Maybe "Deep Impact" was inspired by Hitchhiker's Deep Thought?
While a lot of this might be politics, the truth is, Hubble is what it is and has reached a point of where the question is, is it important to spend billions to service Hubble, or do we move on to something better. It would be nice if the space crews could drop by Hubble now and then and clean the bugs off the mirror, charge the battery, change the oil, but the truth is, this will be a task for the antique space junk fanatics of the centuries to come, they can take pictures of them next to it and post them on the Net with their cars with fins. We need to move on.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Hubble has been the best publicity generator for astronomy for *years* now. My bet is that this was announced when and how it was precisely because they are hoping to generate enough public outrage to get this decision reversed. Personally, I know it was a blow to many of my colleagues. Trying to get HST time has been difficult and frustrating, but you can't deny its impact. The number of high quality science results that have been generated by the telescope dwarfs just about all of its competition when you use most object measurement criteria. We'll see what happens, I guess, but my guess is that the astronomical community is going to at least try to put whatever weight they can muster behind getting the HST servicing mission made a priority again.
"The same piece of software that lets people around the world play video games on their cell phones is now letting scientists drive the ultimate remote-controlled car across the surface of Mars." The specific Java program used to run the rover is called Maestro. It is available for Wintel, Mac, Linux and Solaris, from: http://mars.telascience.org/home/ Regular science and graphics updates come in here. You can get/view them just like the folks at JPL see them.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
There was a team doing a robotics competition for their school (this was college level). Their task was to make a ping-pong playing robot and theirs went to the competition and was doing fantastic. It had been beating the opponents and they were sure they'd win. They had a great Java program to do it.
The problem was that the CPU they were running on wasn't that fast. Now it worked just fine, untill it froze solid. You see, in the final match (or nearly final?) the thing started to do garbage collection, which they hadn't turned off (realize they didn't need it). While doing the garbage collection, the robot wouldn't move or do anything, so they lost. Oops.
And the moral of the storage is... problems in Java are a bunch of garbage. **rimshot**. But seriously though. If they don't capture that picture of the Martian because that little rover is garbage collecting, I'm going to have to go kick some NASA butt.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
As a note about fully mapping mercury, it seems to be one of the forgotten planets nobody talks about much, but has had some attention in the past.
Still, there are some interesting Mariner shots of the planet online. Not quite half has been mapped yet, but there's some interesting features that make it unique.
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It looks like 2 years of waiting is finally over. This is now on mars. I had completely forgotten about it until this stupid story. Thanks /.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
They're saying the Hubble won't get serviced because there isn't enough time to do it before the shuttle fleet is retired. And since the date for the retirement of shuttle was selected after the Mars announcement, I think it's fair to say that Hubble is being neglected for budgetary reasons.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
From the article...
"They are doing things that people think are science fiction," he said. "It's a place to go to have your mind blown. It's hard to find a government agency...where people are living their dreams."
I think I speak for most of the geeks here when I say that I think that we would prefer a place to get our dicks blown.
Thank you very much.
This article (http://www.nature.com/nsu/030728/030728-13.html) from the summer had the following speculation-
"Until recently, the agency had planned to have the space shuttle return Hubble to Earth for museum display. "No one wants to do that anymore," says Anne Kinney, head of NASA's astronomy and physics division.
In fact, the US astronaut corps opposes "risking human lives for the purpose of disabling great science" representative John Grunsfeld told the meeting. It would support a servicing mission to extend Hubble's life or ensure its safe re-entry, he said. A servicing trip to the telescope costs NASA about US$700 million, much of which maintains planning teams at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The option of moving the Hubble to a higher storage orbit has also been dropped. Instead, NASA favours attaching a rocket booster to the telescope in 2010 to steer it to burn up over the ocean.
So far, NASA has found no affordable way to attach the rocket and extend the telescope's life without degrading its performance. Defenders argue that the problem can be solved, and that useful observations can still be obtained from the telescope after the booster is attached."
I guess it's just going to drift while. It's in a 600km orbit.
Seems that NASA has actually lost the edge in robotic space exploration. Remember this little gem of a story submitted by someone from Switzerland and posted by Michael(who else).
NASA doesn't have that much money to play with anymore, and the hundreds of millions needed for another repair mission (even before the backup orbiter issue) was going to seriously screw up the timing of even getting the follow on telescope into the sky, not to mention the other robotic missions they're trying to keep alive.
Luke, help me take this mask off
http://mars.telascience.org/home
They have a data pack from gustav crater and will be updating it with more data packs as the rovers mission progresses.
I did notice that it was a hog of a program, it nearly brought my workstation to it's knees.
The messages linked to state that the Hubble service mission was cancelled purely for safety reasons, and that "Only ISS missions will be carried out in the future" out of concern for shuttle inspection procedures. The general purpose space shuttle has been reduced to only being used for one particular type of mission - it's useful life is effectively over.
The space telescope is a science project that has produced a lot of valuable information. There is some risk involved in a mission to service it, but there is not known to be a high probability of failure.
The newly announced mission to mars also has a science component, but is also largely a human exploration project. Without sending people, we could still get great science done by sending robots, especially if we were to spend the same amount of money as we are willing to spend to send humans. Sending people is a feel-good exercise, yet for this we are willing to take on great risks. The chances that some harm (if not death) will come to the astronauts looks very high. Even with the kind of technology we might be able to develop over the next 30 years there are still some serious inherent risks that will not be overcome.
It's an interesting contrast:- for science we are apparently not willing to take any risk, but for the sake of a feel good exercise we are willing to take an enourmous risk.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The articles state that NASA is going to "design and build" a robotic attachment to send up to Hubble when the lifetime is over. This is going to dock with Hubble, the control the re-entry so that it doesn't end up hitting a populated area.
Seems to be, the costs of one additional shuttle mission may very well be cheaper than the costs to design and build this robotic craft.
Also, the original plan called for a final shuttle flight to return Hubble inside the payload bay. Hubble was to be studied in detail to see the effects of long-term exposure in space to help design future craft to be more resistant.
After that, it was going to be given to the Smithsonian AIr and Space museum. A fitting place given the discoveries made with Hubble.
Sometimes I think we are often shortsighted these days...Doing everything for the bottom line and not thinking about future generations ability to "see and touch" some of the great things we have done.
Bruce Garrett, a member of the Hubble team, has posted to his blog about the matter:
t m# b22
http://www.brucegarrett.com/brucelog_2004_1_1.h
Just thought that was worth mentioning.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Regretfully --- Bob G. Oatse
If anyone's curious about the CPU used by the rovers, it's one of the POWER derived radiation hardened chips made by BAE Systems. While it's PPC based, it's more similar to a family of CPUs that split off even before the first of the Mac PPCs, the 601. Similar operating speed and power, however, as the first of those.
The newer PPC based space capable CPUs are RAD750s, which are directly related to the G3 PPC powering iMacs and iBooks.
While on the topic of space hardware, and going back to photograph mercury, what kind of camera equipment was used to take images of the moon and mars in the 1960s/1970s? I was told by an English teacher that each photo was snapshotted on film, then exposed in a small photoprocessing lab inside the probes, and scanned to send back to earth as there was no possibility of capturing fast moving images on CCD that far back. I think that sounds a bit of wishful thinking urban legend. Anyone know for sure?
thanks
This administration has no interest in science, mostly because they lack intellectual curiosity, as do most religious types, I might add.
Putting a man on the moon! I guess he got this Vision Thing from his Dad.
Help fight continental drift.
Read the letters. The reason SM4 is cancelled is due to the need for developing safety procedures that are not necessary for (science lightweight) ISS, now the exclusive beneficiary of shuttle missions. Why would it be impossible to develop these safety procedures? It only takes half a dimwit to understand that money is the roadblock. Sadly, we've less than half a dimwit sitting in the Oval Office, randomly reshuffling NASA in order to generate election buzz...
It seems like it is just an excuse from the head of NASA, who was a beancounter, alone. Perhaps the most tragic thing was that Columbia was lost while on a purely-for-science mission.
The thing is, bang for bucks, Hubble must be at least two orders of magnitude above the ISS in returning scientific data. It would not have costed above 10billion, compared to the hundreds of billions the ISS sucked up, and it had given us little, or next to nothing scientific data. No permanent scientific crew, the Destiny science module not being put to good use because the barebone crew of two is too preoccupied running it. All it stands for is an ego booster - we have a permanent manned presence in space, albeit a skeletal crew stuck for years in low Earth orbit, forever tied down doing endless plumbing just to keep it there.
I am starting to doubt if we will see a Hubble successor. And the sad fact is that we will not be fully realising the potential of Hubble, a good piece of hardware that had inspired and impressed so many of us at such a bargain price of under the cost of a B2 bomber.
Not urban legend.
Check out the cameras used on Russian probes. They used a film camera, then 'standard' television technology to scan the picture and send it back. Not sure what the Americans used, but was probably pretty similar.
If I was worried about Karma, I'd eat tofu.
nothing to do with NASA, hmm?
these people who feel righteous about pointing out trolls are just as bad as the trolls themselves
...so eager to take Hubble down, when it's still contributing so much to astrophysics? The new space telescope isn't even ready for launch yet, and who knows if it will work at first go? I'd rather have Hubble as backup until the new one is working smoothly and flawlessly before even thinking about bringing it down. Capitalism and politics just don't mix well with science.
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In fact it is approximately 10 minutes there and 10 minutes back. Here's how to find out. Go to John Walker's Orrery to find the current planet positions. Mars is indicated at 1.257 AU from Earth. Since we know one AU (Sun to Earth) takes about 8 min, then 8 x 1.3 = ~10 min. Check it out yourself, it's a great tool.
For this and more, check out the link in the sig below.
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
Becase, um, saftey reasons maybe?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The following estimates state that servicing mission 4 (really 5 considering there was 3A and 3B) spent about $200 million so far developing instruments. But the NASA head administrator (Sean O'Keefe) estimated that only $40 million remains for funding to completion. IMHO, it's a total shame and waste to pull the plug now, if we're only $40 million away from goal.
Another note regarding safety is really suspect. Supposedly all future shuttle missions will go to ISS in case of failure, so the astronauts can stay there and maybe use an escape pod if absolutely necessary. Hence, no more Hubble missions in the interest of safety.
What is missing from this discussion is that NASA is still keeping with their plans to bring Hubble back down from orbit as per an international treaty regarding space debris above a specific size. This entails heavily modifying one of the shuttles as Colombia was the only one large enough to fit the HST inside its cargo bay.
So they consider bringing Hubble down intact (as opposed to crashing it into the ocean, for instance) higher priority than keeping it running. I think that's a shame, again.
SM4 is important. Hubble only has 3 functioning gyros right now (SM4 would replace these and batteries, as well as install new instruments). If one of these gyros breaks, Hubble is severely crippled, and can do some, but only limited pointing and hence less science. If the next gyro breaks beyond this, then Hubble is effectively next to useless.
Come on NASA, change your mind and keep the SM4. It's been in progress for a long time, and its estimated cost is a drop in the bucket compared to some other USA funded endeavours (cough IRAQ cough).
make world, not war
We're thinking of sending someone to mars, but that Hubble thing--WAY too dangerous!
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
Hubble is our proudest and best space innovation. Why are they doing this? I just can't keep saying why?
"A Pluto-Kuiper Joint."
The three main beneficiaries are Cape Canavral (launch, at Florida), Johnson Space Center (Mission Control, at Houston), and JPL (interplanetary craft, at Pasadena, California). FL, TX, and CA. All of these centers, and hence states, will see vastly increased funding. And all of these centers are also in key states Bush needs to win the election.
Sorry about the conspiracy theory, but it's an interesting trend, noticed especially by several NASA folks too.
make world, not war
... is a fine piece of work for its time, but we are capable of making much more powerful space telescopes now, it might be best that we DON'T put mroe money into the Hubble.
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
Hmm, Java.
With all the excitement generated by the Mars Exploration Rovers now is a good time to look at future space exploration missions. One of the most exciting is the Kepler spacecraft which will search for terrestrial planets around nearby stars. Other interesting upcoming missions include the New Horizons mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper belt, Deep Impact which will fire a small impactor into a comet to study the insides,Messenger which will fully photograph Mercury for the first time, and the ESA's Herschel infrared space telescope and Rosetta spacecraft which will land on a comet for the first time. Whew, good time to be invovled in space exploration!"
All of which will be cancelled to waste money sending men to the moon and mars. ISS is just the first step in this money drain. How can you be so damn naive?
Slight clarification, after re-reading the link I just posted:
/.)
The Americans used pretty standard television technology for their cameras. The Russians developed a slightly different technology - still based on the 'cathode/anode tube thingy' idea, but with more sensitive equipment and a pan-n-scan technique for sending photos back. The cathode tube thingy (Photoelectron Multiplier Tube) would scan across the photo film, so that the entire image could be scanned a piece at a time, and with better clarity.
Read the above link for more info, it's pretty cool stuff. The site has quite a bit of interesting information on the Russian space program, including some enhanced and reprocessed images of Venus (previously seen on
If I was worried about Karma, I'd eat tofu.
That basturd is again demonstrating his lack of intelligence.
For US residents:
If you'd like NASA to reconsider, http://savethehubble.org is carrying a petition to uncancel the servicing mission.
You might also consider sending a message to your representative. The house.gov website makes it easy.
I am not going to fall for your lame attempt at start an Urban Myth.
Jack Black's mom did not help design the Hubble Space Telescope.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
How in the world can NASA be expected to go to the moon and mars if they aren't even willing to go service Hubble? Can't they make this mission work a year from now. Why didn't they at worst just delay it. We need NASA to get back the "can do" attitude.
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"It's been the user community that had been pushing to keep Hubble going..."
The user community. Ie, the scientists that use Hubble.
In other words, the work of those scientists, who have produced some of the best cosmology and astrophysics of the last century, and significantly enhanced our knowledge of the universe, has taken a back-burner to the Bush family's perennial re-election year plans.
In many respects, delaying Hubble's successor is a good thing. For starters, it means that it will be able to incorporate even more technological advances and thereby be a more reliable and an even better scientific tool for the thousands of scientists that use its data.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Although I have no actual primary source information on this, what I heard is that the safety board that investigated the last space shuttle accident recommended that all future shuttle missions be designed so that they could reach the ISS as a lifeboat (in case some tiles are damaged during takeoff). Apparently designing a mission to visit the Hubble and still go to the ISS is not possible due to their different orbits. The previous (four?) missions to visit the Hubble never had this requirement before.
Of course NASA is free to ignore the safety board's recommendations and develop a new safety procedure for this single SP4 mission (and they had the money for this), but I guess that's a symptom of the "new" NASA. Let's not try if it might make us look bad and we ignore yet another accident board's recommendation (apparently one of the conclusions of the most recent safetly board was that they ignored all the management communication reorganization suggestions of the Challenger board's report).
Don't know who is "right", but I do know that both NASA and the Safety board both seem to be full of excuses these days (either real or convenient excuses)...
I can see it now
One-Way Ticket to Mars? is going to be a big hit in ~2010 then they are going to get some base setup on the moon and stop sending supplies to the Martian colony because it isn't so popular anymore.
note: Nothing was meant literally
Candle burns its brightest in the dark
Interestingly, Hubble is (soon to be was) the only telescope that could observe certain wavelengths of ultraviolet used to test metallicity. Since Earth's atmosphere is opaque in these wavelengths, space-based observatories are the only way to observe these wavelengths.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
I don't know where O'Keefe got that $41 million number from. Maybe that's the cost to finish the instruments but doesn't account for the actual shuttle launch and servicing.
Anyway, I still believe $700 million would be greatly worth it to fix up Hubble to keep it running for a few more years. I can only hope some other bigwigs at NASA think this too, and can convince the policy makers.
O'Keefe (NASA's administrator) supposedly made the decision entirely on his own this morning regarding Hubble. That's one hell of a profound decision, affecting significant research project as well as jobs, for a single person to make on their own.
make world, not war
Wind River's VxWorks is very popular in space technology for real-time functions. When I was at the Goddard Space Flight Center in the early 90's, most of the ground control centers used VxWorks for their real-time components.
Over a four-year period, Kepler will continuously view an amount of sky about equal to the size of a human hand held at arm's length or about equal in area to two "scoops" of the sky made with the Big Dipper constellation. So how many Big Dipper "scoops" in 3 Libraries of Congress?
The space race was a race, and in the 60's people new race was a risk that people took, was not safe, it was a balance between safety and cutting edge... It's a calculated gamble. You balance the risk with the will to win.
In this day of safety latches and plastic electrical covers for "child safe homes," and McDonald's lawsuits over hot coffee being too hot, is it any wonder that NASA is failing?
When I was a kid, I stuck a fork in an electrical outlet and LEARNED MY LESSON, I put my hand on the stove and LEARNED MY LESSON. I also have been burned by hot coffee in a McDonald's Styrofoam (not environmentally friendly) coffee cup.
Did I sue? Did I blame society? NO. That's just life lesson, things hurt, knifes are sharp and carving a pumpkin can result in injury... THAT WAS LIFE.
Now days, with the world as it is, is there any wonder NASA is failing? What was that famous 60's quote by an Apollo astronaut? Something about "we are sitting in a 10 sq ft cone on 90 tons of explosive fuel, does this feel as crazy to you as it does to me?" Something like that, I wish I had the real quote.. But point is, It's about pushing the limits of what humans can do, not about putting foam safety bumpers on all the sharp corners you could get a bo-bo from.
The estimate of $41 million isn't fully correct, please read my followup post .
make world, not war
According to this NY Times article ...$200 million worth of instruments that had been built to be added in the later shuttle mission will also be left on the ground...
It also notes that a service mission costs around $500 million. If we have already invested 40% of the price of a service mission on parts we might want to consider actually using them.
This is where you can
. ht ml
submit your name for the Deep Impact Mission
After you give them your name the site even generates a a really cool, serial numbered certificate you can print out and hang up on the wall.
The parent wasn't being a troll by saying it only accepts the english character set:
http://deepimpact.umd.edu/sendyourname/namehelp
"At the present however, our database is unable to accept foreign characters, so please use the English alphabet/character set when adding your name. Also, please avoid using special characters such as quotation marks, ampersands, brackets, underscores, mathematical symbols, etc. These characters may cause unexpected errors, and you may not be able to retrieve your certificate from the database. Numbers, apostrophes, dashes, and letters with accents or other embellishments (such as "e" or "n") are acceptable."
I think its pretty cool I can have my name sent to a comet. The mission wont be launched until 2005 or so but I can wait. The last time NASA did something like this I missed out.
Anyway, it's still a relatively low cost to pay to keep Hubble operating for another decade or so. Especially since NASA will fund $300 million for a special rocket to bring Hubble safely into the ocean.
make world, not war
Maybe we can get the Chinese to help us out. They're not afraid.
Skylab was larger and nothing came of it's re-entry over Austrailia, not even a dead kangaroo. Given that luck, the decision might be just to let it go and hope for the best.
Otherwise the most likely scenario is the unmanned rocket pack to deorbit. This of course would have to be done while Hubble is in decent shape, i.e. at least 3 operating gyroscopes. Otherwise not even a shuttle would be sent.
According to NASA watch Hubble should stay aloft until 2012 with a bit of luck although orbital decay would render it useless two years before entry. It's fairly inconceivable that 700 million dollars will be spent to just to recover it intact.
http://slashdot.org/~ertpihreth/journal/ . . . . we will see how DENSE the editor's are. i have submitted this as a story.
It's not too dangerous to haul more wasted money to that floating albatross in the sky, but it is too dangerous to service the Hubble, which is arguably the most important telescope in the history of astronomy.
Asshats.
The responses you see here aren't really negativism and pessimism. They're anti-Bush hysteria. If Howard Dean had announced the same plan, the same I'm-against-Bush-because-the-man-on-TV-told-me-to crowd would be drooling all over themselves at this brave heralding of man's destiny in the stars.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Take an Economics class. Its a sunk cost. Whoever came down and made this decision, decided that the other 60% of the cost wasn't worth the mission. Doesn't matter what we already have built, it's what we think we'll get out of it and whether that is worth the remaining cash.
John Grunsfeld, who has previously twice been to Hubble to service it, had already volunteered to service Hubble again for SM4. This was after the Columbia tragedy. And he said he'd choose to service Hubble over going to ISS.
And a number of other astronauts also volunteered to service Hubble with the shuttle as it currently is, if Congress approved a mission.
So there are sufficient astronauts for a servicing mission.
Plus, SM4 was supposed to happen this year, but it was delayed because of the Columbia. So the argument some have said that SM4 would be launched beyond the lifetime of the Shuttle doesn't make any sense.
make world, not war
When I first read this post I must've glanced at the URL before the actual link cause I saw "windriver". heh I wonder how much 'Wind River' charges NASA for software licenses, What I mean is, It must be a highly specialized system, and it doesn't seem like it would be very profitable for them to sell only one.
500M$US to bring it down? Chicken feed to an Administration that spends 1000 times that in deficit. Shame. Shame on them.
The two most common things in the Universe are dark matter and stupidity.
A shame to lose the Hubble because we are doing "science" on the ISS, which is so much more important. See any ironies there?
Yeah, except the shuttle mission is not required. You're assuming you want to bring it down intact. They just want to do a controlled deorbit, a la Mir in 2001. So they'll just send up an unmanned (read: cheaper) vehicle to grab the telescope and yank it down.
Now, I certainly agree with your larger point: not continuing Hubble's mission considering the dollars involved ($200M already spent, only $40 to go, as you reported) is just bad science. It's just sad. Call your congressmen, I guess.
Oh yeah, and the war. Everytime you hear about some funding shortfall somewhere, say to yourself "87 billion dollars" over and over ... and compare that to the numbers we're all arguing about ...
One simple rule for its versus it's
Sorry, but I find using Java too funny. My Intro to CS Professor used to use spacecraft as an example where you would *never* use Java.
Sing it with me now, "another one bites the Mars dust!"
SPACE-IS-ALL-IN-YOUR-MIND!
MATRIX THEORY !
i have submitted this as a story. WE will see how DENSE the editors are. LET THE ENERGY FLOW!
It is a simple trade-off between glory and science, and science is being screwed. I hate to say it, but robots can do the same job cheaper. Humans on Mars would be nice, but if it is good science OR man on Mars, I will go with the first. I want to see clear photos of Pluto's face before I become Earth dust. (And I don't mean the frippen dog.)
Table-ized A.I.
actually i think ICBMs have the nuke inside a transport housing that could come apart in the event of the crash - i was talking about having the shielding be part of the bomb
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
I'm afraid I'll have to disagree. Delaying a mission to await technological improvement is like waiting for the next generation of PC before a purchase. In the meantime, odds are great that changes in Congressional and/or Executive priorities would kill the project completely. Someone's always looking for $50 million to cut here to justify a $100 billion giveaway there.
Luke, help me take this mask off
In other words, real science takes a back burner or is canned as a cost-cutting measure whilst more photogenic and "sexy" manned exploration is pumped full of cash.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
What's puzzled me is why NASA doesn't consider licensing Energia from the Russians and using it to lift the remaining ISS components. Because of its cargo capacity, they won't have to worry about cramming all the stuff into the Shuttle...
Energia is a proven platform, at any rate; and we wouldn't even have to send people up on it.
Come on, NASA, just get that Orbital Space Plane up so we have a people ferry. Save the heavy hauling for other platforms.
They wouldn't be abandoned.
Weepy celebrities and televangelists could hold telethons to raise money to send supplies out there.
Each package would take years to arrive, traveling to Mars by slow, efficient orbits that criss-cross the inner system to build velocity before finally careening into Mars' upper atmosphere, reentering, and bouncing to a stop, persued by eager colonists in grubby, patched space suits.
"Dig deep my friends! Just $350 can send a package of Ramen Noodles to a needy Mars pioneer. A mere $500 can send this roll of single-ply toilet paper, or two day's worth of tampons, to a brave colonist. And imagine the joy this package of Jolly Roger treats could bring, for only $150."
Stefan "I'll stick with suborbital stuff!" Jones
The other reply post also made a good point, but the actual cost of a service mission is $700m, not $500m. The ride on the shuttle costs $500m, and the parts cost about $200m.
Neat! The project I'm working on (Kepler) made slashdot!
-monique
"Hey! That star wobbles! Woow! WOOOOOOWWW!!! Shit, things still suck here on Earth."
What? Not C#?
The biggest advantage that the hubble had was the lack an atmosphere. Being a spacecraft designed for long term flight without assistace, I am sure that most of it's bulk has nothing to do with the real function of the system. A moon based telescope could easily be a third(?) of the size (I am pulling that out of my ass).
I am sure that someone could squeeze a small telescope onto a moon supply ship, perhaps we could even have a couple of them over the years. Can you imagine allowing school children to point say #4 where ever they want!
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
through the use of modern adaptive and active optics technology, the latest ground based telescopes can resolve to around what hubble can. By the end of hubble's life they'll meet or exceed its capabilities.
However, ground based telescopes cannot operate in infrared (telescopes in extremely dry high altitude areas can do some limited infrared)
HST has outlived its original design lifetime. We can do better than it. Keeping it around is really just an exercise in nostalgia for all the great things it has done for us.
-
But doesn't the Java Liscense say something about not using it for critical tasks? I know it specifically mentions Nuclear Power Plants...
___ alwaysBETA.com - Hey, you've got nothing better to do.
If one of the MERs found something truly mindbending, I'm all for shooting a big wad to send some people out for a better look. But, even if Yoda wandered up to a lander with a feather duster, I can't see GWB being the one to fund the effort.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I bet they're wishing they'd popped for that extended warranty right about now...
HURRRR BUSH KILLED HUBBLE! Is that why this slashdot post back in November already was talking about abandoning hubble?i d=03/11/1 7/1649216&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=134&tid= 160
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?s
The people at NASA were too afraid to upset the nerd community back then so they simply never addressed the issue. Would you rather waste several hundred million trying to fix hubble, or invest the money in something that will secure you more funding in the future? Hubble isnt going anywhere anytime soon. Its going to be up there till atleast 2013 according to the washington post article. By then we should have a new spacecraft and maybe we will decide to fix the hubble, or take her home.
Hubble was nice, but its served its purpose. We have way better telescopes now and other satelites which can take photos. Hanging onto hubble for sentimental reasons is retarded and simply impeeds progress.
hubble service missions have all been very difficult ones, and have all pushed the envelope on EVA work in space. They've set records for EVA excursions to work on them. Remember, these service missions consist of the astronauts actually going out in a suit and manually disassembling, installing and reassembling the telescope parts for several hours at a time in a pretty vulnerable way.
and though they can simulate the mission dozens of times on earth, you can't get the same effect as in space flying around at 17,000 mph. Nuts and screws have to be undone, drills operated and so forth. Pieces do break off and go beyond the astronaut's grasp. One slip and you can puncture a suit or send the spacecraft careening in unexpected ways.
The risks and rewards have to be carefully balanced, perhaps the work needed to be done on the next SM was especially tricky and for less reward of science.
-
I know lots of people that still burn their hands on the stove or feel an electric shock when they stick a fork in the socket every now and then, but none of them have ever gotten paid.
As far as I know what you are talking about it an urban myth to make people feel like greedy little beggers.
-pyrrho
I feel entitled to a free slashdot t-shirt for that.
-pyrrho
Interesting link about it: http://www.cs.duke.edu/%7Ecarla/mars.html
Some of the most intensely religious people you'll find are brilliant physicists.
Bush whar preznit back in n'vember too!
But anyway ther was still a plan, and the fact is the article are also talking about redirecting NASA funds toward manned mars missions, from what? Science. Here is step one.
It's not supposed to last to 2013 without a visit and if it would I wouldn't complain because it's mission is to 2010. What's so hard to understand about a mission? That's not done.
You are wrong abot the better telescopes... the land based telescopes are barely reaching Hubble resolution with Adaptive optics at some wavelengths, and some stuff you just have to be in space for. It's not the end of science. But they are in fact attacking science, I believe.
-pyrrho
by taking out the craft early you are interrupting an experiment... not all experiments react well to such interruption.
-pyrrho
Yesterday, I noticed google had this banner. I thought it was cute. Heh.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
there are instruments built that were supposed to be installed on the Hubble in 2006... so that was new science, it's not just the mirror, it's the cameras, and they have new ones.
The actual expert in the "is this good science" argument is the astrophysicists... what do you think they'll say.
"Hey, guys, would you like us to throw away your instruments and flush 10 years of planning?"
Bush is screwing science I tell you!
-pyrrho
there are instruments, new cameras that is, ready to go to Hubble that were supposed to be installed in 2006, Bush just screwed not only the people that want to see their instruments used, but all the scientists that made science justifications and have therefore been planning to use those cameras for years and years.
They are throwing out years of scientific planning. Bush is screwing scientists and science, and you can support that or not but he is.
-pyrrho
That's Java on XFree86, mind you.
Double trouble.
new cameras were supposed to be installed, and the scientists that made science justifications have been planning for years to use then.
See here.
Why do you trust the President?
-pyrrho
My somewhat limited opinion of the intelligence of the average Slashdot commenter is heading down hill fast. Yes George decided to try for something spectacular and yes it has a political issue. Of course since most of the press so far has been negative, it just might be that it has something to do with vision, but then again you blind naysayer's won't admit that possibility so it can't possibly be anything to do with that.
Now listen up cause I'm only gonna run through this once.
A. NASA's main job isn't to do science. It's to reach out into space and to move mankind out there. Studying atmosphere, weather, land use, and even stellar objects is nice, but it ain't what the charter says we're primarily for.
B. Canceling Hubble is not about money. Read the NASA watch article. Code S (which does scheduling and planning) identified sufficient funding to launch and pay for the mission. The reason Hubble is cancelled is because it finally got through to the powers that be, that the shuttle just ain't all that safe. After 2 out of the 5 flying boxcars have gone Boom even rocket scientists can figure that out.
C. Hubble is running on extended time anyway. Yes it would have been nice to keep it flying a bit longer, but it would also be useful to start working on it's replacement too. And the faster ISS is completed, the faster we can get rid of shuttle.
D. Despite the whining NASA's unmanned programs are continuing on just fine, only the program that depends on Shuttle is going. Programs on unmanned launch vehicles are rolling along (as the article explains)
E. If you really want to whine about this then why haven't you been whining for the past 12 years when Clinton was hacking the hell out of NASA's budget and cutting both overall and inflation adjusted budget amounts (If you were then I apologize for the last)
F. IF we're not going to send people out there and colonize the Moon and beyond then WHY THE HELL ARE WE WASTING TIME STUDYING THAT CRAP ANYWAY! Honest folks, knowing the soil composition of Mars or the gas and dust isotope ratios of comets isn't going to do bleep all for feeding the hungry or housing the poor. It might be fascinating as hell to a couple of dozen astronomers and amaze and marvel a few geeks, but other then that WHO #$%!#%$^ CARES. The only reason to learn these things is so that we begin to chart the resource base we will need to create a solar-based civilization.
G. Most of the initial funding planned out under the presidents new initiative goes to polishing off the station and starting the planning, design and construction of the next generation launch vehicle for people. One that can get higher then Low Earth orbit, unlike the shuttle. One that doesn't require a half billion and a cast of thousands just to launch it. This is so damn needed that words fail me to express just how needed it is.
H. There's every chance that this initiative might cost me my job, and I still support it. Unlike you kibitzers I work for NASA and this will probably put me on the street and take food off the table of my two kids and wife, but unlike you I know we need to change our direction and get back on track. Being on the inside I can see the malaise and lack of common direction that NASA has. I've seen how the lack of a clear mission and long-term goal has lead to the creation of fiefdoms and internal political infighting. Dozens of managers fighting for turf and trying to protect their little kingdoms do not a motion forward create. At least now we have a direction and a goal, the captain has finally woken up and noticed that the third mate has the ship steering in circles, you might not like the compass bearing but at least it's forward.
So until your willing to put your butts on the line, go whine about something you know about.
the cancelling of SM4 is purely about saving money.
This is wrong as your own post argues, he's not saving money, he's stealing it, he's moving it around to things that don't get done in labs at Universities and Research Centers. He's moving it closer to people that can take the money to stockholders and then invest it in "democracy".
-pyrrho
With all due respect to those that died in all of the previous space missions. NASA, The current US administration, and the US public need to get over it and move on. Space travel is currently dangerous business. Every one who engages in it are educated and trained professionals. They know exactly the dangers, better than all of those who second guess them. I don't see the astronauts saying "Hell No I won't get in this craft, it's too dangerous". They realize that for what they are doing the track record is pretty good. Can safety at NASA improve? Of course! Should we stop until it's perfect? No!
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
The basic science that hubble produces is important..countries that cannot stay the course (contunuity of long term science funding) cannot continue developing and will eventually surrender to other countries that are more progressive and can stay the course in funding of basic science and everything that derives from that. If mankind is to create fully operational space programs, we have to use new technologies like nanotech (which NASA is developing, amongst everybody else in the world). The simple fact that it is so expensive to get to space means that technologies like nano can eventually make space elevators possible and cheaply manufactured items like moon bases, truly re-generative (ageles, robotic assembles repairing cells) biotech, eventually specialized assemblers to crank out all our every-day items like houses, tv's computers, brain interfaces, true AI neural networks etc...everything we will need to survive in the future...too bad if these proposals are just cheap pollitical PR to get re-elected...what about NASA's SETI/astrobiological (contribution) programs..how will these announcements affect them?
Why should going to the moon cost so much money? They've still got the blueprints for the Apollo, right? Building one of those should only cost a few billion dollars...
When the HST can produce images like this, it's a real shame they are so quick to shut it down.
Your list of upcoming missions left out the most exciting of all: The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn. It will be entering Saturnian orbit in 165 days; next year, it will be dropping the Huygens probe into the atmosphere of Titan. This is very cool stuff coming up this July. Here's the home page for details: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm
[this
Remember that Hubble is fundamentally broken, and it's main mirror is patched. In the decade+ since it's launch, we have come up with better and bolder technologies for deep space imaging, and it's time that the money spent on maintaining the unreliable Hubble be spent on Hubble II, or a dark-side-of-the-moon observatory. There are half a dozen proposals for a better telescope or system of telescopes orbiting earth, the moon, or the sun itself.
spacetax.com
They want not just a space vehicle, they want an airplane too.
They should build an Enterprise. Built it in space for space. TO get to it use a launcher or whatever to get to the garage in space. Keep it docked in space.
Forget the shuttle, forget rockets, build the fucker in space for space. Space is the launching point for space.
Dont be sad. We Eurasians will continue your work. And we will be on Mars before you.
SHE does throw dice.
Anyone Else think "Deep Impact" is a bad name for something that it going to (albeit a small chance) fracture something big and scary like a comet... look out Tia Leoni! I would prefer something like "Comet Harvester" or "Gold Rush" or "Snowflake" ... something that doesn't elicit images of 4km tidal waves and mass histeria.
meh
Henry Spencer (yes, that Henry Spencer, famed Usenet figure, recognized space historian and enthusiast, founding member of the Canadian Space Society, Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, etc.) posted the following commentary to sci.space.policy in July. I hope he will not mind my quoting his informative notes.
I'm no authority on this (Spencer is), but I've heard some similar points second-hand from a Hubble scientist @ JHU.
One more thing: The parent comment talks about Hubble 'in its day'. If you think its heyday has ended, I suggest that you read some of the HST Daily Reports. (In the January 5th report for example, you'll find that Hubble continues to study objects which "do not have bright enough stars nearby that can be used for natural guide adaptive optics in ground-based telescopes", which was one of the points Mr. Spencer mentioned above.)
As shown in the daily reports, Hubble is constantly active, doing valuable and interesting experiments that go far beyond what you read in the mainstream news. The HST schedule will remain packed right through the day of its untimely demise (even without the invaluable new instruments which won't be installed). Imagine the painful 'prioritizing' that must be commencing as we speak; many possible experiments will be tossed, to make room for those chosen as the most important.
-- omr
So the new space initiative will have hubble destroyed *before* a replacement telescope (webb) is up.
It will leave the shuttle destroyed *before* a new human rated vehicle is in place.
Of course, it is likely that both these projects will die under the weight of the war/feed-the-rich deficit.
The next american on the moon will have to go through a chinese passport control. You wait and see!
I think I need to clarify something. I admit that the Hubble cut is a cut to the observatory missions, but that seems justifiable because the Hubble needs the shuttle to operate. I think shutting down the Hubble sucks, and should not happen if at all possible, but this guy makes a clear, susinct argument for why it's necessary. I think that, with this one exception, the observatory missions will probably not be hurt by Bush's new direction (except that they won't rely on the shuttle).
I would think that a telescope on the night side of the moon would have a pretty good view. Build maybe three telescope bases equidistant around the moon and you could always ensure that one will have good light conditions.
I guess the only explanation of why not is in political reasons.
Less is more !
What do you mean by "false economy?"
This guy is way out there
uhh... I don't think we know what it would take to get the Shuttle up to escape velocity, seeing as it's never been tried or even contemplated. Big Rockets would probably do it, though.
Due to new flight rules imposed on NASA, the space shuttle can only fly to the orbital height and inclination of the International Space Station, so that if something goes wrong with the tiles they at least have a "safehaven" ... seeing as the orbital height of Hubble is lower, and the inclination not as severe, a Hubble mission will be impossible. thank the people who wrote the flight rules.
Heard an interesting lecture on methods of repairing tiles on the shuttle from two gentlemen whose job is to report back to nasa on feasible repair methods for shuttle tile. Regardless of their outcome (ie, they find a quick and dirty method or not) the space shuttle will still have to obey the previously listed flight rules.
Goodbye, Hubble.
Why does everyone throw around the words "real science" as though everyone on Earth should consider it the ultimate highest priority? Why should ordinary human beings, and their elected representatives, consider it more important for astrophysicists to collect more and more data about the universe they can't really apply to life within this solar system than the attempt to launch their fellow human beings outside of Earth orbit, which could have SOME possibility of changing life for Earthlings by enabling interplanetary migration? So the ordinary person things humans in space is "sexy", while you think assigning numbers to a billion new discovered stars is "sexy". I see no reason why funding priorities should not be changed to reflect the democratically determined "sexiness". The real question is why NASA thought it could get away with spending billions of dollars to satisfy only a few elite astrophysicists.
Wake up and pay attention. This decision has been inevitable since the CAIB released its findings. All future Shuttle flights must be able to access the ISS for safety reasons. Flights to Hubble can't access ISS. End of story.
BTW, science is not the motivation for space travel. Nor are pretty pictures.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
They're anti-Bush hysteria.
t he-man-on-the-radio-told-me-crowd would be drooling all over themselves at the opportunity to blast him for this ludicrous heralding of man's destiny in the stars.
The responses you see here aren't really anti-Bush hysteria. They are pessimism about the feasability of Bush's proposed jaunt to Mars given the meagre budget increase, negativism regarding its severe impact on other NASA projects, and skepticism regarding Bush's motives for proposing such a grand project without giving it nearly enough funding. If Howard Dean had announced the same plan, the All-Bush-critics-are-hysterical-liberals-because-
The Hubble abandonment is a direct result of broader funding cutbacks (which include reduction of Combat and Hazardous Duty pay for our soldiers). The US government has slingshotted from a $450 billion surplus... to a $500 billion deficit, in just three years -- a $1 trillion reversal of fortune. Think about that for a second, because it is very real.
9/11? We're told that that cost 'only' $79bb. So, what happened to the other 871 billion?! Tax cuts for the richest 5% of our population, is what. If you're old enough to remember the Reagan tax cuts of '82, they directly led to the oil and real estate collapse of the late '80's, but at least that time we came out with new buildings. The Tax Act of '86 had to undo the imbalances. So how could anyone imagine that tax cuts without corresponding spending reductions would have any different result today? This time, they cut out the inefficiencies in transfer of wealth (building new buildings), by granting 'relief' directly to the corporation and high net-worth individual. The Party has been tipping up the US Treasury and shaking it empty.
While we're taking off our shoes in airports... almost every shipping container coming into US ports goes unchecked. WTF?
Is this asymmetry solely to convey a message of fear to the populous? To distract us with FUD, from thinking about important matters?
It appears tp me that Repubs do the opposite of what they say: Spend, and Spend, and abridge the Constitution, and Spend.
Campaign finance reform is national security.
There is no mandate. Most people don't give a shit about the space program. No one will ever make the space program a cornerstone of their campaign. Thus funding for space always fluctuates on personal whims. All you have to do is look at the last 40 years to see that.
.... that is idiotic in teh extreme. That is not long term.
If you compare how much it owuld cost to maintain the HST as to what it cost to get it up there, or to fund a replacement, you will have a better understanding of long term. To ditch it now for some nebulous future project which will never go past the speech stage
No one is arguing to stop funding NASa, your third point falls into a diatribe. You need to open your eyes to the reality of politics. These silly inane commenst are valid. If you thought the second impeachment is out history was deserved for a president who lied about who he had sex with, do you not think it is deserved for one who lies about the reasons for going to war? You sound like you think we will go to the moon and Mars simply because Bush says so. You are going to be sorely disappointed if you believ that. You want the facts, the facts say Bush is a liar and has hidden agendas up the wazoo.
Infuriate left and right
NASA then followed up by saying consumers would enjoy a more stable and robust space-exploration experience by upgrading to HubbleXP(tm)
Am I the only one excited about the moon annoucement? I mean we went to the moon in the 60s and stopped in the 70s. That was 30 years ago. You would think by now, we'd have people on Pluto. Aren't you people science fiction fans? Doesn't exploring space excite you? Sure, you can look at stuff with a telescope, but why not try to go there and see it for yourself. Or send a telescope there, and get a better view.
And I'd like to see a network of communcation satellites placed thur the solar system, to make it easier for probes to report back to Earth.
And I've always thought it made more since to build a moon base first, instead of going to Mars. I know in the short run Mars looks more attractive. But in the long run, think of all we could learn from a permanet base in outer face. This knowledge could then be used to help other space ventures.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
BBC has a story on this:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3969567/
Basically, the leak was found in a hose which is used to connect from the interior space of two thick window panes, to the outside vaccum.
Due to the late arrive of a separate hand-hold, astronauts repeatedly used the hose as a temporary hand-hold, and the repetitive strain caused the hose to partly fail, leading to the leak.
Interestingly enough, while repairing the hose, the astronauts made a mistake which led to a vacuum excursion event!
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
I just read on the BBC news site that NASA is phasing out the Hubble Telescope. Are they out of their fucking minds?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/photo_galle
The Hubble telescope - which is being phased out by Nasa - captured the deepest view of the cosmos, detecting the youngest and most distant galaxies ever seen.
A few years ago, it was a book called "T
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Call up China, Russia, India, Pakistan, the EU, Japan and any other country willing to put up the cash, then establish a moon base and go to the moon as a planet rather than a country? May sound farfetched, but hell, so was Jr. Bush winning. If I was president, I'd at least call up the other countries and run it past them, "Come on guys, lets go to Mars!!!"
To 1 sig. fig.:
An engineer's pay costs about 1e5 dollars per year. Overhead for that engineer costs about 1e5 dollars per year. 1e9 dollars per year would therefore fund about 5e3 engineers' careers, less any money used to pay for raw materials.
That's about 1 in 2e3 of the engineers Bush's economy has failed to employ.
A few years ago, it was a book called "The end of science", I think the author's name was John Horgan, or something. I read it.
It has been said that he argued that the end of science was near because most things are allready known, but I think that's a misinterpretation of his point. I think you're touching on his point: That it will be increasingly difficult to argue why we should investing huge and increasing amounts of money into finding smaller and smaller insights.
The problem is, it is indeed very difficult to explain. I think I can explain why you're wrong, but it'll take me a whole book to do it, and you probably wouldn't read it anyway.... :-)
The very short version of a core argument is that the reason why astrophysics (and particle physics ) is so important, is that without them, you're not going to get any technological advances after a few decades. Every insight that has after a while become technology in everybody's hands has a history beginning in astrophysics or "atomic" physics (insert epoch-dependent understanding of "atomic").
I could also write a book on why I think Horgan's wrong, and that has to do with scientists are starting to put more thought into how to test hypotheses.
Then, the problem is that neither politicians, nor the general public, nor CEOs has any clue, where the next breakthrough will be. In fact, not even the scientists who do it has. They're just working on something they find interesting, and all of a sudden, it turns out to be something of value. That's the way it has always been.
I'm afraid what we're seeing is what Horgan predicted. Trying to explain it to Bush is an exercise in futility, so what we're seeing is the beginning of the end of science. (not that I really believe it is, but that's another discussion).
But, then, going to Mars is probably quite easy. It can probably be done with the current understanding. It can probably be done by throwing money at it and just do it. But I doubt it will bring any huge insights.
That's not to say we shouldn't do it. But I think it should be done as a project that involves all of humanity, a project that all of humanity feels is theirs. It is more of a humanity-get-together-party than a scientific venture.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
King Richard the Turd is doing the same thing for NASA that he's doing for the environment, the economy, Medicare amd world peace.
Can't have any of them there eee-vo-lutionists finding evidenvce of life somewhere else now, can we?
Not to mention Houston, TX where Bush's buddies live and Florida, where his brother is Govenor.
"Cnet.com is reporting that the Mars Rover uses Java. The same piece of software that lets people around the world play video games on their cell phones is now letting scientists drive the ultimate remote-controlled car across the surface of Mars."
talk about a waste of resources, sheesh.
I have seen some of the guts of VxWorks, and without getting into it too much (don't sue!), some of the low-level stuff is absolutely the most frightening shit I have ever seen. Now a lot of it was in our Board Support Package (BSP: the custom bit that is written for your exact hardware to provide a standard interface to the OS: I guess this is what non-embedded software people call a "HAL": Hardware Abstraction Layer (?)), but some of the headers and other library type bits (PCI stuff, mostly) is just quite amazingly hacked together. It's ifdef that, ifdef this other thing, hand-coded some value over there, blah de dah...
Given all this, though, I have to say that the thing holds together remarkably well once you get over the initial screwups. But, brrrrr!
If NASA is going to spend a launch on space telescopes, they may as well put up a new one. The Hubble was designed when NASA PR was claiming that shuttle launches were going to be cheap. They're not. Each one costs about a quarter billion dollars.
NASA and American Politics: a Short History
We must go to the Moon!
Why?
Just to kick the Russians in the ass.
We made it, we were on the Moon.
Let's go to Mars!
Mmmm... that's quite more difficult. Let's put it on the back-burner.
Let's build a reusable Space Shuttle!
Why?
So that going to space will become routine and accessible to Joe Average (yep, that what we told Mr R. Nixon when he signed the check).
See, we love the Russians with this Apollo-Soyouz thing.
Skylab? We are no longer sure why we made it. Maybe because we still had a few Saturns on hand. Anyway, let's scrap the thing.
Sorry guys, the Space Shuttle is not quite what it was supposed to be (and don't start us on the actual vs. projected cost).
By the way, we confirm that in NASA speak, it makes total sense to risk the lives of astronauts to send big pieces of junk, such as Hubble, into space.
Damn, we lost one!
Consequently, we delay everything, including the stuff that could have been sent to space using that low-key technology called rockets.
No, we won't comment on Ariane and its business model.
Let's build a big fat Space Station!
Why?
To justify the existence of the Space Shuttle.
By the way, the "Let's go to Mars!" is still an operative statement.
This Mir station is so... dirty an dangerous that we can't resist to rent space from the Russians for our astronauts.
Goddamn Russians, they're real pain in the neck. We have to finance them for their part on the ISS.
Mir is dangerous! It has to stop. The ISS will be much better.
Damn, we lost another one! [ What are we going to say, if we lose a third one? ]
OK, the Russians are not so bad after all. Their Proton thing is kinda useful in the interim for the ISS.
Let's go to Mars!
Why?
Because that's our Manifest Destiny.
And because Hubble and all those pieces of robotic junk are not sexy enough for the young minds.
What? You think it's BS. Mmmm... Anyway, we must keep going.
Perhaps Dean should step up and grab the opportunity right now: I would have said something like, "I'm a scientists, and I know the value of funding science well", then show that the plan Bush has proposed does not imply adequate funding, by pulling out a graph showing what kind of budget NASA had in the Apollo days compared to what is proposed by Bush. Then he could say something like "this is an investment, and it is an investment that has not only put Americans on the moon, but also made our universities the best in the world. But like all investments, you do it when you've got money. Now we don't. So, let us fix the economy first, then launch a program where all of humanity gets together to work towards a common goal, to put a human on Mars. Meanwhile we should focus on goals that are scientifically sound, and ditching HST is not".
Well, that's what I think, anyway... :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Thanks, G.W. At least we had one more amazing glimpse into the deep past.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3387919.stm
(sorry, forgot how to link stuff. eep!)
The astronomical community has spent much effort in the past year reaching a consensus opinion, and conveying this opinion, to NASA and the government. Astronomers are in favor of continuing support and service for Hubble at least until the NGST (James Webb Telescope) is up and flying. Hubble does some things that cannot be done from the ground at all and has been a huge success. Despite the cost, Hubble has been evaluated to have provided the best science per dollar of all astronomy facilities. Hubble Space Telescope proposals for the next year of observations are due THIS Friday, Jan. 23. I assume we will go on with the current observing cycle, but probably not the one beyond. But we don't know yet. The timing here is shocking. I also have a lot of friends who work on Hubble Instruments that were due to be installed on SM4 -- their jobs will vanish as the funding is cut and we'll have a flood of unemployed astronomers (we are a small field and this will have a relatively large immediate impact). Many astronomers were looking forward to some spectacular new science capabilities. Those won't happen now (the Webb Telescope is being optimized for infrared work, so we will be losing general UV capability entirely). The American Astronomical Society is maintaining an informational webpage at http://www.aas.org/policy/CurrentIssues.html that should help us determine just how this is going to affect us. I served on the Hubble Space Telescope science review panel last year to determine what projects would be done. This was just after the shuttle accident, and there was speculation at the time that this could happen. We knew then that a Hubble-mission could not abort to ISS in the event of a problem and that this might curtail things like SM4. I don't think anyone there really believed it would happen though, at least not this abruptly at this time.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
No Hubble is not fundamentally broken. There are high precision optics that correct for the flawed shape of the mirror, so image resolution is essentially what it was intended to be. It's about as good as it gets for a large mirror in space, and it is already in space, not on the drawing board. Also, we DO put new technologies on Hubble! That is a major point of the servicing missions that are now cancelled. The new instruments to be installed on SM4 were going to do some great new space-breaking work. There is a next generation space telescope being developed (The James Webb Telescope) that will be bigger and better than Hubble, but why not desire to keep Hubble flying until that one is up (around 2010)? We won't be able to follow up on supernovas, gamma ray bursts, and other transient phenomena until then.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
The new space telescope CANNOT replace the Hubble. Get a goddamn clue. The Herschel telescope operates on infrared wavelengths. It cannot be used to make the same observations as the Hubble. The two telescopes were intended to be somewhat complementary, in fact some of the planned missions for the Herschel require additional observations to made from the Hubble.
Cutting funding for one of NASA's most successful currently running missions is imbecilic.
because Hubble had new cameras going, which have already been built.
Better pray for Kepler and the rest too... they don't like science. Better mount a laser pointed at earth on it if you want it to make it to space.
Maybe NASA won't be wrecked, if that's so it'll be because people more influential than I that are pissed off just like me, only more so.
-pyrrho
...why not sell it on eBay or to China, India or Brazil, and then contract out the repair job?
Is the Hubble free for grab once NASA decide it wont service anymore? This sound like a great deal for anyone that has the money to tow Hubble to a permanent orbit and service and start leasing time back to the astronomer.
...or is this a special case. You sit there and say "no Hubble is not fundamentally broken", then you write about the corrective optics that were fit to it to bring it up to 'essentially what it was intended to be'. It IS broken, it is patched, and it is not in fact what it was supposed to be.
'm no engineer but it seems that going to the moon is really not much of a problem, after all Armstrong was there. It looks to someone uninformed like me that Mars represents a small increment in difficulty and that it could probably be done with the same tech that got us to the moon.
I'm an unashamed space nut but I admit that there is simply no consensus that we ought to go there particularly if it costs what ever sum of money the public considers significant, by that I mean a sum likely to have a major impact on other government programs- just check the posts on slashdot if you diagree.
Presently business sees no economic return in going to the moon or beyond - no point in ranting that they are short sighted and wrong the fact remains they don't see it so we can't look to them as an alternative to government.
I,m sure you are all aware of the X-Prize http://www.xprize.org/press/what.html what is signicant about it is not just the intention - it's that the investment made by the participants bears no relation to the reward.
Historically there are many examples of government offering prizes for things they just can't justify spending the money on. It's a win win for government. If it succeeds they show foresight if it fails they spent their money on better things.
What about a government funded X-prize II - 500 million dollars for the first human spending six months on the moon. 500 million to be divided among other organisations that solved specific problems that would enable such a period on the moon.
How about the readers of slashdot design the rules. I offer my own ideas;
1. 500 m for living six months on the moon
2. 100 m for a reuseable rentry vehicle with a 10 tonne payload
3. 50 million dollars for designing and building a closed ecology weighing less than 5 tonnes that provided food and processed waste to allow a human to live for six months.
4. 10 million dollars for a rocket engine or other propulsion system that delivered weighed X tonnes requiring Y fuel giving Z thrust/specific impulse
5. 10 m illion dollars for an effective drug based therapy to cure low gravity induced decalcification
6. Once a design/build has won a prize - for space use purposes only the technology enters the public domain.
7 10 million dollars for Solar cells that weigh X that give Y watts of power that can be errected by one man.
8. etc etc etc
How about exemption from health and safety legislation so the families dying astronauts don't sue - and just like the early explorers on earth they will die. How about designing rules so that all the sciences get a slice of the pie not just engineering and materials science.
Much more fun thinking of a way to make it happen at a cost that does not offend rather than indulging in Bush Bashing - trotting out old arguments about child poverty, tech spinoff and the efficiencies of unmanned programs.
Is ther really anyone against the idea of going to the moon and beyond if it's done cheaply and without signifcantly detracting from other government programs ?
Sorry if this is a bit of topic - but sick of the old flames much prefer seeing such a well educated group of people coming up with answers.
They're not sacrificing "real science". Hubble wasn't intended to last forever. Given the popularity and emotional appeal of all those pretty images, people would whine if NASA did nothing else but nurse Hubble along for 50 years and then let it die. Everyone complains when their favorite project ends.
"Science" is a payload for the space effort. The best science payload is a person.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The Shuttle: TWO out of seven shuttles have been lost. They're outrageously expensive to refurbish. It's time to find a better way. Personally, I believe that seperating the cargo/human parts of the shuttle into different missions, or a return to capsules, would be better than trying to launch the mass of the shuttle every time, then have to rebuild the shuttle before you launch it again. Launch a lab on some Saturn-5 equivalent, then when the orbit is stable, send the astornaughts up in a smaller 'space plane'. Designed right, you could quickly have a better space station than the ISS.
Hubble: See the Shuttle. Manned missions to refurbish the hubble are too risky in terms of human life, and we don't have the shuttles to both keep the ISS supplied and the Hubble repaired, among other things. There are a number of replacement telescopes, some orbital, some not. Just think about how easy it would be to set up a telescope on the moon, and the value of observations from it!
And who says that the Hubble is being given up? Or the decision is by the president? Part of the article:
See? Canceled for safety concerns, and a new policy that the shuttles will only be doing ISS missions.
And these comments are "flamebait" if you are a far-right whacko, kids.
You have a pretty encompassing definition of 'far-right whacko' then.
I don't read AC A human right
If you're a professional astronomer, then I weep for the field. Here is the definition of 'fundamental'. Here is the definition of flaw. Here is a NASA newsletter talking about the corrective optics and using software to correct the flawed mirror.
So, to carry forth your moronic and logically flawed analogy, if you bought a car, and the engine didn't run very well because it was defective from the manufacturer, and you took it to a mechanic who wrapped the carbeurator with duck tape, and it ran better, then does it cease to be flawed? More to the point, would you keep that car, or would you insist the dealer replace it?
Hubble is flawed. it is antiquated. It is no longer worth the investment which could be better spent on a newer space telescope or network of telescopes.
Not only are you a troll, you're an arrogant and concieted troll.
PLONK!
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Java? No wonder it takes days to turn the thing around!
*rimshot*
I'm sure I didn't say that.
I say this. They just screwed science.
They are not suggesting enough money to do the other cool sci-fi stuff they're talking up either.
They are moving money around NASA. They've asked for money to be put on the moonbase and mars idea and taken off other pursuits. Like Hubble. Like research science, in favor of interesting engineering research, which they have not indicated they will fund enough to complete.
It's about this rearrangment of NASA. And similarly their postition on stem cell research. And so it's my impression that Bush is no friend of scientific research.
But mostly this thread was just about the Hubble, I think it's no big thing to finish what we started with the Hubble.
Maybe the rest of the pessimism won't come true. Hell, maybe the Hubble thing isn't over too, you never know with the government.
-pyrrho
First off, Hubble's orbit will decay so there will be nothing for the "space junk fanatics of centuries to come". Second of all, what do you mean by "move on"? If you mean we need to create new telescopes, that's true. But the "replacement" for Hubble is already being built but it won't be launced for nearly a decade! I doubt the schedule can be changed much at this point.
Plonk! The sound of a fool who starts and argument and realizes all to late he can't finish it.
That they have to let Hubbell die a slow death. we dont have a replacement scheduled until 2010 or so. Maybe they can rig the ISS up with a telescope?