Space Tug to Save the Hubble?

Aglassis writes "In an article at SpaceRef, the CTO of Orbital Recovery Corporation claims that his company will be able to develop a space tug that could save the Hubble Space Telescope (from becoming 'a ballisticly implanted reef in the Pacific') by either moving it into a much higher stable orbit, or by moving it to the ISS where it could be maintained and operated. Some of the reasons that he cites are that the Hubble's replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope, could be delayed or suffer some sort of failure. Since the JWST will be at the L2 point, servicing will be impossible."

Comments

Um

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was the ConeXpress Orbital Recovery System (ORS) conceived?

Re:Um

[Tirel]

Modern telecommunications satellites are designed for a useful on-orbit life of 10-15 years. This limit is set by the total fuel load they can carry at launch - a constraint that stems from the maximum liftoff mass of today's launch vehicles. The costs associated with a telecommunications satellite's procurement, launch, insurance and operation can exceed $250 million - while such spacecraft typically generate revenues of more than $50 million per year.

At the end of these satellites' useful lifetimes - which is determined by the depletion of their on-board propellant - the spacecraft are boosted into a disposal orbit and junked. In the majority of these cases, the satellites' payloads (relay transponders and associated electronics) continue to function nominally at the time of their forced retirement.

Currently, there are no viable means of prolonging the useful life of telecommunications satellites, resulting in the wasteful loss of valuable assets every year.

Re:Um

[AKAImBatman]

Don't be so sure about valuable assets. NASA proposed a space tug when it was building the Space Shuttle. The idea was that a tug would pull satellites to a lower orbit where the Shuttle could reach them. At that point, the shuttle would be responsible for repairing, refueling and refurbishing. If necessary, even bring them back to Earth.

Here's the problem: No one wanted their satellites back. By the time their fuel was spent, they were old technology that would be replaced by a new satellite. The shuttle had bet the bank on the economic theory that people wanted their space-stuff back and lost.

Re:Um

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree with the statement that the JWST won't be servicable.

If the James Webb Space Telescope will be at the L2 point won't it be within range of the new "exploration" craft that GW proposed. It should therefore be safely within range for repair if the lens or whatever is damaged.

Only a launch failure should be a problem. Therefore Hubble will be outdated and the new telescope will be far superior for imaging due to it's position in the legrange point.

Re:Um

[Winkhorst]

This all seems to imply that our so-called presence in space is really only limited to a very small volume of space and that any manned or unmanned missions are only capable of reaching certain specific places. There is currently no ability whatsoever to actually travel freely in space. That should be our longterm goal. To be able to go anywhere we want without worry about carrying our lunch along. In other words, we need to be able to generate our own fuel as we go along. There are options in this area but they don't seem to be at the forefront of research. One almost has to wonder if the governments of the Earth aren't afraid of such free-flying craft. And perhaps they should be.

Re:Um

[H8X55]

Here's the problem: No one wanted their satellites back. By the time their fuel was spent, they were old technology that would be replaced by a new satellite.

What is it about this comment that make me think of commercials for eBay?

::cue music:: For a lawnmower blade to cut your grass or a satellite that's out of gas, use eBay! Use eBay! For a Beagle that has missed his mark or a spark plug wire that wouldn't spark - Use eBay! ::/cue music::

Re:Um

[Octorian]

Yeah, that is one thing that really annoys me about the current approach to space travel. It is way too mission-oriented. Frankly, it doesn't make logical sense to build "craft X for mission Y" and "craft W for mission Z". It would make much more sense to make a multipurpose "Craft XYZ" that could perform missions Y, Z, Q, and R, either with different vehicles, maybe even on the same vehicle after some refueling and maintenence. (and yes, it would make sense for this craft to remain out in space for the whole time)

Re:Um

[khallow]

Here's the problem: No one wanted their satellites back. By the time their fuel was spent, they were old technology that would be replaced by a new satellite. The shuttle had bet the bank on the economic theory that people wanted their space-stuff back and lost.

No one wanted their satellites repaired at NASA prices. It's cheaper to launch a new satellite.

Re:Um

[nial-in-a-box]

That is a very good point. Your thoughts about governments in relation to space travel certainly match most governments' current ways of thinking. It seems that because of the rapid development of technology, no one is particularly concerned with long term solutions. Instead, there is this frantic dash to get things done, because apparently we cannot be satisfied with where we are at. I'm not saying that we should be content with the state of the world (or technology, for that matter), but everything tends to be hectic for the wrong reasons. Why not stop throwing poorly built spacecraft and satellites into space? Can't we pause and take time to develop safe nuclear power for any space application? I have already seen examples of proposed probes that use nuclear power, and do so relatively cheaply. If a space telescope had a halfway decent power facility then we would not have to worry about sending repair vehicles. It should then be capable of repairing itself. I'll stop my random rant here, but I think these are things to consider if they haven't been already.

Re:Um

[uberdave]

The shuttle was supposed to be your Craft XYZ. Unfortunately, it became Craft UVWXYZ which cut down on its fitness for duty. Too many conflicting design constraints.

Re:Um

[Jeremy Erwin]

Cool, we could have a shuttle that will transport 7 astronauts to Mars, in order that we might observe the stars undistorted by Earth's atmosphere.

The trouble with adding general mission capability is that sometimes, for one reason or another, some missions prove to be less than worthwhile. Meanwhile, the extra equipment larded on to this general purpose space vehicle just increases the cost.

Re:Um

[corebreech]

The reason we won't put the Hubble at the L2 point is because Bush can't pronounce Lagrange. Ergo, no announcement. Thus, no funding.

Re:Um

[AKAImBatman]

Can't we pause and take time to develop safe nuclear power for any space application?

You mean like the "Clean Nuclear Launches" article I posted last week? Honestly, we have the technology. WTF are we waiting for?

Oh, that's right. Anti-nuclear activists who think plutonium is so dangerous that it can only be transported in 500 tons of lead. (Plutonium is actually safe to hold in your hand. Some people have accidentally ingested it and survived with no ill effects.)

Nuclear boogeymen? Bah, humbug.

Re:Um

[MushMouth]

Great then we get something like the shuttle, that does everything poorly. The thing about space travel is that it goes through such extreams. Think about it, high vibrations, heavy accelerations, extream cold, near vacuum, high temperature, and high stress. Some things are better off single use, single purpose.

see Gregg Easterbrook's shuttle series for these words written by someone much smarter than all of us.

This one was written around 1979

this one was the cover of time after the columbia blew up, but it is now only available as a copyright infringement.

Re:Um

[mangu]

By the time their fuel was spent, they were old technology that would be replaced by a new satellite

There's more than that. It's possible to extend the life of satellites in synchronous orbits by stopping inclination control. About 90% of the satellite's fuel is used to cancel the orbit inclination, caused mostly by the Earth's flattening at the poles. If you stop doing inclination control maneuvers, the orbit inclination increases by about one degree per year, which can be tolerated for many applications.

However, the satellite itself degrades in orbit, so that after about 20 years a communication satellite is nearly useless. Batteries degrade with each recharge, as anybody who has any rechargeable electronic equipment knows. Twice each year the satellite passes through a period when it enters the Earth's shadow daily, so it cannot be operated without batteries. Also the solar panels, from which the power supply comes, degrade with time, from charged particles emmitted by the Sun and from micrometeoroids. The bottom line is, even assuming a very low cost to bring a satellite back, the cost of refurbishing it woud come close to the cost of building a new satellite.

Re:Um

[blugu64]

Awesome, I wonder what all those stars look like with martian atmospheric distortion!

just pointing out a small flaw in the logic.

Re:Um

[synaptik]

The reason we won't put the Hubble at the L2 point is because Bush can't pronounce Lagrange. Ergo, no announcement. Thus, no funding.

Considering that La Grange is a city in Texas (the declared homestead of 2 generations of Bush Presidencies,) I find that there is no 'gravity' to your jest.
...Hmm, perhaps La Grange Texas is the legendary, oft-hypothesized L0 lagrangian point?

Re:Um

[corebreech]

Bravo!

Re:Um

[NM156]

"Just let me know,
if you wanna go,
to that home out on the range...
(uh, you know what I'm talkin' about!)"

- Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard describe the L0 lagrangian point

Re:Um

[Winkhorst]

I really wasn't talking about missions per se, though the points raised are certainly important. What I was really trying to get at was that space exploration should resemble more what Christopher Columbus did. Though he actually thought he was on a specific mission to find India, what he was really doing was sailing around seeing what he would run into. This is what Lewis and Clark did. They weren't really looking for anything specific as much as they were simply exploring the great western spaces. Space exploration needs something along these lines. In short, if you decide before hand what you are going to find, you tend to miss everything else. For instance, I can imagine a situation where one of these Mars rover type vehicles falls into the fossilized tunnel from the ancient Martian subway system, complete with subway cars and gum machines, and reports back that its sensors have found no sign of organic life.

Re:Um

[dkirchge]

The technology in the satellites may be obsolete, but I'm wondering how much in the way of materials could be recycled/recovered from any given satellite. After all, there is only so much metal available and to waste it through de-orbiting a satellite or boosting it into interplanetary space seems wasteful, especially give the number of times the shuttle came back empty from trips made to deploy a satellite. IANA physicist so I don't know if the long-term exposure to cosmic radiation would render this option unfeasable.

Re:Um

[ckaminski]

Hate to spoil your fun, but those clean nuclear launches were incapable of launching something from Earth. Consider them high-powered hall-effect thrusters, not replacements for the shuttle SRB's.

Re:Um

[AKAImBatman]

Sorry, but you're confusing Nuclear Electric Propulsion with Nuclear Thermal Propulsion. The later can throw just as much mass as chemical rockets, but at a lot higher velocities. (force = mass * velocity2)

An actually physicist was kind enough to give an easy to understand explanation of the differences.

Re:Um

[cosmo7]

This is what Lewis and Clark did. They weren't really looking for anything specific as much as they were simply exploring the great western spaces.

Dude, what did you do at school? Eat paste all day? Lewis and Clark were looking for the Northwest passage.

Re:Um

[Jeremy Erwin]

The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by it's course & communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregan, Colorado or and other river may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce

President Thomas Jefferson's Instructions
to Captain Meriwether Lewis (June 20, 1803)

Re:Um

[Anonymous Coward]

Stopping inclination burns does extend the amount of time a satellite can operate within it's Longitude Station. The problem is for ground stations to keep tracking it. I have tracked a satellite that had inclination maneuvers halted, and I was seeing more than 15 degrees change in elevation durning the day from Seattle. It was actually burning out drive motors on the ground station equipment. A swing of that far could never be used with a stationary dish like the Dish Network or Direct TV dishes.

Re:Um

[shadowbearer]

Yup. There should have been a Crew Launch Vehicle, a Heavy Lifter, and a Light Lifter. For essentially (or close to) the same amount of money we could have a serious LEO capability.

Sigh.

SB

Re:Um

[GileadGreene]

Satellite lifetime is also determined by the amount of degradation suffered by the solar arrays. Over time the arrays lose efficiency due to radiation damage. Satellite designers know this, and thus design the arrays to initially be bigger than is necessary to support the payload so that the capability of the degraded arrays at the end of life is still sufficient to power everything. Longer lifetimes mean larger solar arrays, which means more mass, more complicated attitude control, greater propellant usage, and a host of other problems. Plus, as another poster pointed out, the technology becomes obsolete after a while. 12-15 years seems to be an optimal spacecraft lifetime (the actual duration being dependent on the type of mission), although some missions are better off with even shorter lifetimes.

Re:Um

[uberdave]

The purpose of the shuttle (aside from being a manned platform) was to bring satelites back to Earth. NASA already has/had heavy and light lift capabilities.

Re:Um

[shadowbearer]

(sorry, I should have said *reusable* hvy and lt lifters)

You're right, but that should really be a job for an (unmanned), reusable heavy or light lifter . Crew vehicle rendezvous with the lifter/satellite, load it, and send it on it's way.

If the crew vehicle had fewer missions it could be made safer and have a much better turnaround time, not to mention be cheaper to build and to operate. Not only that but so would the lifters. If you want to do science in space, put up a lab ;)

The idea of a "space truck" is nice; but do construction crews travel to the job in the truck that delivers the materials? No. Why not? Because it's impractical :)

The shuttle is a kludge....and we haven't had heavy lift capability since Skylab. Also, doesn't the Air Force actually run the Titan programs? (Not sure on that)

SB

Re:Um

[Wolfrider]

[singing] The ORCs are saving the Hubble, hooray hooray...

Re:Um

[StarsAreAlsoFire]

This limit is set by the total fuel load they can carry at launch

Correct; however do not forget the batteries. The public has seen a few "satellite refueling" concepts tossed about, but nobody mentions that NiCd batteries only last about 10 years, even with completely optimal charging systems. NiMH have only recently become an option -- I'd love to hear a date, but a about few years now.
Sooo, the question arises: how do you crack open a craft which was not designed to have batteries replaced, de-solder the batteries and then solder in new ones?
Hell, BMW won't even desolder the f*ing NiCd batteries on their '90's era 525 models which powers all the gauges. Replace the whole board they do. But I'm not bitter.

Free Taco?

[DrewBeavis]

Look on the bright side. If they don't save Hubble, maybe taco bell will do their space junk promotion again like they did for Mir and we can win a free taco?

Sometimes you have to look on the bright side.

Re:Free Taco?

[nial-in-a-box]

I was thinking more like a free Nachos Bel Grande, considering the enormous waste.

Re:Free Taco?

[WasteOfAmmo]

considering the enormous waste

Before, or after you eat it?

This is a great idea!

[Thrymm]

Since the US doesnt have a replacement planned to be sent up until 2010, and that by not servicing the HUbbell it may die by 2007.... Bringing it towards the ISS would allow it to be refitted and keep science moving forward!

Re:This is a great idea!

[TrueBuckeye]

And it may even give the IIS a reason to exist. At the moment, it only seems to exist to give the shuttle a place to go...which isn't really happening right now.

I feel the IIS is just not very useful. Other than studying the long-term effects of microgravity on people, it doesn't do so much else. The massive loads of money spend on this thing could have gone to other, more useful, space projects. Instead it was built because we've always felt we needed a space station. Now we have one (partially, at least) and don't know what to do with it.

Re:This is a great idea!

[Thrymm]

I feel the same way.. The ISS seems like a waste of money to do experiments on low gravity on humans, or other animals/insects. Its there to let countries partake in space endeavors I suppose. By having the Hubbell close by, it does add a concrete reason to have the ISS up at all.

Re:This is a great idea!

[perly-king-69]

No, no, no - we must get a man on Mars. Or the Moon.
That's far more of a priority than that Hubble or ISS crap.

Re:This is a great idea!

[TrueBuckeye]

I'm not going to discount the value of a manned mission to Mars, but if there's anyway that can be done without having it mandate the end of Hubble, then we need to do it. Hubble has not only been nothing less than an incredible boon to science, it is also very near the only positive PR that the space program has had in better than a decade. The value of that is almost immeasureable.

Re:This is a great idea!

[brinch]

This is not a great idea! You don't wan't moving equipment on the ISS, at least not anything that has the size of Hubble.

And if you were to launch a mission to equip a Hubble-class telescope on ISS, it would be far better design an instrument specifically to the task instead of trying to mount Hubble as it is.

Re:This is a great idea!

[Thrymm]

Mars isnt planned until 2020 or after. In the meantime there'd be time to move the Hubbell. Also dont attach it to the ISS, but maybe in an orbit similar and within reach of each other...

Re:This is a great idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Attaching the Hubble to the ISS is horrible science! The pictures will become subjected to vibrations from the station unless very expensive mounting systems are in place. Much better to have a way to easily get to/move the Hubble when you need to.

Re:This is a great idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a great idea! You don't wan't moving equipment on the ISS, at least not anything that has the size of Hubble.
And if you were to launch a mission to equip a Hubble-class telescope on ISS, it would be far better design an instrument specifically to the task instead of trying to mount Hubble as it is.

Poor people can't be choosers.

If Hubble could be brought to an orbit where astronauts could refit it and modify it to mount to the ISS a'la one of the modules, it would be the start of a decent onboard research lab.

Above all it would be cheaper than building a new module and launching it into space... and we all know how the government likes to hear 'cheap' and 'space' in the same sentence.

Re:This is a great idea!

[InfoVore]

How about we put Hubble on the Moon? It might make a nice little observatory and you don't have to worry about its failing gyros... assuming you could land it without crashing AND figure out how to make it work on the ground.

I know its unrealistic, but it sounds cool. Much better than making Hubble a "ballistically implanted reef" (got to love that phrase).

Re:This is a great idea!

[Pxtl]

Well, a very expensive mounting system could be designed - after all, the cost of getting it into place is a lot anyways. Making the Hubble accessible to the ISS would be a good thing - even if only by space walk. Perhaps there could be some way to keep them close to each other, though not directly attached? The hubble would have to be held at a long length to prevent EM produced by the ISS from messing it up. Still, given the long time until the next space telescope is ready, it might be worthwhile. At worst, the Hubble has reduced (but not nullified) usefulness and can still be used to obvserve our local space neighborhood.

Re:This is a great idea!

[forlornhope]

I dont think the idea is to attach it to the ISS. The general idea is to bring it into a close orbit with the ISS so it can be serviced then boost it into a higher orbit and just bring it back down whenever it needs more servicing.

On a similar note, the ISS needs space tugs like this one and needs to prove its usefulness as a repair shop in space. If you could use the ISS in this fasion to repair the HST then you could easily retro fit the ISS to build the type of vehicles needed to send a manned mission to the moon and mars a lot easier than if you were to simply launch the vehicles whole or try to assemble them in open space with the space shuttle(or its replacement) as your only aid.

An ISS with space tugs and large Saturn V style rockets could prove to be an excelent assembly area for any manned missions to the moon or mars. Without such a facility you need to send up the man power to assemble the vehicles along with a work platform each time you want to assemble a manned mission to mars. But with the ISS you have a permanent facility to do all the science and assembly work that the space program really needs. I think this kind of space tug is one of the very items that is nessicary to carry out space travel that is both cheap and useful for science and the common man. The other three items being the ISS, a heavy lift vehicle(such as the Saturn V in a modernized version), and cheap, reusable shuttles ala the X-Prize. If NASA had these four items then manned missions to mars and the moon would become so much cheaper and easier, and the added science that could be done would be emense.

Re:This is a great idea!

[sharkman67]

Buckeye,

You spend too much time using Microsoft products it seems. It is the International Space Station.

But I do agree with your comment that: "I feel the IIS is just not very useful. " And I'm not talking about the ISS.

Re:This is a great idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

But, you gotta ask yourself... WTF is so important on the moon, or Mars for that matter?

The moon? I'ts got no atmosphere, it's got no water, it DOES have gravity (making it less than ideal for low-G experiments), etc. It's got no real scientific value besides it's history.

Yeah, it was nice to have the moon there as a testbed for our technology. It was nice to have as a landing target.... But, even when we had people there, what did we learn that we didn't already know? Not enough to justify putting more people there 30 years later.

Mars? Now it's got some interesting things going on, with the possibility of large pools of underground water, and ancient fossilized bacteria and the like. It's neat and all, but it's really not all that interesting, either. Mars will probably prove to be a great testbed for even more advanced technology, but I doubt it's ever going to be more than that (at least in the near future)... The only use Mars has in the future is mining, or terraforming, both of which are far out of our grasp.

We SHOULD be developing tech to get to other worlds, but I don't think it's a reasonable thing to try and put people there at this stage in the game. It's a politcal ploy, and a fucking stupid one at that. Much of that money and time would be better spent learning more about our own world, and figuring out ways to fix what we've fucked up.

Re:This is a great idea!

[AceCaseOR]

Well, at least with ISS they still haven't gotten around to using it to experiment on the effects of micro-grav on human copulation...

Re:This is a great idea!

[Penguinshit]

I believe Luna (the Moon) is a very important step toward manned exploration of other planetary bodies in our Solar System. The reason for this is that humans are designed to work with feet on ground, using hands to grapple and manipulate while legs handle heavy lifting/movement. This is difficult in a zero-G environment like orbit, requiring special tools and platforms in order to do any real construction work.

Meanwile, on Luna, you have a large stable platform on which to work using standard tools such as could be found on Earth. Because the platform is huge compared to orbital workstations, many people could work simultaneously to produce large vehicles (such as the types required to transport humans safely to other planetary bodies).

Once the suitable vehicle is built, launching from Luna is much easier than from Earth due to the drastically decreased gravity and complete lack of drag from air friction. This allows for larger, non-streamlined (which necessarily constrains design choices) vehicles to be built and launched.

This does not even begin to take into account the possibility of obtaining raw material resources from Luna, removing the requirement to transport those materials from Earth.

Re:This is a great idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the suitable vehicle is built, launching from Luna is much easier than from Earth due to the drastically decreased gravity and complete lack of drag from air friction. This allows for larger, non-streamlined (which necessarily constrains design choices) vehicles to be built and launched.

This does not even begin to take into account the possibility of obtaining raw material resources from Luna, removing the requirement to transport those materials from Earth.

Yes, this is the only possible benefit to having a base on the moon. However the infrastructure to get to that point is immense. We won't see it for a hundred years, if ever... Barring some extreme technological barriers are overcomed.

And you've got to have power. Solar's not efficient enough, and the mirrors/collectors are going to be covered in dust in short order--so they've got to be maintained. Forget the meteorites that hit it all of the time.

This basically dictates that we've got to send a nuclear reactor and fuel up there. I'm not sure of the existance of nuclear fuel on the moon, so it's a given that fuel is going to have to be supplied on a regular interval. This is going to be very difficult politically. Remember Cassini?
It's also going to take some huge radiators to cool it... Which are, of course, going to have to be cleaned regularly to maintain any sort of efficiency.

That's the only way you're going to get enough power to do things with the minerals up there; if there are any useful minerals. AFAIK all of the surface stuff is silica, who knows what's down below... If anything at all.

Like I said before... Declaring the moon as some sort of home base at this point and time is idiocy. It makes NO sense at all... Unless they plan to build a giant laser on it, and threaten all of the countries of the world. Given our current president, this is the absolute most likely scenario... Simply because the scientists involved already know and have illustrated the points I just did, it's unfeasible technologically and economically to build a moon base at this time, and it's going to continue to be as far as I can see.

Re:This is a great idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel the IIS is just not very useful. Other than studying the long-term effects of microgravity on people, it doesn't do so much else. The massive loads of money spend on this thing could have gone to other, more useful, space projects. Instead it was built because we've always felt we needed a space station. Now we have one (partially, at least) and don't know what to do with it.

One of the problems is that it doesn't have a full crew. The two person crew currently onboard have to spend most of their time maintaining the station systems. With the full seven person crew the ISS is planned for a lot more effort could be put into scientific experiments.

But.. With the space shuttle grounded and the planned "crew escape vechicle" nowhere in sight it doesn't look too good.. :(

Re:This is a great idea!

[Dastardly]

And you've got to have power. Solar's not efficient enough, and the mirrors/collectors are going to be covered in dust in short order--so they've got to be maintained. Forget the meteorites that hit it all of the time.

You are referring to space dust, or dust kicked up by impactors, right? Is that really sufficient to "cover in dust in short order"?

Re:This is a great idea!

[gilgo_22]

Maybe I am biased, being a theoretical scientist, but I do not see much to be gained from a manned mission to Mars. The romantic value is huge, but in the scientific sense, a robot can accomplish much more (and you can fund many robot missions with less money than a manned mission). And it seems to me like there not much to be learned techonologically either.

It can be argued that the romance of sending a human being to Mars can attract public support for other forms of space research. But I think that a series of robotic missions, spread over time, can also achieve that kind of support.

(Moving slightly off-topic, it is very sad to see how a succesful ongoing mission gets prematurely killed for dubious political gain.)

me.

Re:This is a great idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Both. I forget how much mass the Earth gains per year, but it was a staggering number (to me at least), somewhere on the order of 50,000 tons, most of that being space dust.

On the moon, well, I'm not sure of the number. I do recall some NASA people being concerned with dust if solar collectors were used on the surface, primarily because of dust being kicked up by impactors, traveling hundreds of miles or more, and settling down.

Perhaps it's not as much of a problem as I (and they) invision, but remember that our little rover (on Mars) has a 90 day mission, primarily due to the anticipation that dust will settle on it's collectors. Granted, mars has wind, and that presents a problem with dust, but there is also solar wind that's constantly pushing a stream of particles out at us. I imagine that it would be as much, if not more of a problem on the moon (because of the impactors).

IIRC, NASA suggested that objects on the moon might collect as much as 1cm of dust yearly. I could be totally off base on that one, but I don't belive I am. Google didn't turn up anything.

It's going to take an army of collectors to be landed on the moon to do anything like melting metals and sand to build structures, nevermind keeping everything (buildings, water, food, people) heated. Cleaning those collectors (be they photoelectric, steam/molten sodium closed loop generators, or whatever) is going to be a huge logistical problem.

Re:This is a great idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

and we all know how the government likes to hear 'cheap' and 'space' in the same sentence.

so they can spend $50 million an hour on interest payments.

Re:This is a great idea!

[AKAImBatman]

From a scientific perspective it really makes limited sense. (e.g. Geologists could be on site to study rock formations and figure out more about our solar system's history.) From an economic standpoint it makes plenty of sense. Our economy has grown so much that the last major boom was over intangible resources (i.e. computer programs).

Space travel to Mars and asteroids would bring about new resources and technological developments that could bring about a new industrial age. The economic benefits of such progress can not be overstated. Simply put, there are more easily accessible raw materials on a single asteroid than are mined on Earth in 10 years. While the economics may say that it isn't cheap to bring them back to earth, it would be cheap enough to start building new craft, stations, and other outposts in space.

The only limiting factor to this progress is propulsion. We have to have a way to travel the solar system cheaply. On the bright side, there already exists a technology that can generate a constant energy output in the multi-megawatt range. That same technology can be used with many of the resources readily available in space. But that same technology is the most feared and misunderstood technology in all of history. That technology is nuclear power.

We already have NERVA engines. Gas Core Nuclear Engines have been under development for the past decade and promise to be even more efficient and powerful. But until the public at large starts to understand these technologies, they will fear them.

It should start with schools. Stop keeping nuclear power such a "big secret". Explain to school children how Nuclear fission and fusion work. Define what a nuclear pile is. Explain what Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Neutron and X-Ray radiation are. Send a rock of plutonium (specifically a non-fissible isotope so no one gets any bright ideas) around schools so kids can see what nuclear materials look like. Once they understand nuclear power they won't fear it and the tide will shift in favor of nuclear power.

Re:This is a great idea!

[Penguinshit]

That's "giant frickin' laser".

Yes, I do agree that there are some daunting technological issues to overcome; I basically glossed over that to deal with the issue of *why* the moon would be a good target to start with manned interplanetary exploration.

Insofar as the power requirements go, solar should be sufficient for basic living quarters (I've not heard of either Mir's or ISS's panels needing to be cleaned). For a heavy industry something more substantial will indeed be required (you've mentioned the potential political trouble with getting a suitable reactor launched).

I would hesitate to "declare the moon some sort of home base at this point and time", but I would like to see some steps toward development of the technologies needed to overcome the difficulties in establishing such a base.

Also, I believe this will take more international cooperation because, even moreso than ISS, this undertaking will be hideously expensive.

Could we use it....

[Anonymous Coward]

...to find the Beagle?

Re:Could we use it....

[isorox]

Dog whistles don't work in space

Private management

[memmel2]

Maybe the Universities and goverments that use the Hubble can take over management of it. Nasa should give them a shot.

Re:Private management

[JohnTheFisherman]

And when it needs repairs? If it falls out of orbit?

Nice concept, but NASA is still effectively responsible for it.

Re:Private management

[ChrisDolan]

Hubble is operated and funded by NASA, but all science planning and data analysis is done by Space Telescope Science Institute on the Johns Hopkins University campus.

The key is funding.

Re:Private management

[yoshi_mon]

I think the point of your argument is that since NASA is the only one that currenly flys into space in this country they are the only game in town?

What about the fact that a geek close to our hearts, John Carmack, has his own areospace co. or the Russans are always willing to send up a rocket for some cash. (With ppl in them even.)

The Hubble is American and as of right now it's NASAs responsability, however if they see fit they could give the responsability to a set of insititusions. With letters like MIT, GT, UCLA (Sorry, I'm east coast. Drawing a blank on what west coast schools do rocket science.), and then add a few other schools in there and you have one powerful set of heads working there.

It could work...but again, it's up to NASA.

Re:Private management

[britneys 9th husband]

With letters like MIT, GT, UCLA (Sorry, I'm east coast. Drawing a blank on what west coast schools do rocket science.),

UCLA? When I think of East Coast schools that do rocket science, I always think of the University of California at Los Angeles :-)

For the West Coast, try Caltech, which runs JPL.

Hubble is now like BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

It's dying.

Re:Hubble is now like BSD

[SlamMan]

Thing is, your right. My brother's a contractor that works on the Hubble servicing missions, and just was informed on Friday that all future servicing missions have been canceled.

Re:Hubble is now like BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

My brother's a contractor that works on the Hubble servicing missions

But would he work on the Death Star, knowing that there may be a rebel attack?

Doesn't NASA...

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't NASA have a AAA card? They tow for free, you know...

Re:Doesn't NASA...

[Anonymous Coward]

It had better be a Gold membership...the regular membership only gives you five miles.

Re:Doesn't NASA...

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

Even with a premium gold membership they only tow the first 100 miles for free, then it's $1 per mile after that.

Re:Doesn't NASA...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the sort of commercial adverstising that could make such a mission more viable... have AAA run ads that NASA -has- a card and that the hubble can be towed... slap a AAA sticker on the space-towtruck and voila! The novelty of that ad would be worth a couple million bucks.

"well that's great pal, but this is AAA, you want AA."

Wrong

[rw2]

The correct answer is:

Spend that money on ground based observatories with advanced systems that allow better than hubble imaging from earth.

Re:Wrong

[rco3]

Quoth rw2: "Spend that money on ground based observatories with advanced systems that allow better than hubble imaging from earth."

Are there any? Doesn't atmospheric distortion limit the imaging ability of ground-based systems?

Re:Wrong

[aborchers]

Spend that money on ground based observatories with advanced systems that allow better than hubble imaging from earth.

Which of those advanced systems are going to allow for observing at wavelengths to which our atmosphere is opaque?

Re:Wrong

[strictnein]

but... but.. but we need big phalic like things floating around our planet to show those aliens how manly we are!

Re:Wrong

[aborchers]

Are there any? Doesn't atmospheric distortion limit the imaging ability of ground-based systems?

Adaptive optics can do a lot to cancel atmospherics. The real problem is that the atmosphere just plain obstructs much of the spectrum.

Re:Wrong

[hplasm]

No, spend different money on GBOs, and this money on Hubble. The more the merrier.

Re:Wrong

[rw2]

Which of those advanced systems are going to allow for observing at wavelengths to which our atmosphere is opaque?

None.

Which of the wavelengths that the hubble can shoot which ground based cannot will fail to be served far, far better by Webb?

The fact is that most of the work being done by hubble can be done from the ground today and what cannot is being replaced by Webb with greatly improvments. This is by design.

Re:Wrong

[nadamsieee]

Which of the wavelengths that the hubble can shoot which ground based cannot will fail to be served far, far better by Webb?

All of them, if Webb has a failure. That's the whole point of saving Hubble.

Re:Wrong

[khallow]

How about those UV frequencies? I recall atmospheric distortion is worse at these frequencies too.

Re:Wrong

[Nimey]

What happens if something goes wrong with Webb? It could be destroyed in a launching accident, it could fail to activate once it reaches its orbit, and so on. With Webb and Hubble both gone, we're SOL for extra-atmospheric astronomy.

Re:Wrong

[aridg]

Not to mention that even adaptive optics don't help you see through clouds...

Re:Wrong

[calyphus]

Ahh, Adaptive Optics. Their proponents keep forgeting about that pesky atmosphere isn't just distorting light, but absorbing it. No matter how advanced optical adaptation becomes it can't resolve the photon that doesn't arrive.

Re:Wrong

[aborchers]

I think that's an unfair stab at AO. It solves the problem it was meant to solve, and the results are remarkable.

I'd agree (well, actually I already said as much) that they aren't the be-all-end-all of observational astronomy, but they serve a useful purpose that is complementary to orbiters imaging at other wavelengths.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

"Quoth"

Do you also start a lot of posts with "Umm..." and use the term "Virii"? GO LORD!

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

There sure is, at least for deep field viewing. The LBTI .

Re:Wrong

[aborchers]

Not to mention that even adaptive optics don't help you see through clouds...

Right. For that you need really big fans. ;-)

Re:Wrong

[rco3]

No, I'm more likely to start a post with "Err..."

Why do you ask?

And what's with the "GO LORD!"? YARIDG?

Re:Wrong

[EvilTwinSkippy]

The atmosphere is nearly invisible to radio telescopes (if you pick the right wavelength.)

Re:Wrong

[qrash]

The theoretical resolution of a 76 metre ground-based radio (21 cm wavelengths) telescope is 20 arcminutes, so it has a large 'beam'. In comparison the human eye has a theoretical resoulution of about 1 arcminute.

Thus too do any ground-based observations in the radio or far-infrared part of the spectrum you must have either a very large telescope or a large array of telescopes. Even then the resolution is limited by turbulence and water vapour in the atmosphere.

The alternative of course is what the Hubble is doing, go above most of the atmosphere and observe in the visible part of the spectrum, no turbulence, high resolution.

Re:Wrong

[Agent Orange]

The problem with adaptive optics is the limited field of view. And not even AO approaches the diffraction-limited resolution of the HUBBLE. With multiple lasers in a horrendously complex MCAO system (which don't work yet!), there FOV is tiny. great if you want to image a double-star system but essentially useless for anything larger than a point-source :-(

Re:Wrong

[calyphus]

It may be an unfair stab at AO, but their proponents do pop up on every discussion of HST over-hyping AO as able to replace HST. They excessively discount the advantages of a space-based platform.

Great!

[HappyCitizen]

I think its great that someones trying to save the hubble. I like their analogy about decommisioning a ground based telescope because a newer one had been built and it would save money. They are absolutely right... keep it up there if you can, incase the new orbital telescope(forget the name) does fail, or just because so many people want time on it. Good luck to the tug!

Re:Great!

[Bullschmidt]

Not entirely a fair comparison, though. Presumably (I don't really know) a decommisioned ground based telescope is not destroyed - just shut down. It could be restarted later. Decommisioning it means it costs 0, but could later be restarted for some cost. Hubble can't simply be "shut down" and later started up again. It's orbit must be maintained, so decommisioning it in any non-destructive way is an expense.

Pretty good idea by them

[GonzoDave]

If it succeeds, they're sorted for life. If it doesn't, well, the Hubble was going to be scrapped anyway, and the government's already paid for the flight and research

My opinion

[W32.Klez.A]

I feel that we need to save the Hubble, even if it is just for nostalgic reasons. Perhaps it just seems absurd that we dump all of our old equipment into the ocean when we're done with them, but really, I think we need to preserve the things that have given us insight into the universe and remember them. Besides, how might Mr. Hubble (have) like(d) that we just dump this huge telescope named after him once it becomes slightly antiquated?

Re:My opinion

[GonzoDave]

If he was alive, he'd probably be turning in his grave

Re:My opinion

[Mulletproof]

Or burning...
Ahem, anyway, i agree with the parent on this one. We're literally torching a lot of history here. I mean, look what they did to the Enterprise...

Re:My opinion

[Jason Hood]

OK, You buck up the cash to bring it back in one piece. =)

Re:My opinion

[AceCaseOR]

More like saying, "Help, help, lemmie out of this box! Help, lemmie out of here!" or something like that.

Sounds fishy...

[Stingr]

"Some of the reasons that he cites are that the Hubble's replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope, could be delayed or suffer some sort of failure."

Sounds like some kind of extortion scam to me...

Pay me to save Hubble or something could happen to your fancy schmancy new one.

Re:Sounds fishy...

[shuz]

As said earlier saving the hubble has nothing to lose. Unless you consider that the space tug could have a malfunction and send hubble into an unstable orbit that takes out other satellites. But in general I think the only reason they suggested problems with the JWST was to reinforce thier arguement to try save the hubble. I don't think there is any extortion intent.

Re:Sounds fishy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Humor.

Re:Sounds fishy...

[willtsmith]

This whole "can't reach the space station" issue is all trumped up. All NASA need do is design an orbital fuel pod system.

Basically, they would design a spigot that fits into the back of the existing shuttles. NASA would launch one ore more simple orbiting "fuel pods" at various orbital heights. The fuel pod walls would be armored against orbital debris. It's mission is to sit happily in orbit until needed.

If the shuttle runs into a fuel problem during a mission. They would simply rendevouz with the fuel container and refuel. At that point they could move up into ISS orbit.

A fuel pod in low earth orbit shouldn't be a problem. If it de-orbits, it will simply explode since it would be 90% fuel. There would be no risk of flying debris hitting the earth.

These things shouldn't be that expensive to develop. They are a good idea for ANY future manned NASA program. They would be good for the future "commuter" space vehicles as well.

Re:Sounds fishy...

[ausoleil]

Pay me to save Hubble or something could happen to your fancy schmancy new one.

While space launches have become far more reliable than they were in the early days of NASA, it is still hardly a given that any particular payload will make it to orbit -- rockets still veer off course, malgunction and just plain blow up. Again, it's not as often as it once was, however, it does indeed happen still.

That said, it makes sense to keep the Hubble until it truly has been proven far obsolete. Even if it is not a state-of-the-art leading edge observatory, it can (and I think should) be kept for use as an educational unit -- "once you master the Hubble, well then, you can use our fancy-schmancy new Webb!" All too often, we fall into the trap of "new is better so old is useless."

2 words

[shuz]

chromatic aberration Earth ground based telescopes will never be as good!

Business a little slow?

[CaptainAlbert]

Is there actually a market for orbital recovery? Apart from Hubble, which it would be nice to have back for sentimental value, I can't think that there's much up there than needs recovering. Most satellites are so many years out of date that it makes no commercial sense to get them back again - you'd only have to re-launch them anyway, at which point you might as well have spent the money on new ones.

Equally, no-one needs to run the risk of trying to repair things that are orbiting the Earth; it's guaranteed to be cheaper to junk it and build a new one.

Methinks this guy is playing on popular support for the "keep Hubble" campaign to raise the profile of an otherwise unviable business.

</devil's advocate>

Re:Business a little slow?

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider that a big comms bird runs upwards of a billion dollars. Think that e.g. Hughes might be interested in keeping one of those puppies running at end-of-life?

The potential market for on-orbit servicing is HUGE!.

Darpa is even funding just such a program.
Google on "orbital express".

http://www.boeing.com/phantom/orbital.html
http ://www.darpa.mil/tto/PROGRAMS/astro.html

Re:Business a little slow?

[princewally]

OTOH, orbital recovery may be what we need to build a moon base. Use the orbital tug to haul the junk to the moon, and recycle it into parts of the base. All of the satellites and garbage may be useable.

Re:Business a little slow?

[CaptainAlbert]

Consider that a big comms bird runs upwards of a billion dollars

I'd dispute that. You can launch a ton into LEO for less than $25M. Let's inflate that to $100M to be on the safe side. Development cost, even including NREs un-amortized, isn't going to be remotely close to $900M. No way. Prove me wrong? :)

Think that e.g. Hughes might be interested in keeping one of those puppies running at end-of-life?

No, I don't. They put enough fuel in it that, when it runs out, the technology on-board is obsolete. This is particularly true in comms, which is quite a fast-moving industry. Who wants a load of 1990's satellite TV hardware kept running? They call it end-of-life for a reason.

Re:Business a little slow?

[Tackhead]

> Is there actually a market for orbital recovery?

No. There's some stupid treaty that says Hubble's too heavy to be deorbited, so it has to be brought back intact in the back of the Shuttle.

And the official reason Hubble's being canned is because it's "unsafe" - a damaged Shuttle on a Hubble repair mission (which NASA suddenly decided it cares about) cannot change inclination to dock with ISS.

So the ironic part is that it's "unsafe" to fly the Shuttle out there to save Hubble. But we're going to take exactly the same risks to fly it out there to bring it downh in a few years anyways.

Given that most of the money for the Hubble repair mission has already been spent, and given that the Shuttle's time is over, I'd call for 3 volunteers, and take my changes on launching the damn thing anyways.

"We haven't fixed a damn thing. We were only going to launch your shuttle two or three more times anyways, so we're treating the Shuttle as an expendable launch vehicles that happens to have landing gear. So yes, there's a 2% chance that what killed the last shuttle will kill your shuttle, and you along with it. There's also a 98% chance you'll come back as heroes for having kept Hubble in good condition long enough for JWST to come online. Any takers?"

The Hubble is obsolescent. But it does vastly more science than ISS ever did, or ever will do. For that reason alone, it's worth risking a few lives to keep aloft. For the record, I'd volunteer for such a mission. I'm sure most astronauts would too.

(None of this diminishes the fact that it would have been cheaper to skip the Shuttle, use a Big Dumb Booster, and just launch a new Hubble every 5 years, the way they do with spy satellites. But it's too late for that option now.)

Re:Business a little slow?

[mangu]

Consider that a big comms bird runs upwards of a billion dollars.

Hmmm, no. About $250 million is the top price. Plus $100 million for launch and insurance, it doesn't cost more than $350 million to have a comms satellite in synchronous orbit.

Hughes might be interested...

Hughes doesn't exist anymore. They became Boeing Satellite Systems after the acquisition.

Re:Business a little slow?

[orac2]

Actually the plan to bring the Hubble back in a shuttle bay was cancelled even before the servicing mission was. No shuttles are going to near Hubble, period.

Re:Business a little slow?

[wass]

I'm sure most astronauts would too.

Actually, there are several astronauts that have already volunteered to go up for SM4 Hubble Servicing Mission.

John Grunsfeld (guy who did SM3B and another Hubble servicing mission, I don't know which one) among others. And Grunsfeld said he'd go into space for Hubble, but won't go back for ISS.

So that gives some perspective on how some astronauts are thinking. They'd risk their lives for Hubble's science and choose that mission over the safer mission of another ISS launch.

Re:Business a little slow?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even $250 Million + Launch is on the expensive side. Telstar 14 was built by Space Systems Loral, and Launched by Sea Launch for $250 Million On orbit delivery. That means $250 Million includes the satellite and the launch.

Re:Business a little slow?

[shadowbearer]

Back when when watching the first shuttle launch land in the school cafeteria, I remember my physics professor shaking his head sadly and saying "They should have built a spaceplane to carry just humans; we already have cargo boosters. It's a bad design decision to do both in the same craft."

I didn't understand how right he was for a while...

SB

Re:Business a little slow?

[GileadGreene]

Big comm birds aren't going to LEO, they're going to GEO. That said, your conclusions are dead on.

Launch costs are somewhere between US $50M-$100M these days, depending on exactly how big a satellite we're talking about. The standard rule-of-thumb is that launch costs are roughly the same as spacecraft costs. So the average "big comm bird" is probably somewhere around US $100M.

Just to put the ridiculousness of the grandparent's assertion about comm sats costing $1B into further perspective: the current Mars Exploration Rover mission cost (officially anyway) under $1B. For that cost they developed a brand new and very complex rover design, as well as a complete lander and cruise-stage system, then actually built and launched two of them (Spirit and Opportunity). So claiming that a single satellite doing a fairly standard mission, and launching only to GEO, cost ~$1B seems fairly absurd.

Re:Business a little slow?

[puppet10]

For that cost they developed a brand new and very complex rover design, as well as a complete lander and cruise-stage system, then actually built and launched two of them (Spirit and Opportunity).

Doesnt their budget for the mission even include the ground control and staff during the science mission as well (although that part might go up if they are able and wish to extend the mission beyond the original time frame) ?

Re:Business a little slow?

[GileadGreene]

Not sure if the budget includes operations. I believe that it may well include development of the ground systems, but that will be a fraction of the cost of the spacecraft & launch. Even if the budget does include ops, that's only 90 days per rover, with a 2 month overlap (i.e. a total of around 120 days). They cannot go far beyond that due to design life limits on the rovers (mostly as a result of solar array degradation IIRC). So I doubt the ops cost will dominate the budget.

Letter sent to European astronomers

[Aardpig]

I attach below the text of a letter recently sent to European astronomers, regarding the demise of Hubble support:

Dear colleague,

As you may know, NASA has decided to cancel all further servicing missions to Hubble. Servicing Mission 4, originally scheduled for next Spring/Summer, was designed to refurbish HST and enable it to continue operating in the current efficient and successful way. NASA has decided that all future Shuttle missions will be devoted to the International Space Station. Hence, no upgrade in capability or maintenance is planned for HST. A direct consequence is, of course, the end of WFC3 and COS as HST instruments. A discussion is developing, however, on the possibility of launching one or both of these instruments as part of a "fast-track 2 meter class telescope" mission.

Without the replacement of failed gyros there is a high probability that HST will have to be operated in a two-gyro mode relatively soon, with substantial restrictions on the science observations. A controlled de-orbit of the spacecraft will have to be achieved using a special robotic mission at some time in the future as yet unspecified.

There is little we Europeans can do directly to change NASA's decision which, apparently, is final. We believe strongly, however, that it should be made known how universal the feeling of disappointment is within the scientific community. As European members of the Space Telescope Users Committee (STUC), we have asked the ST-ECF to open a web page where you can send comments on the fate of HST and on the loss for the scientific community. We encourage you to share your views with us, visiting the site and sending e-mails to the address given.

The site is now available at http://www.stecf.org/SM_cancellation.html

Best regards,

Eric Emsellem and Monica Tosi

Re:Letter sent to European astronomers

[phaggood]

There is little we Europeans can do directly to change NASA's decision which, apparently, is final.

Screw NASA; what about an online fundraiser (paypal, anyone?) to raise money for a Hubble servicing contract with China?

Or, maybe, NASA could raise some cash just selling Hubble outright on EBay? China or India buys it, services it, and does a lease-back with the UN who rents it out to international astronomers?

See, that's the kind of planetary cooperation the extraterrestrials are looking for to invite us into the galactic federation....:-)

Re:Letter sent to European astronomers

[alexpage]

Dear Colleague,

You may be surprised at my contacting you in this manner. I am DENNIS WINGO, chief technical officer of the ORBITAL RECOVERY CORPORATION, and you have been identified as a trustworthy person with whom I can do business.

Recently, I have suffered due to instability in the Hubble Space Telescope, which contains a good deal of material worth, approximately 100 MILLION US DOLLARS. If this money is not quickly recovered then the value will be burned in the atmosphere and everybody will have lost. If you help me to recover this money, I will send you 10% of the value (10 MILLION US DOLLARS). Please reply with details of your bank account number, sort code, account name and date of birth and we can begin the process of saving the Hubble Space Telescope and the 100 MILLION US DOLLARS value within.

Yours,

Dennis Wingo
Chief Technical Officer
Orbital Recovery Corporation
wingod@orbitalrecovery.com

Re:Letter sent to European astronomers

[Remlik]

If all hubble needs is some replacement gyros why don't some of these billionare space tourists (Tito) put down some hard cash and have the russians shoot them up for a fixit mission. Once the gyros are repaird the telescope becomes useful again without fear of losing orbit.

I'm all for new and advanced space and ground based telescopes but to just junk the craft seems wasteful, hell offer it up on ebay and see what happens, maybe the chinese would be interested in refurbing it.

Re:Letter sent to European astronomers

[jim3e8]

My buddy Stephanopoulos was operating in two-gyro mode the other day, one in each hand. I could barely stand it in the neighboring cube.

Re:Letter sent to European astronomers

[Performer Guy]

It's a shame they're bitching about what NASA is doing to deprive them of their instrument when they've had it's benefits for years. Geeze, talk about glass half empty. There are new missions, other priorities and in context ESA spends a pittance on this kind of stuff.

The idea that once it's up you have to service it long past it's anticipated life or put up with endless politicking by scientists over it's fate makes me want to object to launching another bird for these dufi. How long are we going to service the next one for? Costs up front please so we can say no at the outset to slipping cost overruns and extended mission support. Heck we're even spending a hundred million bringing this hunk of tin down in the ocean which is insane when you consider the natural asteroud impacts we have. At least the next one is going up to the L2 where we can't send a repair mission, so we'll have the blessing of not having to listen to more griping from scientists that billion dollar space programs are somehow disappointing to them.

Shuttle missions are obscenely expensive compared to other launch vehicles and we've already had two service missions to this thing. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars (OUR DOLLARS!), probably upwards of a billion on one telescope and they want to keep sending the missions up. Time to get a grip. Manned service missions to space telescopes are more expensive than launching new instruments, but because it's their sandbox perspective goes out the window, enough of the politics already.

Geeze for a billion bucks you could have had an amazing instrument on Earth that would do useful work for the next 100 years and at a lower ongoing operating cost.

Re:Letter sent to European astronomers

[ClioCJS]

Can someone explain to me, in layman's terms, why the L2 point isn't serviceable? I already read the entire wikipedia article on Lagrange Points but it didn't cover that.

Re:Letter sent to European astronomers

[Performer Guy]

L2 is effectively orbiting around the Sun not the Earth (with a little bit of a tug from the Earth), so it's really an Earth escape mission, rather than Earth orbital mission. That means it requires much greater velocity and AFAIK it's beyond the reach of the Space Shuttle (at least if you want the Shuttle vehicle back).

Re:Letter sent to European astronomers

[ClioCJS]

Excellent explanation, many thanks.

I'll be willing to bet...

[twoslice]

that this guy can do it faster better cheaper....

What we need is an orbital fix-it robot

[kippy]

I think India is planning something like this. It's an ion drive powered robot. It would be able to tub things into the right orbit and perform some limited maintenence tasks. It wouldn't be a cure all but it would probably pick up a lot of slack on the cheap. I'm guessing it could be refueled with a tank of fuel launched up hear it.

It would be a nice private venture. I could see a realistic market for it with all the telecommunications stuff up there.

Re:What we need is an orbital fix-it robot

[Anonymous Coward]

thing is if it breaks who's going to fix the orbital fix-it robot? the orbital fix-it robot fix-it robot?

Think about it, do you keep your used cars? I say dump the HST.

old article

[wes33]

The article is very out dated, but the point remains valid. It is worth saving the Hubble for science work ...

As it stands, the new Bush space initiative will lead to Hubble's loss before any replacement is in place. Who knows if the Webb 'scope will fly on schedule (not very likely really is it?).

Second, American capacity for manned space flight will be lost for some years before its replacement flies. Who knows if the new "space exploration vehicle" will fly on time (not very likely is it really).

The american space progral is likely to just fade away under the budget pressure of war/feed-the-rich expenditures.

Face it, the next American on the moon, will have to go through Chinese passport control.

Sad in a way.

Re:old article

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up you stupid piece of $hizznit a$$h0l3 mutherfruxer

Re:old article

[mosb1000]

What you read on CNN regarding the reasons behind the Hubble's loss is not entirely accurate. The decision to stop matinance on the Hubble is a resule of SAFETY concerns with the space shuttle, NOT money concerns. The official NASA statement said that they wanted to use the shuttle as little as possible, and that all future missions should be to the ISS so that they can prevent another event like the Columbia from happening. This is a decision that is the result of the study done regarding the shuttle Columbuia, and likely would have been made regardless of any new space initiative. Recall that the the Hubble was going to be serviced last year, but that severcing will not likely ever happen now. Furhter, your assertion that the new space exploration vehicle will not fly on time is unfounded. The requirements for the space exploration vehicle do not call for the developments of any NEW thechnologies. The vehicle is to be designed an built using existing technologies. This removes most of the question marks from it's development schedule. Space vehicles such as the gemini capsule have been developed in less time.

Salvage Space Junk

[Hits_B]

It seems to me that this technology could be used to clean up a lot of the space junk orbiting the earth. Set up an intergalactic recycling station and move all of the inoperable satellites to it and strip them down for parts. Which leads to another question. Are there laws that dictate ownership of property once it leaves the planet and is in orbit?

Re:Salvage Space Junk

[Thrymm]

That is also a great idea. Cleaning up space junk should be a priority too, as there is too much up there already! Chances are, most can be recycled. As for the law issue, who knows, a new law field now will probably be formed. And that is the last thing we need, lawyers in space!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re:Salvage Space Junk

[Ulven]

Oh? I always thought that was a good thing.

As long as they don't have any spacesuits, of course.

Re:Salvage Space Junk

[ThosLives]

I'm sure there are indeed laws, but they are unenforceable (as long as you are in space, anyway). Think about it: you launch a spacecraft, sit in space, turn the unused junk into something else, and then sell it or use it for fuel or whatever. Well, unless said owner is willing to spend money to send rockets up at you to blow you up, then you can do whatever you want.

Space is a place to be truly free to do what you want, which is both great and dangerous. Great, because most people won't bother to enforce anything. Dangerous, because the only way to enforce anything reverts back to force.

Re:Salvage Space Junk

[ericspinder]

I agree that something has to be done with space junk, every piece is a missle waiting to hit something important, but I don't think that there would be so great of a recycling market for the old equipment.

let's see..., what do we got here a 386 computer, some 15 yo solar cells, and an empty canaster of propellent...

I think that it would be best just to design a "space tug" with a big cage on the front, with a eye to letting the whole mess burn up.

IANAL, but I believe that the "standard laws relating to ships at open sea", if it's a derilict, you can do anything you want with it.

Re:Salvage Space Junk

[Xoder]

New Laws Are Not Required.

Naval salvage law could apply quite well ("finders keepers"). Granted, then there's sometimes a tax to the local government (the things I learn watching CSI: Miami...). Give it to the UN to distribute among the various space programs, or something like that.

Re:Salvage Space Junk

[GQuon]

Are there laws that dictate ownership of property once it leaves the planet and is in orbit?

I haven't searched for it, but this is the state of affairs:
If you launched it, it's yours.
If it was allready in space you can't claim it or own it. (Because of an agreement.)

Yay! L2 point!

[ImWithBrilliant]

Finally some recognition of Lagrangian orbits.

Re:Yay! L2 point!

[adrianbaugh]

Why would it be impossible to service it at L2? Surely if they can get it there they can get something there to service it - I assume what is meant is "prohibitively expensive to service it at L2"?

Re:Yay! L2 point!

[eggoeater]

So the L2 point is on the line of the Sun and Earth, but not between them, rather "past" earth towards Mars' orbit. Does that mean it would ALWAYS be in Earth's shadow?
That sounds cool from the point of sunlight not interfering with it's "vision". But doesn't it have solar panels that it needs sunlight for??
Sorry for off-topic questions.
-Steve

Re:Yay! L2 point!

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy.. When was the last time a manned mission went to a Lagrange point?

Second question, when was the last time a space telescope was repaired while in service without a manned mission?

Re:Yay! L2 point!

[jpflip]

NASA, etc. have already made use of the Lagrangian points for several other satellites and probes. Most notably, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) is currently in orbit about L2, sending back data on the cosmic microwave background, the leftover heat patterns from the Big Bang itself.

Re:Yay! L2 point!

[RLW]

The L2 point is beyond the Earth's umbra and lies in the region of Earth's penumbra called the annular umbra. Further the planed orbit for the JWST will not exactly be at L2 but rather in a more stable configuration around L2.

Earth-Sun L2 and shadows

Re:Yay! L2 point!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would it be impossible to service it at L2? Surely if they can get it there they can get something there to service it - I assume what is meant is "prohibitively expensive to service it at L2"?

Of course it would be theoretically possible, but not with any manned spacecraft earth has produced so far.

Unmanned spacecraft can take months or even years to reach their final orbits. Manned spacecraft doesn't have that endurance, so you'd need to make a direct approach, decellerate to a stop, do the stuff you came for and then accellerate back to earth. Doing that would require _a lot_ of fuel, much more than anything we have can carry.

Re:Yay! L2 point!

[eggoeater]

Thanks for the 411. I had no idea the L2 point was so far away or that the orbit around L2 was so large. ( 1.5million KM!)
Here's another page which has a great diagram of the launch and orbit:
Proposed Orbit for JWST

An ad for a tow truck

[onyxruby]

Article is an ad for a tow truck based in space, that is all. That being said, there probably is a fair and justifiable market for a space based tow truck, as well as a spaced based garbage truck. That being said, why are we getting advertisements linked as articles?

Just give it to 'em

[RobertB-DC]

I know it takes millions of dollars to run the science behind Hubble, or any other space project. Apparently, it takes a whole team of rocket scientists just to keep the thing from crashing into Tucson or something.

But why can't NASA just give the telescope to Wingo's company and be done with it? Just give them the keys and be done with it. Sign something requiring that they drop it in the Pacific (or in the Sun, or something) when they're done.

If Orbital Recovery can make a go selling science time to astronomers, then let them try it. Or they can sell time to people looking for the Face on Mars. Or they can fly up the next Survivor crew with some duct tape and an oxygen tank to play "voted off the Hubble". Whatever the free market wants.

I'm not usually one to say the "free market" is better at making decisions, but NASA has gotten its investment back. Instead of plowing it into the seabed, give it away -- think of it as the new-frontier version of salvage rights.

Re:Just give it to 'em

[applemasker]

Technically, this would mean a transfer of the Hubble from a 570km orbit to something more in the area of the ISS, which is approximately 370km. At that altitude, there is still the issue of atmospheric drag, which is why ISS is periodically re-boosted by Shuttles (when/if they fly again). Moving Hubble to a lower orbit doesn't make sense, it too would need periodic re-boosting.

More significantly, there is the issue of orbital inclination (the angle between the orbit and the equator). Hubble is at a comfy 28.5 degrees, which is optimal for shuttle launches from KSC given the launch site's latitude. ISS is inclined at 51.6 degrees, which is more of a 'climb' from low-latitute launch sites like KSC, because of the need to launch materials from Russia. (Low latitute launch sites get an extra 'kick' from the earth's rotation, the more equitorial the orbit.)

Transferring in altitude and orbital plane is no easy trick, (http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/rocket_sci/s atellites/hohmann.html) but can be done (just check the math... a lot).

Even if it's done though, NASA would have to commit to service the HST for a few more years. And, although their "official" reason for canceling the HST Service Flight is "safety," the real reason is funding. It may be cliche, but as the line goes, "No Bucks, no Buck Rogers."

I would bet there are gaggles of astronauts who would volunteer to fly a HST service flight with these risks and I'd much rather spend $500 million (most of which is already spent on the hardware and training) to support HST for another 5-7 years than on anything else, including ISS or Pluto-Kupier. Otherwise, we're left with a HST which is one failure away from becoming an orbital paperweight (if there is such a thing) and $200 worth of already-built flight hardware sitting in a warehouse somewhere.

Re:Just give it to 'em

[Blob Pet]

I'd give it to the europeans or the chinese (who ware trying to get their own program off the ground) if they want it....or even sell it to them. It might save NASA some money and help the scientific community.

Re:Just give it to 'em

[urbazewski]

And who will be held responsible if some catastrophe ensues like the unstable orbit mentioned previously or an uncontrolled reentry into the atmosphere? So they said they would drop it in the Pacific --- what if they screw up?

It seems to me that they should be required to idemnify against potential damage, essentially to take out an insurance policy that would pay off the victims in case of a bad outcome. Something that looks economically viable now may not be at all if the companies involved are forced to pay the full costs of the project including the risks to uninvolved parties.

This has also been suggested in the context of drillling for oil in enviromentally sensitive areas: requiring the oil companies to indemnify against damage caused by accidents would mean that full cost of the project was accounted for, that a third party (the insurance company) would make an estimate of how likely they think damage is to occur, and provide an incentive to prevent accidents in the first place.

Re:Just give it to 'em

[jafac]

Indeed; there is no such thing as an "orbital paperweight". More of an orbital papermass.

Re:Just give it to 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, sell it to Europe ($500 million sounds ok to you?), charge them another $500 million for the still necesary repair flight, which they can't perform themselves.

NASA could make money from this...

Re:Just give it to 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

I Think you'll find its already half european owned....

"a ballisticly implanted reef in the Pacific"

[Whispers_in_the_dark]

OTOH, if Hubble were allowed to burn up on re-entry then George Lass could potentially have a kindred spirit to keep her company.

Why?

[MarkusQ]

The correct answer is:

Spend that money on ground based observatories with advanced systems that allow better than hubble imaging from earth.

Why is that the "correct" answer? It's a crime to deorbit large objects when they are potentially so much more valuable where they are.

Just off the top of my head:

1. It could potentially be used for 24/7 monitoring of targets (which you can't do from earth)
2. We could use it to watch for dinosaur killers
3. Automate it for long term survey duty (Oort cloud, etc.)
4. Even if the Hubble is never used as an observatory again, it does consist of a lot of parts / raw materials that could someday prove useful.
5. It may be a future tourist attraction

If somebody actually spent some time on it, I'll bet they could come up with a dozen more good uses.

Further, having a proven tug capability (tested in a situation that wasn't life threatening) would be very valuable in and of itself.

To me, this looks like the right answer.

-- MarkusQ

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cuisinart....

Re:Why?

[JordanH]

• 2. We could use it to watch for dinosaur killers

Why would we care about dinosaur killers? In case you didn't notice, the dinosaurs have been extinct for 70 million years or so.

Re:Why?

[willtsmith]

Agreed.

At the very least, Hubble should be boosted to a higher orbit. If the Webb telescope fails for some reason (blows up during launch) then we will have lost our "eyes in the sky".

Ground based telescopes are improving with adaptive optics. However, does anyone believe that they can ever correct 100% for atmospheric disturbance?? The deeper you look into space, the more pronounced those errors will be.

The old saying says that a bird in the hand is worth two in the Bush. Well, an orbiting, working Hubble is probably worth two Webbs that are still on Terra Firma.

The scientific missions of NASA are now under assault by the Bush adminstration. He wants to turn NASA into pure pork-barrel for industry at the expense of the cheaper, pure scientific endeavours.

I can deal with developing cheaper, less elaborate orbital transport, but what they are proposing is ridiculous. They ridicule the ISS for it's cost. Yet they want to build a MOON BASE to replace it which will cost ten times as much to build and maintain as something that already exists.

Of course, they won't be able to test "advanced drilling technology" on the ISS. Here is part that is pure porky corporate welfare. They want taxpayer money to subsidize R&D for Bushy's crony CEOs. A budget as large as a moonbase is harder to scrutinize and will contain all kinds of handouts for corportations.

We'll see if Prince George elaborates tonight in his "State of a Decaying Nation/Economy" speech.

Re:Why?

[goatan]

2. We could use it to watch for dinosaur killers2. We could use it to watch for dinosaur killers

Why would we care about dinosaur killers? In case you didn't notice, the dinosaurs have been extinct for 70 million years or so

so they can be arrested and put on trial for there crimes 70 million years won't protect those dinosaur killers from the law

Re:Why?

[Tom Rothamel]

It could potentially be used for 24/7 monitoring of targets (which you can't do from earth)

Actually, one of the main problems with the HST is that it can rarely do 24/7 monitoring. It's in orbit around the earth, and for the majority of targets, the earth will be between the HST and the target for some portion of the orbit.

One of big advantages of the new space telescope is that it will orbit much further from the earth, and so the earth will rarely block it's view.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

It could potentially be used for 24/7 monitoring of targets (which you can't do from earth)

And neither can Hubble. It's in LEO... there are large hunks of the sky it can only see for 30 or so minutes at a time because the Earth gets in the way (why do you think they want to put JWST at L2? The astroheads learned their lesson!).

We could use it to watch for dinosaur killers

I think they are already dead. But, actually, it's a narrow field instrument... it isn't a wide field survey instrument. Try going to a beach with a hood on and then using a paper towel tube to look for hot chicks. Nice when you find one, but finding them is a bitch.

Automate it for long term survey duty (Oort cloud, etc.) It breaks. Alot. It's expensive to operate. It's clunky and difficult to use because it's in LEO. It's aperture (the size of the mirror) is limited.

and it's optics SUCK!!!! Even with the correctors, you can still see optical defects in the images if you know what to look for.

We just all have too much emotional garbage tied up in it.

Let it go. Move on.

Re:Why?

[Tackhead]

> Of course, they won't be able to test "advanced drilling technology" on the ISS. Here is part that is pure porky corporate welfare. They want taxpayer money to subsidize R&D for Bushy's crony CEOs

"Horizontal drilling" increased continental Natural Gas reserves by huge amounts over the past decade or two. It's why you can still afford to waste the stuff heating your house, rather than just cooking with it.

Just suppose that 20 years from now, laser drills are cutting exploration and production costs of natural gas by huge margins, enabling North American companies to burn the stuff to crack the oil out of the Alberta Tar Sands (which contain more oil than Saudi Arabia) and tell OPEC to go fuck themselves. North American energy independence.

And we'll have a moonbase, where we'll be starting to mine Helium-3, or fuse all that silicate stuff into solar panels, and beam the power back to Earth. Planetary energy independence.

Will we be saying "Bushy's corny CEOs", or will we be saying "Holy crap. That space programme we started in 2004 had some really awesome spinoffs!"

But you're right. All that rocketry stuff was just pork for Bell Labs and Raytheon. Transistors? Integrated circuits? Pah! Just subsidized R&D for Kennedy and Nixon's crony CEOs.

The only reason for those smaller, more expensive gadgets, is so that better guidance "computers" can be crammed into the spatial constraints of the nose cones of missiles. Nobody will ever benefit from those technologies, because vaccuum tubes are just fine for radios and televisions, and business can do all the "computing" it need with a room full of clerks and hand-operated mechanical calculators, thank you very much! We should never have gone to the moon in 1969.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

We could use it to watch for dinosaur killers
Who cares if the dinosaurs get killed?

Re:Why?

[MarkusQ]

One of big advantages of the new space telescope is that it will orbit much further from the earth, and so the earth will rarely block it's view.

The proposal on the table is to boost Hubble to a higher orbit.

-- MarkusQ

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

"4. Even if the Hubble is never used as an observatory again, it does consist of a lot of parts / raw materials that could someday prove useful."

Two words: Space Bong

Re:Why?

[crawling_chaos]

The problem, of course, is that politics is intimately entwined with space program, and has been from the begining. One of the reasons that Apollo was not advocated very strongly after the first moon landing was that Nixon saw it as a Kennedy project, and he didn't like Kennedy. He instead started the Space Shuttle, and made sure the contract went to a vendor in his home state that had already killed three astronauts and nearly killed three more. Grumman was a finalist in the Shuttle bidding, but lost primarily due to the fact that it was in Democrat country on Long Island.

Add to that the current Administration's utter lack of tact or guile when paying off their political sponsors (see no-bid contracts for Iraq and Homeland Security), and you have yourself an image problem. Many people (myself included) are even doubtful that the President is even serious about any of this, since it's woefully underfunded and the completion date is conveniently set well after his second term would end, leaving the blame for failure on somebody else.

Re:Why?

[kylegordon]

In case you didn't get it, it's called an analogy. I'll explain for those at the back of the class...
It could be used to watch for asteroids or other items in space that could collide with us and have the same effect on us as it did on the dinosaurs.

Re:Why?

[JordanH]

Talk about not getting it...

It was a JOKE. Sorry I didn't provide a smiley for those who just don't get these things.

Re:Why?

[jsebrech]

Just suppose that 20 years from now, laser drills are cutting exploration and production costs of natural gas by huge margins, enabling North American companies to burn the stuff to crack the oil out of the Alberta Tar Sands (which contain more oil than Saudi Arabia) and tell OPEC to go fuck themselves. North American energy independence.

For how long? Switching to reusable energy sources is the only long term plan for north american energy independance.

And we'll have a moonbase, where we'll be starting to mine Helium-3, or fuse all that silicate stuff into solar panels, and beam the power back to Earth. Planetary energy independence.

Unlikely. We're talking about solar panels here, which can be made and deployed orders of magnitude cheaper on the earth's surface. It's not like the moon has a monopoly on sunlight.

But you're right. All that rocketry stuff was just pork for Bell Labs and Raytheon.

Rockets are indeed dead-end r&d. There's no way to get rockets to be cheap enough to do any of the stuff people have fantasized about for decades, like space mining, or launching colonies. The only feasible approach towards the next generation of space exploration is to develop a new way of getting out of the gravity well, like the quite reasonable but underfunded concept of space elevators, or (on the more fantastic end of things) some kind of anti-grav.

We're not doing ANYTHING today that wasn't being done in the 60's and 70's. We were launching huge spaceships to other planets to do scientific research then too. Space research simply has brought us less benefit than the same amount of money would have brought us had it been spent earthside. Note that I'm not advocating abandoning space, just that things like a moonbase offer no real benefits over committing that money otherwise. If government was run like a business, moonbases would get no money. There's no scientific benefit to be gained, and no profit either. All that can be found on the moon is glory.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Just suppose that 20 years from now, laser drills are cutting exploration and production costs of natural gas by huge margins, enabling North American companies to burn the stuff to crack the oil out of the Alberta Tar Sands (which contain more oil than Saudi Arabia) and tell OPEC to go fuck themselves. North American energy independence.

Speaking for Canada...

Great.

Then you'll invade us

Re:Why?

[cybercuzco]

Just suppose that 20 years from now, laser drills are cutting exploration and production costs of natural gas by huge margins, enabling North American companies to burn the stuff to crack the oil out of the Alberta Tar Sands (which contain more oil than Saudi Arabia)

What is the energy return on investment? Theoretically, we could create oil out of ordinary biologically created hydrocarbons. the only problem is that it takes more energy to do so than what you get out of it. Say you can use the natural gas to crack tar sands. Well no matter what energy you get out of the tar sands, it will cost whatever the natural gas cost, plus the cost of mining and refining the tar sands. Therefore the tar sands will never be cheaper than the natural gas. Why not just use the natural gas? As for energy independance, the US is the "saudi arabia" of coal. In fact it would be more aprorpriate to say that saudi arabia was the US of oil. At the current rate of consumption, we will run out of oil by 2050. Well run out of coal sometime in the 2400's. They didnt tell you that they made the antimatter with coal for the Enterprise. Without exploration of other methods of power production, well be using coal for everything in the forseeable future.

Re:Why?

[willtsmith]

"Horizontal drilling" increased continental Natural Gas reserves by huge amounts over the past decade or two. It's why you can still afford to waste the stuff heating your house, rather than just cooking with it.

Geez, and they didn't need a single money of federal money for their R&D. Did they? It's called investment on return. If Halliburton wants advanced laser drills, they can develop them independent of NASA. One thing is for sure, they aren't going to pay the taxpayers back for their "investment" (pork).

And we'll have a moonbase, where we'll be starting to mine Helium-3, or fuse all that silicate stuff into solar panels, and beam the power back to Earth. Planetary energy independence.



Assuming that a practical fusion technique for Helium-3 is invented, it will still be cheaper to use robots to get it. Assuming that a long range microwave power transmission system is feasible, it will still be way cheaper to send robots to set everything up.

The only reason for those smaller, more expensive gadgets, is so that better guidance "computers" can be crammed into the spatial constraints of the nose cones of missiles. Nobody will ever benefit from those technologies, because vaccuum tubes are just fine for radios and televisions, and business can do all the "computing" it need with a room full of clerks and hand-operated mechanical calculators, thank you very much! We should never have gone to the moon in 1969.


Yes, I realize that this is sarcasm. But it's stupid. The need for integrated circuits is from reduced costs of fabrication. Minitiarization is a natural cost function since it costs less to fabricate into smaller chips.

NASA has about as much to do with our modern technology as they have to do with developing Sunny D.

Ok, 'splain this to me...

[EFGearman]

I'm interested in space, but will admit a lack of knowledge regarding a number of things.

Why, if something is put into a LaGrange point (L2 in this case) would it be unserviceable?

Re:Ok, 'splain this to me...

[JeanBaptiste]

I would also like to know why if it is put in L2 orbit, why would it be unserviceable?

i mean, if we get something there in the first place, why couldnt we get something else to the same place in order to fix it?

Re:Ok, 'splain this to me...

[jpflip]

L2 is a point about 1.5 million kilometers away from the earth, essentially right "behind" the earth if you look from a vantage point near the sun. This means it's about four times farther away than the moon - much farther away from the earth than any human has ever flown. It would take an enormous amount of time and fuel (and thus money) to get anything out there, so it's something you don't do very often.

Re:Ok, 'splain this to me...

[Mulletproof]

I think he should have specified finacially unservicable personally, since your absolutely right- There is no physical reason to keep us from doing the job. Maybe once we get that moon base operational, sure, but as of this time it's probably just too damn expensive.

Re:Ok, 'splain this to me...

[jandrese]

The basic problem is that the shuttle cannot reach the L2 point. It doesn't carry enough fuel. To launch something there, it has to do another burn after being released from the shuttle to achieve the correct orbit. If we can't get the shuttle there, then we (the US) can't send people there (currently). I've never heard of a repair mission carried out with robots, but I suppose it is possible (although they're plenty difficult with people, so I wonder about the feasability of using robots).

Re:Ok, 'splain this to me...

[rtz]

Perhaps not unserviceable in theory, but probably unserviceable in practice. It's a whole lot more expensive and risky getting humans to L2 and back, than low earth orbit and back. (After all, you are going past the moon and then some)

A one way robot mission would of course be cheaper, if it wasn't for the fact that we are several decades from building a repair robot that's reliable enough not to need repair on it's own.

Servicing a satellite in L2 is probably only practically possible when we have a space station in L1. Both because the energy cost will be much lower, and since that would mean that our space-technology is much more mature than today.

Re:Ok, 'splain this to me...

[rtz]

... and of course I mix up the lagrange points of the Sun-Earth system with the points of Earth-Moon.

The point still holds though.

Re:Ok, 'splain this to me...

[deitel99]

Why, if something is put into a LaGrange point (L2 in this case) would it be unserviceable?

The L2 point is about 1 1/2 million miles from earth, which is 6 times further away than the moon. To send a manned craft (as would be required for a repair mission) would be incredibly expensive - the shuttle doesn't have enough full and only goes 200 miles above the Earths surface, so a new system would have to be designed specifically for the task. It'd probably be easier if something failed just to send a replacement.

They should export astronomy to Delhi

[Anonymous Coward]

Indians can do it cheaper

Reminds me of Salvage I

[Fizzlewhiff]

With Andy Griffith. Short lived TV show about a many who would salvage space junk. Think they used a cement mixer as a space capsule. I think it is a good idea. While satellites may be outdated, it still costs a bundle to make them and send them up. If these guys offer an alternative to that then why not.

What happens though if NASA decides Hubble is scrap and proceeds to deorbit. Can this guy go up and snag it and then sell it to the highest bidder?

What if...

[Anonymous Coward]

They try extortion: " pay us now, or we're going to give the Hubbell a push in the wrong direction and it will end up in the rose garden! And the ISS is next! "

The US would have a chance to use that new anti-sat laser

Re:Um: (High cost or refueling)

[G4from128k]

Currently, there are no viable means of prolonging the useful life of telecommunications satellites, resulting in the wasteful loss of valuable assets every year.

The problem is that a refueling mission would probably cost as much as a new satellite (not to mention reducing the fuel capacity of the orginal satellite by allocating precious mass budget to a refueling port and subsystems). Which is better: spending $250 million every 8 years to refuel an aging commsat (a mission that might bork the commsat anyway) or spending $250 million every 10 years to replace the commsat with a brand new one?

Until we find an ultra-cheap way to get to GEO, the commsats will continue to be replaced. Perhaps cheaper ion engines, with their high specific impulse, would enable longer-lived commsats.

Holy Cow!

[Gudlyf]

"...or by moving it to the ISS where it could be maintained and operated."

<self back patting>
I suggested this option once before, but one person said, "Nah, the attitude/orbital requirements for the scope and the station are just too different." Is this true?
</self back patting>

The politics of it all....

[Mazzie]

I can't believe that NASA is even considering abandoning the Hubble.

Let me get this straight. They are going to abandon a working spacecraft, that continues to revolutionize deep space imaging, on the whim of a politician spewing typical election year rhetoric?

I think anything and everything should be done to maintain the Hubble for as long as possible, or until it truely becomes obsolete. I could understand the decision if they had a far superior telescope already in space and functioning, but this seems a bit off the wall.

Not sure if I interpreted the article correctly, but it seems they won't have a superior telescope in space for 1 or 2 years after the Hubble has been abandoned?

Also, the tree hugger in me has to ask. Why are we willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to colonize other planets, when we are slowly destroying our own. Seems like our priorities are just a bit out of whack.

Re:The politics of it all....

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are we willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to colonize other planets, when we are slowly destroying our own.

Because when we are done destroying our planet we'll need somewhere to live, duh. Seems pretty self-explanatory to me.

Re:The politics of it all....

[adrianbaugh]

At worst they could just give it to ESA. I'm sure they'd love the chance to wring some more life out of it, and they're just as competent as NASA at burning the thing up safely when it really does die (at least I hope so!)
Junking it when other competent people could still make good use of it just seems like throwing the toys out of the pram, and completely contrary to the spirit of international co-operation most of these space agencies claim to believe in.

Re:The politics of it all....

[Mulletproof]

"Let me get this straight. They are going to abandon a working spacecraft, that continues to revolutionize deep space imaging, on the whim of a politician spewing typical election year rhetoric?

And you heard this... Where again? Stop pulling opinions out of your ass and passing them off as facts, Top Gun.

Re:The politics of it all....

[Mazzie]

Oh no, a Slashdot superstar is flaming me. I am now too afraid to post ever again (sob).

Actually, since I must now defend myself, I read this article the other day.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3982359/

And my OPINION, is that the President's new space initiative is election year rhetoric.

Re:The politics of it all....

[mefus]

And you heard this... Where again?

Some think Dubyuck has been couching the dismantling of many NASA projects and the redirecting its priorities to military ones under the rhetorical device of "putting a man on mars".

Because such a program won't be realized for many years even if there is a deliberate effort to do it, the movement of NASA projects (and NASA funding) to the interests of Dubya's cronies seems disingenuous, especially from an administration that has been stripping the governments ability to do anything "governmental" (outside of waging personal wars, of course).

Re:The politics of it all....

[LaCosaNostradamus]

Yes, believe it.

No matter how many pounds in an object lofted into orbit at $10K per, NASA will let the mass fall when it becomes yet another distressing line in some administrator's much beloved Spreadsheet of Doom {tm}.

Skylab and Mir burned. I predicted that NASA will let the ISS burn when it becomes another political liability too. The Hubble's abandonment is yet another point in my prediction space.

NASA well knows that in order to avoid the incredible risks and difficult efforts of doing real space work, they have to encourage a "business cycle" within the industry of space exploration. Boom, Bust. Using a bust, they can fund the following boom. I have already heard people say things like "get the Hubble out of the way of the Webb". This type of gross stupidity is actually quite cunning; it represents an undercurrent of agreement about this cycling, and promotes conspicuous consumption.

If you want to know the truth, the Hubble's only real purpose was to support the rafts of NASA and aerospace industry employees. Once launched, 90% of its real usefulness was gone. After a couple of "maintenance" events, the ROI on the beast is much less attractive than another sexy piece of equipment like the Webb. But since it's widely perceived that "you can't have both" ... well, better to fund the big new project in its design phase than to support the old cheaper project in its maintenance phase.

Do you know how many times NASA has developed things, just to throw them away? Things like the Hubble are only the tip of the massive money-wasting iceberg that we can see.

NASA hates amortization, and loves your tax money. Now, stop reading this right now, and get another job to pay into this money-burning system. While driving to work, don't be distracted by that flash in the sky ... think of it as your tax dollars providing you with a fireworks show.

Re:The politics of it all....

[bwy]

Why are we willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to colonize other planets, when we are slowly destroying our own.

If you ask me, global warming is the best thing to ever happen to our planet. While I live in Florida it still gets cold on occasion. And I really pity the folks up north who have to shovel all that snow. How is making Boston a tropical paradise a bad thing? People pay lots of money to travel to tropical destinations. People rarely visit Boston for fun during the winter however.

So if you ask me we're upgrading this big round hunk of rock we live on- not destroying it! Plus we've built some really cool shit here. Skyscrapers, theme parks, etc. That has to boost our value in the intergalactic real estate market. Otherwise we'd just be written off as unimproved property.

Re:The politics of it all....

[Mazzie]

I agree with you. I wouldn't be surprised if the first 'colony on the moon' was actually serving a primarily military purpose. Not sure how I feel about it though. I guess it has something to do with being the first, or someone else will.

I think with the Chinese putting a man in space, followed by anouncements of an ambitious drive towards space, the Bush administration collectively crapped its pants.

Presidents are so concerned with protecting their legacy. Dubyah doesn't want to be the president responsible for "losing space to the communists", but rather the president who "forged the space program ahead in a bold new direction and [insert more rhetoric here]"

Look, I think it would be really cool to have people on Mars, I just don't think it is useful in any way besides giving sci-fi geeks chubbies.

Someone else asked on /. Thinking 20 years from now, what will humans be able to do in space that robots won't be able to?

Re:The politics of it all....

[Mazzie]

I enjoyed your comments. I think you make a lot of sense.

I thought of a good analogy for your thinking. Software contractors bad mouth old software to get contracts for writing new software.

Even though the current software just needs to be updated, that won't generate nearly as much revenue as a complete re-write.

I see this all the time. Many contractors bail once you tell them you just want an update. They want to deal with suckers with deep pockets.

Or how about cell phones. Once they are out dated, just chuck 'em. Even though they work fine, the mentality is if its not the best, its crap.

Re:The politics of it all....

[shadowbearer]

And my OPINION, is that the President's new space initiative is election year rhetoric.

Mine too. I posted much the same thing a while back (initial slashdot article, I think it was).

It's just too friccin' coincidental....plus, IMO, if Bush was *really* serious about this, he'd have announced it years ago.

Another part of me wonders what was plowed under in the media when he made this announcement (like the Saddam capture plowed under the partial resurrection of Patriot II). I'm still looking...

SB

Re:The politics of it all....

[shadowbearer]

What's the point of spending tons of money to scale Mt. Everest, or to explore the ocean deeps? Exploring volcanoes? Going to Antarctica?

What can humans do there that robotic stations or probes can't do?

Well, I can think of one answer. How do we know for sure, until we go? & if we *don't* go, we may just be kicking ourselves in the pants about it twenty years from now...

If you don't like that answer, how about this one: We'll go for the morale boost it'd give the citizens of our country (and, incidentally, the world - the first lunar landing had the *biggest* worldwide TV/media coverage *ever* at it's time.)

Besides, it's *there*. :)

That said, I think Bush's initiative is either going to fall flat on it's ass or will become another mess like ISS....sigh.

SB

Re:The politics of it all....

[TaoJones]

I can't believe that NASA is even considering abandoning the Hubble.

Follow the money...

Let me get this straight. They are going to abandon a working spacecraft, that continues to revolutionize deep space imaging, on the whim of a politician spewing typical election year rhetoric?

It's not about what NASA wants, it's about NASA trying to save their ass dealing with a Commander in Chief who's decided to slit their throat as a sacrifice to Defence contractors. This isn't something the scientists at NASA decided on, it's a political game. And currently, despite the pretty pictures from Spirit, NASA is losing. The possibility that a declining pop star might be a pervert gets better ratings, and is therefore obviously more important...

Re:Take it over.

[A55M0NKEY]

Once the telescope becomes useless, it seems to me that it should be considered Junk, and ripe for salvage. A private company could take it over and sell online time on it to those who want to peep into other people's windows.

Save the Hobbits

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Argh, read that as "Space tug to Save the Hobbit"..

JWST != Hubble

[Anonymous Coward]

The JWST is not the same as Hubble, it is desinged to look at different spectrum. So even if the JWST was operating today its scientific value would be different. Having both Hubble and JWST would allow for scientists to perform complementary research.

Even if both had the same capabilities there would be value to having them both, since currently there is a waiting list for the Hubble.

L2 unservicable? No

[chfriley]

>Since the JWST will be at the L2 point, servicing will be impossible."

You can still service it there. What that should have said is it will be impossible ***with the shuttle***.

Re:L2 unservicable? No

[Mr. Slippery]

You can still service it there.

We've never sent humans that far. We can service it there if and only if we design, fund, and build a crew-carrying vehicle that can get there, do station-keeping, and get back. We'll have one some day, but quite probably not until long after the operational life of the JWST is over.

L2 Issues?

[sQu@sH]

I checked out the link about L2, and I'm not getting why an object at L2 would be unserviceable. Could somebody clear this up for me?

Re:L2 Issues?

[coolmacdude]

The L2 point is beyond the moon. We currently do not have the capabilities to launch manned missions that far out.

Re:L2 Issues?

[TrevorB]

Here's a question I have... if the next telescope is on the far side of the moon, how are we going to getting signals from it? It's not like we have a lunar relay sattelite like we have (2 of.. actually now 3 of) on Mars...

Re:L2 Issues?

[coolmacdude]

The distance to the L2 point is about 4 times the distance to the moon. This distance is great enough that the moon could, at most, obstruct transmissions to only a small portion of earth. The telescope could also communicate with many satellites in geostationary orbit which could then relay signals to specific points on earth.

Re:L2 Issues?

[Greger47]

It's not on the far side of the moon, it's in an orbit farther away from the sun than the farthest point of the moon's orbit. The orbit is also set up such that the telescope, earth and sun are always on a straight line.

The times the moon happen to be on the far side of the earth (as seen from the sun) just as the telescope it'll still be out of the way because it'll pass above or below the telescope-earth-sun line. Sometimes it'll manage to get in the way but it'll be no more common than solar eclipses.

/greger

Point of Space exploration?

[LZ_Mordan]

I want HST to be saved, but I can't help remembering how pointless space exploration is right now.

We better found the anti-age pill. Right now space exploration timelines are so huge that most of us won't see the first man on Mars. Frankly, the best boost for science production we can have is to find the "anti-age pill" and THEN consider wasting money in space. Common, there is a mecanism to make old age possible, and thus understanding and reversing that mecanism is my priority number one.

All efforts should be directed at this goal.

Re:Point of Space exploration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever happened to doing thinks for the sake you your children or grandchildren?

Re:Point of Space exploration?

[Queuetue]

If you're going to make people eternal, you may want to figure out how to feed, house, warm them and then how to prevent the population from reproducing first. Right now, our current longevity is a curse on each following generation, and the problem is growing. You're suggestion would make that problem exponential in nature.

So, in order, how about: Eliminate poverty, then eliminate hunger, then eliminate money, then eliminate disease, then eliminate age, then populate other worlds, if we've got nothing better to do, and if we can still find space on the planet to build stuff.

Hubble...

[softspokenrevolution]

I say that the hubble needs to be placed in some kind of magical protective bubble, that way, when it crashes to earth, it will bounce back up and position itself correctly, that and Hubble and Bubble rhyme, it's hard to find good rhyming words for Hubble. None of this would be necessary if Mike Nelson hadn't broken it of course.

Re:Hubble...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's hard to find good rhyming words for Hubble

How about Rubble?

JWST a compliment, not a replacement

[doorman]

The James Webb Space Telescope is really not a replacement for Hubble. JWST is primarily an IR telescope, and HST is a visible light and UV telescope. Different but complimentary missions. Even if JWST goes up, the loss of HST prematurely will hurt science.

Re:JWST a compliment, not a replacement

[JediTrainer]

JWST a compliment ... Different but complimentary missions.

Nice 'scope there, dude! I love the way it matches your solar panels! Hubble, hubble! (I guess they had some imaging issues and needed a boost)

Compliments are nice, but I think complement might have been the word you were looking for.

Tow it to ISS!

[SubtleNuance]

The HST is a big piece of equipment -- we all know that it is expensive to put *anything* in orbit, why let it burn up into the atmosphere/crash into ocean?

Tow the HST to the ISS. Once there, maybe some equipment/raw material can be salvaged (at least) -- if the HST cannot continue to be used and maintained by the ISS crew (MUCH preferd). If we are 'serious' about using the ISS for a while, why not give them something worthwhile to do? hell, is there a reason why you wouldnt (all things being equal) line up all the rest of the hubble-like space ships near the ISS? If nothing else, this will establish a "destination" in space that acts as a central hub for work in space....

Hell, arent the panels on the HST worthwhile? If they can tow it over to the IIS, maybe something on the HST might find itself usefull, either now or in the future. Spare parts? Sheet metal? Something.

I know someone will say "the panels are old/different voltage/designed for another purpose" or "its cheaper just to launch whatever you need than tow the HST" but my response is simple, if we are going to try and make this a permanent behabviour of man (off-world habitat) then we have to learn to be more nimble, adaptable and less dependant on MASSIVE planning efforts for every screw, bolt and hammer that gets into space.

We have to learn to utilize resources *AROUND THEM* and Make It Work. Hell, the ISS could be the 'hotel' for HST repairmen at least....

Re:Tow it to ISS!

[jhoffoss]

" Tow the HST to the ISS. Once there, maybe some equipment/raw material can be salvaged (at least)..."

Crikey! Just imagine what McGuyver could do with even just a few of HST's parts!

Re:Tow it to ISS!

[VdG]

The problem of piling up a load of old junk around the ISS is that they'll be in very slightly different orbits. Without continual orbital adjustments there would be a very real risk of collisions.

Re:Tow it to ISS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't ISS scheduled to go bye-bye about the same time... you'd buy, perhaps three-four more years.

Besides the BIG cost of operating Hubble are the ground crews and science crews that care and feed the thing.

Re:Tow it to ISS!

[rabel]

Part of the reason for abandoning the Hubble was because of new safety requirements that require a fueled-and-on-the-launch-pad shuttle to be available in the event of a crisis. The reason for this is because a servicing mission to Hubble would not be able to make their way to the ISS if something should go wrong.

If HST is towed to ISS, wouldn't it then be able to be serviced while still allowing the crew an opportunity to be "rescued" by ISS crew or whatever?

Seems to me that the shuttle could be used to service both the ISS and HST. Continue to use Progress ships as well and have a nice big happy family of things floating around together up there.

It would be cool to observe HST, ISS, Shuttle and a Progress all streaking by together on a clear night, wouldn't it?

Re:Tow it to ISS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tow the HST to the ISS.

It sounds so simple!

But.. Tow it with what? The space shuttle is the only vechicle that we know can reach and dock with Hubble. But if NASA thinks a service mission is too high a risk, hell would freeze over before they attempted to actually tow Hubble. Besides, the space shuttle can't go to Hubble and then ISS in one go, so you'd need multiple missions.

Then there is a private company which says it can build a space tug but haven't actually launched anything into space yet. Maybe they'll succed someday, but I'm pretty sure that Hubble will be long gone before they can even attempt to reach it. I don't think they really think they could do it either, but it's a good opportunity to get some media attention..

Re:Tow it to ISS!

[britneys 9th husband]

But.. Tow it with what?

Somebody at NASA must have a AAA membership. Let them worry about how to tow it.

Re:Tow it to ISS!

[theycallmeB]

Because having two really massive objects, one of which is slowly losing is manuevering ability (while the other never had much to begin with), close enough together to be able to move between them is a really bad idea.

Even setting up an identical initial orbit (so that one always follows the other) is very difficult, but over time, variations in Earth's gravity, Lunar effects, solar storms, etc, will change the orbital motion of the two platforms differently. And unless one is always under positive control (like the Space Shuttle when approaching the ISS), the chance for a collision between two multi-ton objects 25,000 kph is very real.

Even if that could be managed, the area near the ISS would be bad for Hubble's mirror due to the gas/water/waste emissions from the station. And any common parts from the Hubble, at best there would be very few and only if designed into future craft, would not be worth the risk of trying to remove them from a freely floating platform or the cost of sending up a frame to dock Hubble to the ISS. In an enviroment where failure means at least the loss of a spacecraft, it is best to stick with massive planning efforts as long as we can, rather than try and cruft something together from aging parts in LEO.

Re:Tow it to ISS!

[firew0lfz]

That's a great idea! I also like the idea of giving control of it to Universities or just selling the thing to other countries. Problem is, how do we get these ideas into actions?

Re:Tow it to ISS!

[Kris_J]

Can't it just be bolted to the ISS? Heck, coat the ISS in old satellites as a form of armour.

Re:Tow it to ISS!

[dj245]

Forget McGuiver. Give it to Mr. T and Hannibal Smith, and come back in five minutes. You'll have yourself a new space elevator!

Re:Tow it to ISS!

[BaronElectricPhase]

And once it has been towed there, simply attach it as well. Once attached, it no longer needs additional fuel or orbit boosting. Maintenance should be a snap. And if a need for an onboard sensor package arises the HST would ba a damned good start!

Just take the Hubble?

[Angry Toad]

I wonder - if NASA is planning on dumping it in the ocean anyway, is there any particular reason why someone couldn't pay a group like Orbital Recovery to just grab it before it re-enters, and park it in a safe orbit. NASA has already abandoned it, so presumably they won't object to someone else using it...

Materials research

[jhines]

We, which is to say NASA, is going to have to do some research into the long term effects of space on materials, before they can go to mars, with people.

I hope that some of this space "junk" is being brought back, to see how the various things have faired.

Wrong and Wrong Again

[davecl]

Which of the wavelengths that the hubble can shoot which ground based cannot will fail to be served far, far better by Webb?

The UV. Our atmosphere is opaque to the UV, and JWST, being an infrared optimised telescope, isn't going to be capable of observing the UV at all.

Its important to note that JWST is not a simple upgrade to HST. It has a very different mission and set of instruments. Its not just HST with a bigger mirror.

Re:Wrong and Wrong Again

[badmonkey]

We need to break out the CFCs and get us a hole in that pesky ozone layer so we can get those UV rays to our ground based telescopes!

umh...? good!

[Anonymous Coward]

a very good idea indeed!

problem is that consumption and waste are
the driving forces of our "modern" economy.
so this "satelit recycling" might not go to
well with the marketing department ...

why build as house that can last 200 years,
if you can agree on building one that lasts 10
years? this way there'll always be enough jobs to
build new houses.

`methinks this mentality can be used for almost
any department in the economy (cars, elec.
devices, powerplants (escpecially NUKES!),
rockets and satellits ...)

once society has decided that we have "progressed"
far enough, this consumption and waste paradigma
will definitely take hold and we'll have a
system of
waste vs. clean-up
and
construction vs.destruction
without any real progress anymore. just keeping
the system in balance or in a status-quo will
be the WHOLE economy.

like sitting in a leaking boat and removing a not
so important part at the bow to fix the "more"
importat part at the steern only to undo that
"fix" because the wind has changed and the waves
are now splashing from the other side ...

"FREE FOOD FOR ALL! FREE CLEAN WATER FOR ALL!
WORKING SUSTANABLE WASTE-WATER TREATMENT! FREE
MEDICAL! FREE HOUSING! FREE POWER FOR ALL!"

so let's get busy! (prolly not ...)

Is there a market in after launch boosting?

[n-baxley]

I'm not familiar with the economics. Is it enough cheaper to launch to a lower orbit that you could save money by launching to lower orbits and paying to have them boosted by a "premanent" tug that could move between lower and higher orbits? If the savings from going to a lower orbit could pay for the boosting charge there might be a market here. Assuming of course that such a tug could be built.
Another opportunity that I would think could have even more possibilities would be simple refueling. Some others have posted that the main reason sattelites are junked is becasue they deplete their fuel. If you could refule several satelites on one launch you might be able to recoup your loses. If you could offer that service at a considerable savings to launching a new satelite, you might convince companies to get some more mileage out of their old birds even if it were just for backup purposes.

Do it and save money

[apsmith]

Apparently NASA has proposed spending $200 million on a new craft to link up to Hubble to bring it down - I bet Orbital Recovery would offer their option for considerably less. Wingo's a smart guy - they certainly can do this. It seems the obvious choice here.

Who's responsible for the junk?

[n-baxley]

Are there enforcable requirements that satelites be disposed of responsibly? What is to keep a company that goes bankrupt to allow their satelites to crash into terra firma any-old where?

Re:Who's responsible for the junk?

[MountainLogic]

IIRC, accourding to treaty, the country of origin has final responsiblity.

Keep Hubble away from ISS

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to see Hubble saved; there are plenty of "obsolete" observatories that are still doing work, and discovering things. How many comets and asteroids have been discovered by the major observatories?

But keep it away from ISS. The reason? Trash, dust, rocket exhaust and other sewage will contaminate the lenses if the two are very close together. A cap to cover the Hubble's optics will, at best, limit the time it can be in operation, if it's removable, and, if "transparent" will have to be cleaned itself, and, when its not clean will reduce clarity. So it would be fine to be just close enough to ISS to permit regular, economic servicing, but far enough away to avoid the trash.

Re:Keep Hubble away from ISS

[scharkalvin]

Hubble has a built in 'cap' that can be opened and closed on command from the ground.

Guaranteed to be cheaper to junk it!

[Tom_Yardley]

A poster remarks, "Equally, no-one needs to run the risk of trying to repair things that are orbiting the Earth; it's guaranteed to be cheaper to junk it and build a new one." How can that be. You assume there is no value to an object in orbit as opposed to the same item on the ground. The cost of lifting things into space, particularly when you use the goofy reusable space plane, is very high. Hook it to the space tug, tow it out to L-1 and the Hubble can provide useful observations for decades to come.

Re:Guaranteed to be cheaper to junk it!

[CaptainAlbert]

You assume there is no value to an object in orbit as opposed to the same item on the ground.

That's not exactly what I meant.

1. The Hubble space telescope wouldn't be much use on the ground. :)
2. I was referring mainly to commercial satellites (I would like to see Hubble stay up as long as it can be kept working).

Commercial satellites are like this big time capsules of what technology was once like. They're designed to stay up there doing their job with very little intervention, for many years, while back on Earth, technology progresses as normal.

Do you still use a ten-year-old PC? (Wait - this is Slashdot. Don't answer that.) Do you still use a ten-year-old cellphone? That's what I'm getting at.

Re:Guaranteed to be cheaper to junk it!

[David Gould]

Do you still use a ten-year-old PC? (Wait - this is Slashdot. Don't answer that.)

Nice catch, dude. You almost sounded like an idiot.

Since we're talking 'disposible telescopes'...

[Mulletproof]

Since NASA is now considering Hubble disposible now, why not refuel it one more time, attach a small booster to it and sent it to a Lagrange point? It can't be that expensive to do, relatively speaking. After that, one could sell time on it to compensate for the expense and make a profit. If that isn't enough, you're also saving another piece of history.

ISS? Pshaw.

[superdan2k]

I have my doubts about the ability of the ISS to host the Hubble, based solely on the issues of vibration -- I'm sure the station has all sorts of activity that would wreak havoc with Hubble's instrumentation. Nevermind that in the lower orbit of the ISS there's considerably more free-roaming debris to contend with.

dinosaur killers

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they're not fussy, and are indeed equal opportunity killers.

Slow down.

[Anonymous Coward]

After three readings, I've still failed to decipher the meaning of the sentence "Which of the wavelengths that the hubble can shoot which ground based cannot will fail to be served far, far better by Webb?" and then you come at me with "greatly improvments."

space tug needs more purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

say space lane sweeper.
clean up all the debrie orbiting about as well.
not like it dosen't have plenty of time...

These sats aren't going to live long...

[Mantrid]

The problem is the damned Khaak are going to take out the ISS and the satellites son anyways, unless someone scrounges up the cash for a Split Iguana.

Gyroscopes?

[manonthemoon]

My understanding is that the gyroscopes that keep the Hubble oriented properly need occasional replacing. A space tug isn't going to get rid of the problem of failing gyroscopes, only shuttle missions. 2 shuttles blown to kingdom come argue effectively against dedicating a mission to getting a couple extra years out of Hubble.

The shuttle is old tech that needs a total redesign. I'm glad the administration is forward thinking on the whole issue. They haven't necessarily chosen what I would call the best path- but its better than the drift and mission creep that NASA has suffered through lately.

Re:Gyroscopes?

[forlornhope]

I think the space tug would remain permanently attached and could take care of those duties that the gyroscopes and the HST's own engines were doing. Also part of the over all proposal is the idea that one could boost the HST into a close orbit with the ISS where it could be serviced, then once it has been serviced, boost it into a much higher orbit still in a similar plane with the ISS so it could be brought down for periodic service and upgrades. Thus extending the life of the HST and giving the ISS a purpose other than a self serving stop for the space shuttle.

This seems to be a win for everyone and I dont see the cost in it if we are planning on attaching a booster to bring it down anyway. Instead boost it into orbit with the ISS and do the repairs. It seems to be a good idea to me.

Re:Gyroscopes?

[phliar]

...the gyroscopes that keep the Hubble oriented properly need occasional replacing. A space tug isn't going to get rid of the problem of failing gyroscopes, only shuttle missions.

In the article, ORC says:

... has the ability to lift multi-ton GEO spacecraft from intermediate orbits to GEO, take over the attitude control and station keeping of these large spacecraft.

The tug takes over pointing -- the Hubble's own gyros are not an issue.

Ideally, instead of complex replaceable gyros in satellites, build it with a "handle" . When the gyros start failing, a space tug grabs on and takes over. Unmanned launches, no worries about STS safety etc. (Maybe satellites are launched with an attached tug -- a "space motor". When it dies, it could be detached and a new motor attached.) That seems the obvious way to deal with putting expensive electronics up there in LEO where the atmosphere will drag you down.

Of course maybe ORC is not the right company, I don't know; but the concept seems obvious and good.

YES!

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA has dropped the ball - Hubble must me saved. Or at least de-orbit the sucker in a controlled way.

completely wrong

[ShadowWarriorOfDeath]

that's just wrong. UV is blocked by the atmosphere. and let's not forget about a thing called atmospheric distortion. Webb does IR and so will not help with UV astronomy. and FUSE does far-UV not near-UV like Hubble.

Re:completely wrong

[rw2]

There wasn't a single thing wrong in my note, much less completely wrong.

The infrared will be replaced by Webb.
The visible by ground based with adaptive optics.
The UV not at all.

I think it's stupid to spend so much money on hubble for UV only. We don't live in a world of infinite money and there are far better ways to spend it than on an outdated platform.

Yeah, damn straight, it was cool.

Now it's old and only a small fraction as useful.

Pour some on the block for HST.

[waxmop]

The fact that the Hubble telescope is being abandoned so that NASA can focus on manned trips to Mars is a @#$@#$ing tragedy. The HST's main flaw was that it didn't have the public appeal. We're giving up a good scientific tool in order to divert funding to some seriously nonsensical crap.

Both

[Anonymous Coward]

Hubble's awesome.

Satellites should be designed to operate for thirty or forty years. Then, by the time they are to be replaced, or hauled out of orbit as orbital traffic rises, they are still sending pictures to that sidereal day.

Maybe in the future when launch is cheap they can be disposed of like bics but today with some $10000/kg, hell, that's more expensive than drugs on Earth.

If it costs thousands and thousands of dollars to send a kilogram into orbit, what's the holdup?

Too much fuel

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, moving a vehicle in orbital inclination from the standard 32 degrees for a US-launched vehicle (Hubble) to the ISS inclination of 57 degrees would take a LOT of fuel. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but to change by 90 degrees in low earth orbit takes more fuel than the launch of the vehicle from Earth! This change of roughly 25 degrees would probably take an ion drive system half the mass of the Hubble itself, and a LOT of time.

If we go with a "simple" orbital boost, you are gambling a LOT that the reboost can be done before any major systems fail and render the reboost a waste of time. The process should be done as a demo of reboost technology. Even though a tug is not economically viable, the existence of one, even a simple one, would prove handy with these science satellites. We've already lost one great observatory too soon, and this will be a second. The same vehicle could reboost the space station on occasion as well.

Crazy Sams Used Satellites

[devinjones]

Tired of renting transponder time, but don't think you can afford your own satellite? Well now you can! Come on down to Crazy Sams used satellites. We get the latest models of used satellites, re-fuel em, boost'em back to stable orbit and sell them to you at 1/10th of their original cost.

Got an old satellite you're ready to replace with a newer model? Dont throw it away! Trade it in at Crazy Sam's! We pay cash for pink slips. Why pay somebody to de-orbit it safely, when we pay you!

Sensible

[sjames]

This seems like a reasonable proposal for several reasons.

First, one way or another, NASA has no option but to visit HST one more time, either to fix it, or to prepare to de-orbit it. They are committed to that.

Since they're going to have to visit it anyway, they might as well let the mission have a positive or at least a less negative value. That sounds a lot better than spending half a billion dollars for the sole purpose of making sure a hew hundred million dollars burn up. If a space tug can get hubble into a safer orbit and take over for it's failing attitude control, it's probably a good idea. It's not like they could de-orbit the thing if it's tumbling anyway (picture a bottle rocket with it's stick broken off).

They seem to have some hope that an automated system could grapple HST and tow it up to ISS. Best case there is that HST continues to do good science. Worst case is that the NASA mission to bring HST down just got a lot cheaper since if HST is near ISS, the need for a standby shuttle is removed and they now have people already there who can work on paring HST down to size for recovery in pieces. Perhaps it could come down with the rest of the trash inside a progress.

The biggest mistake would be to let 'Not Invented Here' remove the proposal from due consideration.

Re:Sensible

[aallan]

They seem to have some hope that an automated system could grapple HST and tow it up to ISS.

You mean down, down to the ISS. The ISS is actually in a 200km lower orbit than Hubble, thats why the station needs to be reboosted everytime the shuttle docks. Putting Hubble next to the ISS isn't really an option, its a poor orbit from which to observe from and Hubble would have to be constantly reboosted just like the station. Bad for science, and bad for the budget.

Al.

"Impossible" only for now

[isomeme]

Since the JWST will be at the L2 point, servicing will be impossible.

Certainly impossible using the Shuttle or similar low-earth-orbit transportation. However, if the Bush plan moves forward, we'll have lunar-capable transportation coming online right around the time the JWST is deployed. If you can get people to and from the surface of the Moon, getting to and from Sun-Earth L2 is arguably easier and safer. So we can service JWST with our lunar fleet.

Re:"Impossible" only for now

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can get people to and from the surface of the Moon, getting to and from Sun-Earth L2 is arguably easier and safer. So we can service JWST with our lunar fleet.

Not true. Getting to lunar orbit is actually easier, since you don't have to come to a complete stop -- you "only" have to slow down enough to be caught in the moons gravity. You still have _a lot_ of momentum.

A service mission at the L2 point means you have to decellerate to a complete stop and then accellerate back. Doing that requires much, much more fuel than going to the moon.

Re:"Impossible" only for now

[isomeme]

Note that I wrote "to and from the surface of the moon", not to and from lunar orbit. Getting to and from the moon, overcoming lunar gravity up and down from the surface, and stopping at the surface requires more delta-v than travelling to L2, stopping, and coming home.

Impossible to service?

[four12]

Since the JWST will be at the L2 point, servicing will be impossible.

My knowledge of orbital mechanics is limited, but why would servicing it pose a problem?

We can send people to the moon, we can (usually) hit Mars, so why would an extended mission to a relatively local L-point be impossible?

Open Source?

[muyuubyou]

Why not making them Open Source after those 10-15 years?

That way we would all benefit from it's inherent advantages: cheap maintenance most remarkably. Not having to pay salaries does help the budget.

I mean... why not having a couple of teen amateurs controlling a multiton machine that's orbitting over our heads? I see nothing wrong with that and we could possibly get linux compiling in it's firmware. That's some serious new horizons for the space race. Screw Mars

That's right 10-15 = -5 years, so it should have been declared Open Source 5 years prior to release. Hurry up!

I was just thinking of this..

[tassii]

Funny about the timing of this.. I was just thinking of something like it. Picture this:

Use the ISS as a kind of "space dock". You can then send up supplies/materials via a remote platform, similar to the Russian Soyuz capsule does now. By stockpiling goods (fuel, parts, etc), you can then use the ISS as a launching point for anything. Tugs can move satellites from the ISS to any orbit you need and do repair missions, spacecraft can move freely from Earth orbit to a lunar base without the need for streamlining or heat shields. The whole trip could probably be done on reaction thrusters, reducing the huge fuel costs. Most of a missions cost goes into getting out of earth's gravity well.. something like $10,000 per pound on the shuttle.

Until we have some sort of space presence like this, the costs of earth-based launches are going to make space travel cost prohibitive.

Save it for the Future

[peacefinder]

In 2090, on the 100th anneversary of the launching of Hubble, where will it be? Will history forgive us for dropping such a significant artifact in the ocean?

All seem to agree that the risk of letting Hubble fall out of orbit without some additional guidance is too high. (I have read figures stating that it'd be about a 1 in 700 chance of a fatality from the debris.) Apparently we're going to send a robot tug to move it.

but if we go to all the trouble of developing a robot tug to move Hubble, why are we moving it down?

It's going to be decommissioned eventually, but we can save it for future historians. We just need to put it in a high and stable enough orbit, and eventually someone will recover it. (Hopefully for history, possibly for salvage.) Don't know who, don't know when, but if humanity continues to climb into space it will happen eventually.

I realize it will take a more robust tug to do this, but it's not like we're in a hurry. We can put an ion thruster on the tug and let it boost for months if we need to. Heck, let's take it all the way to a Lagrange point.

History will thank us if we do.

Re:Save it for the Future

[Anonymous Coward]

> In 2090, on the 100th anneversary of the launching of Hubble, where will it be? Will history forgive us for dropping such a significant artifact in the ocean?

This was suggested for an even more important artifact left in orbit.

The Apollo 11 LEM ascent stage.

It was left in Lunar orbit in the hope that it could be recovered by a later space tug.

The orbit was calculated to be last for up to fifteen years.

Look how much attention and development that idea got.
RJG.

Re:Save it for the Future

[shadowbearer]

but if we go to all the trouble of developing a robot tug to move Hubble, why are we moving it down?

Especially when it involves similar amounts of fuel to move it *up*.

I like the idea about moving it to a Lagrange point. Too bad someone in the upper end of the decision tree doesn't have as much imagination. What a *great* test of a ion propulsion system that would be. :)

SB

Re:Save it for the Future

[bhima]

Given the money the USians spend on other things I agree. To bad another space telescope isn't going to be more of an international effort.

I wonder...

[I_l00P]

...if it would be possible to turn it towards Earth and read newspapers.

Great idea but..

[amightywind]

The Hubble has been an amazing success but $500M+ servicing missions take funds away from Dubya's new moon efforts. Besides, maintaining Hubble's orbit solves only part of the problem. The telescope gyros and instruments would still have to be replaced periodically. For those worried that the James Webb telescope will never reach its final orbit in one piece, I have this advice. Why build one telescope when you can build two at twice the price.

Send a Robot to fix Hubble

[PineHall]

Robots have gotten quite sophisticated. It has been suggested that even something like Honda's anthropomorphic concept-robot ASIMO with grasping hands with four fingers and a thumb may be something that could be made to swap Hubble's gyros and batteries.

Business in junk

[ImWithBrilliant]

Yes, there is a big reason to recover/remove space junk - orbital collisions. Theory has it that one sattelite's demolition into a million spreading pieces at 17,000 mph would wipe out anything in (or crossing) a similar orbit for years to come, each demolition creating new high velocity problems.

Re:Business in junk

[man_ls]

Satellites have quite a few interesting materials...aerospace grade titanium, gold heat shields, some may have communications equipment which is valuable, etc.

If a satellite costs $10m, it's probably got at least $2m of salvagable value in it. Plus, if there's something up there to recover one, it could potentially salvage more.

I've seen a prototype/concept model of a "space runabout" type module with a robot arm, a rocket, and a cockpit...mostly manual/fly-by-wire control, designed to tow satellites around. Not developed yet but it's promising...and whoever does finish development of it, would have access to all the satellites parked out in post-geo "graveyard" orbits: where almost every satellite in middle to high orbits has gone since they were built.

Re:Business in junk

[trentblase]

gold heat shields

Considering that gold is a bad insulator, heavy element, and has a pretty low melting temperature, I'd say that they made a poor choice in heat shield materials.

Re:Business in junk

[ek_adam]

gold heat shields

Considering that gold is a bad insulator, heavy element, and has a pretty low melting temperature, I'd say that they made a poor choice in heat shield materials.

Bad insulator? In a vacuum you are not concerned with conduction or convection with respect to the surroundings. The only heat transfer across a vacuum is radiation. The best resistance against radiant heat transfer is high reflectivity. Gold has high reflectivity

Heavy element? Gold is one of the most ductile metals. You can form it into incredibly thin foil. It's also inert. You don't need to add any coatings to keep it from corroding while the satellite is being built or being readied for launch. A given area of reflective gold foil can probably be made much thinner (and somewhat lighter) than a similar area of any other metal.

Low melting temperature? It's still higher than most satellites will see unless they're going to reenter Earth's atmosphere, at which point you want the satellite to vaporize or burn in most cases.

Re:Business in junk

[trentblase]

reenter Earth's atmosphere

That's the whole point of a heat shield. Try http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_shield

If you're trying to block radiation, they call it a radiation shield, oddly enough.

Re:Business in junk

[ek_adam]

Radiation shields are used to block high energy radiation (gamma rays, x-rays, high energy ultraviolet, high energy particles). This is sometimes referred to as ionizing radiation because the particles can knock electrons or positrons out of atoms either directly or indirectly through particle cascades.

For most satellites, especially in any case where they are using gold foil, heat shields are used to block (or more accurately, reflect) thermal radiation. This is lower energy radiation (low ultraviolet, visible light, infrared) that will not ionize material but can still increase its temperature.

Re:Business in junk

[trentblase]

Thanks for the physics lesson. Unfortunately, you are still confused as to the purpose of a heat shield. If you don't believe a wiki, you could try Merriam Webster (www.m-w.com).

Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

Just send a robot up there? According to the "no more people in space" crowd, robots can do everything people can do, right?

Why not just bounce a pathfinder golf cart off the side of it? That would be the spaceflight equivalent of banging the side of the television. Works for rabbit ears.

Moon

[Leroy_Brown242]

i still hold to my opinion that hubble should be parked on the back side of the moon.

Bottom line

[mangu]

The novelty of that ad would be worth a couple million bucks.

$250000000 - $2000000 = $248000000

Nah, they'd still be in the red...

Webb doesn't make Hubble useless!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no reason why astronomers couldn't continue using Hubble even after Webb is deployed. It'll still be one of the best observatories available, and there's still a lot of good work that it could do. Besides, by that time someone may come up with gyros that don't fail constantly.

Archiving Hubble's Data

[LittleKing]

This is a little older (2002) but interesting non the less. It is pulled from Hubble's website

Every day, Hubble archives 3 to 5 gigabytes of data and delivers between 10 and 15 gigabytes to astronomers all over the world. See science highlights. As of March 2000, Hubble has:

• Taken more than 330,000 separate observations. Observed more than 25,000 astronomical targets. Created a data archive of over 7.3 terabytes. (That is like completely filling a PC every day for 10 years.
• Provided data for more than 2,663 scientific papers.
• Traveled about 1.489 billion miles--nearly the distance from Earth to Uranus. It circles the Earth about every 97 minutes.
• Received more than 93 hours of on-orbit improvements in three successful servicing missions.

Re:Take it over.

[EvanED]

NASA would only accept that plan if it could be assured that it'd be safe. They (and I) would rather have the Hubble come down as NASA plans than have it come down on someone's head because the people who took it over don't have the capabilities to keep it up.

Not going to ISS

[RayBender]

No matter what that guy says, the are NOT going to tow HST to the Space Station, for reasons of simple physics. HST is in a 28 deg inclination orbit, ISS is in a 57 deg orbit. The change in velocity ("delta-V") required for such a plane change is of the same order as the delta-V required to get into orbit in the first place (something like 3 km/s). That would require a very, very large rocket by the standards of current on-orbit maneuvering systems, and probably cost as much as simply building another HST and putting it in the right orbit in the first place.

You might see them reboost HST into a high orbit, but it's NOT going to ISS.

Intrigue

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone notice that the two names combine to form Webb Hubble (sp), a long time friend and supporter of President Clinton?

HMMMM

Salvage 1 Anyone?

[stuffduff]

Most Slashdot readers will be too young for this one, but this it practically a script out of Salvage 1. Andy Griffith played the salvage engineer turned astronaut who first rescues a falling satellite, and later goes after the descent stage of a LEM.

Can mirrors be used as lasers?

[Mercury2k]

Now, Im probably the dumbest person on the planet when it comes to understanding telescopes, but could it be possible to convert the hubble telescope into a laser weapon secretly if it were attached to the space station and refitted/modified? And if it could, doesnt it seem like an excuse to do so by prearranging the telescope to be placed ahead of time into a precalculated decaying orbit in the hopes of later using an already planned out method to tug it back to the station where it could be modified as such?

Also, isnt the mirror in the telescope very high quality? Could something like this is possible be used to melt incoming rocks?

Oh well, probably just another stupid post, but someone let me know, im curious if such a thing could be done.

ISS problem though

[pablo_max]

Im sure someone has already said it, but moving the hubble anywhere near the ISS is not a smart move.
The ISS leaks gasses and fluids into space. It has its very own orbiting space junk.
Because of this the hubble would never be able to get a clear shot of deep space. It would be suffering from the same things as earth bound scopes, thus defeating the purpose and taking away the justification to spend any money on it.
A higher orbit would be the way to go here IMO. Better yet tow the thing out to L1. Then you dont even need to worry about orbit corrections and all that fuel could be used for pointing the hubble and it would last a lot longer. At least that MHO.

Cool, go for it, don't wast good $ sci equipment

[thenarftwit]

That's an excellent use for new space technology...we do need the capabillity of retrieving and fixing present and future space craft...the Hubble still has some life left in it and the upgraded instruments need to be installed, it's a good use for the international space station (fixing other spacecraft), besides, the replacement telescope lacks some of the instruments in the Hubble, so we would lose that capability... and the way future military "posing" by future superpowers (china, india), the scientific community probablly won't get any replacement telescopes for many decades because we are going to see the military/industrial complex (worlwide) waste trillions on massive space military arms races (and future wars) in the next 100 years.

An ideal for a space tug.

[Criton]

I think if they enough people want to keep hubble in service or atleast decfommisssion it in a safe manner,We'll need a tug of some sort. I propose modifying a progress freighter to dock with the mounting ring on hubble. Main differance the progress will have gyros and an ion drive added in place of the usual cargo. Also it will carry an extra large set of solar panels. This should extend hubble's life till JWST is ready or a truely large replacemnt can be launched on a shuttle derived booster which BTW would be lower risk then JWST with it's complexe mirror. It should be noted though Martin's hybrid OSP with the disposible epuiptment module could be used to service hubble or any other orbiting platform with a few changes to the service module heck and old apollo could rember skylab?

Re:Take it over.

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to remember some hideous made-for-TV movie with Andy Griffith revolving around the idea of a 'space salvage' company. His junkyard-owner character built a spaceship from an old concrete-truck drum and powered from the usual Unobtainium rocket-fuel formula whipped up in the garage by the local chemistry geek.

Ahh the Hubble....

[bodland]

Wallpaper has never been the same since the Hubble...

Bush knows what he is doing

[jdev]

By Bush cancelling programs to protect our atmosphere, we'll be able to let in more wavelengths. Then we don't need the Hubble anymore. This guy thinks of everything :)

Money

[Detritus]

Who's going to pay for it? You?

It costs a lot of money to keep the HST running. There is a small army of scientists, engineers and technicians that keep it healthy, schedule observations, point it at the right places, and download and distribute the data.

NASA has a severely constrained budget. Every dollar that is spent on HST is a dollar taken away from some other project. From a scientific point of view, you have to ask whether it makes more sense to terminate HST and spend the money on new spacecraft and missions. There are always many more proposals for new spacecraft than there is money to fund them.

Re:Money

[wass]

very dollar that is spent on HST is a dollar taken away from some other project. From a scientific point of view, you have to ask whether it makes more sense to terminate HST and spend the money on new spacecraft and missions.

Exactly. And IMHO, that perfectly justifies keeping Hubble aloft, at least for now.

Given estimates, it will take about $41 million to finish SM4 instruments, and $500 million for the launch. And there are astronaut volunteers (Grunsfeld, for example) to go there without the 'safety' of the ISS.

So, that's another decade or so of astronomical research with the HST, for about $540 million.

Compare that price for building other observatories from scratch, launching them, working out the bugs, calibrating them, etc. Do you have any numbers favoring building new scopes from scratch?

Hubble is currently working. And, despite what people claim here on /., it's not antiquated, and it does provide data that will NOT be provided by other current and future planned missions (ie, Webb, Chandra, FUSE, etc). Namely, orbital-based near-IR/optical/near-UV imaging and spectroscopy.

People here on /. often claim that adaptive optics gives better data than Hubble, and this is true sometimes for imaging. But definitely not so for spectroscopy, and definitely not so for IR and UV ranges. And that's where most of the hard science comes from.

So anyway, IMHO, it's worth $540 million to keep Hubble operating for many more years. Especially considering it only has 3 working gyros right now, and if one fails it becomes severely crippled.

I'm not an astronomer, but there are several around me consistently using Hubble's data. So I have a pretty good feel for how much worthy data is still being produced and utilized from Hubble.

Re:Money

[Detritus]

Add another $90 million per year for operations and data analysis.

Every NASA mission, assuming the hardware still works, follows a curve of diminishing science returns. At some point, someone has to make a decision to pull the plug. HST may not be at that point yet, but they have to compete for NASA dollars and resources that can be used to fund new missions.

We've heard this before

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when : a space tug called Teleoperator was going to save Skylab from burning in ? But NASA could make more money available for their new shuttle program by abandoning the Skylab program.

So Teleoperator never was built, a Skylab vehicle sits in the Smithsonian, and the Saturn booster that could have launched it sits on static display in front of a NASA building.

How about a FLEET of tugs!

[cr@ckwhore]

Ok, this is a great idea... attach a "tug" to a satellite once it's used up it's propellant.

Well, if a satellite is good for 10-15 years before it would need a "tug", why not just give it a "tug" right at the start?

Here's my idea... lets build a fleet of space tugs and store them at the ISS. Whenever a satellite is launched, launch it with a small amount of propellant... just enough to do some basic maneuvering to get the orbital situation correct immediately after launch. Then, via a standard adapter that would be built on all new satellites, a tug would be sent from the ISS to mate with the satellite. From there on out, the tug would take care of the satellite's propulsion and perhaps even provide the satellite with back-up solar power.

Think of the possibilities of this system... sattelites would be lighter due to the decreased amount of propellant onboard, thus, cheaper to launch. The space tugs themselves could be fairly cheap to build and launch, especially in quantity. Space engineers would also gain a standard system for propulsion, so it's likely that the same set of ground controls could be utilized for every satellite fit with a standard space tug.

There might be more benefits, and I'm sure there are a few draw-backs, but I can't think of any at the moment.

Re:How about a FLEET of tugs!

[dj245]

You're talking about commodizing future sattelites. This is a really horrible thing.

Think about toasters. 50 years ago, if your toaster broke, you could get a new coil, or whatever, and fix it. Toasters were such a major appliance and so solidly built with interchangable parts that it wouldn't make sense to just throw a broken toaster away.

Look at things today. Toasters don't have repairable parts. How many toaster repairmen do you know? How many toasters have you gone through in the past 15 years?

Sattelites cost a big chunk of change, that is true. But the rocket underneath it and the salaries of the people who launch the rocket and build the rocket cost much more than the sattelite on top of the rocket. You certainly don't want to be replacing your communication sattelite every 3 years if the sattelite costs $5 million dollars but the rocket costs $40 million. You can make your sattelite cheaper, but smaller solar panels, smaller reserve batteries, smaller attitude thrust fuel tanks, all these things make the life of your sattelite shorter. It just makes sense to make ruggedly-built, longer-term sattelites. And that is a good thing.

I can only hope that the disposable society that the United States has created does not radiate into space.

Re:How about a FLEET of tugs!

[cr@ckwhore]

I'm not advocating that we should make "cheaper" satellites in the sense that they should be of lesser quality. BUT... by reducing the amount of fuel needed to carry on board, (because a tug will meet it in space for its thrust needs), the satellite can now weigh LESS than before... meaning, it could potentially be launched on a smaller rocket. At something like $10,000 per pound to put something in orbit, saving a few pounds on fuel could mean extra available dollars in the budget for other areas of the sattelite... that extra sensor, or that better chip, etc.

Re:How about a FLEET of tugs!

[dj245]

The amount of fuel is often a measure of how long a Sattelite remains useful. After deploying the solar panels, the fuel is used for the attitude thrusters on most orbiters to keep the panels facing the sun. Mariner 9 (mars orbiter) snapped thousands of pictures, and did tons of science, mapping most of the surface of mars. But once it ran out of fuel, it couldn't face the sun anymore and ran out of power and died. Several Russian mars orbiters failed because they didn't have big enough tanks and had to use too much fuel on the trip to mars. When they got there, they could only face the sun for a day or so before spinning out of control.

If you want your sattelite to remain useful for long periods of time (Mariner 9 operated for over a year) and not crash back to earth (Mariner 7 will fall to mars in 2022 or something) you need all the fuel you can carry.

As long as they name it "Marcus Garvey"...

[No Such Agency]

Good god, I'm a geek.

No, it's because it sounds French.

[No Such Agency]

Now they're "Freedom Points".

Crash the ISS, not Hubble!

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientifically speaking, I think it might be much more productive to admit that the ISS is a scientific and economic failure. Stop shuttle flights to the ISS, send all remaining shuttles in pairs (one as a life boat) to service Hubble for as long as it lasts. Stop throwing good money (and amazing optical/UV telescopes) after bad!

Space Tug to save the Hubble?

[mythedrine]

Hire a Soyuz TMA to ferry the repair crew and a Progress to haul the upgrade/repair parts up to the HST. Get the whole thing fixed up for $100M, tops. Who says the Shuttle's robot arm is required to fix a satellite, anyway?

Anybody Remember Moon Zero Two?

[serutan]

This suddenly brought to mind an old movie called Moon Zero Two , about a couple guys based on the moon, who fly around in a refurbished Apollo lunar lander to retrieve dead satellites for scrap. The story includes bad guys trying to illegally crash a small asteroid on the moon to salvage the minerals. Pretty cool movie, 1969 special effects and all.

Better Check that equation, there

[niteshad]

(force = mass * velocity2)

No, I'm afraid you're mistaken in your recollections of Newton's Second Law. There are many ways to express it mathematically:
Force=mass*acceleration (note: both Force and acceleration are vectors, while mass is a scalar)
Force=dp/dt (differential change in momentum with respect to time)
Perhaps you were confusing force with kinetic energy:
T=(1/2)mass*(velocity^2)
Consider studying more physics and someday others will call you an "actual physicist" too.

Re:Better Check that equation, there

[AKAImBatman]

#$^@#%$ high school physics!

I stand corrected. A bit of googling produces the following formula:

Energy = mass * (velocity^2)
Kinetic Energy = (1/2)mass * (velocity^2)

I'm not sure what the difference is in the two equations, but my hunch is that the kinetic energy is taking into account the reaction energy. i.e. Every action has an opposite and equal reaction. Thus, half the energy expenditure goes to the action and half to the reaction.

A bit of consideration on the formula makes one notice how close it is to the E=mc^2 equation. The only difference between the two is that c is a constant representing the speed of light. As to whether the speed of light is used because it is the maximum attainable energy state or not is another thing I should find out.

In any case, my point still holds. If we want to make our engines more efficient, we have to produce more velocity in the thrust. Since velocity is a much "heavier" part of the equation, we can equal performance with significantly less mass by a much smaller increase in the velocity of the exhaust. Thus a nuclear rocket that can throw the same exhaust mass at a higher velocity than a chemical rocket will produce far greater thrust.

By extension, a higher Isp rocket will assume a higher thrust as long as the amount of mass remains constant. The problem with technologies such as nuclear electric propulsion is that they trade far too significant a mass for their high propulsive effects. While the use of a larger power source (such as a nuclear reactor) can boost their mass throw significantly, it is still far less than is necessary to produce enough constant thrust to overcome the Earth's gravitational and atmospheric friction vectors.

If we continue down that train of thought, it becomes apparent that an electric rocket such as the ION drive is completely ineffective unless first boosted to a stable velocity (in this case orbital velocity) by more traditional means.

Hmm... I guess my old boss was right. Communication does complete thought. :-) Ok, I'm done thinking out loud now. You can all come down on me for what I got wrong.

Why we should save it.

[EnterpriseNCC-1701]

The Hubble Space telescope has allowed us to see marvolous things. The Galaxy cluster Abell 2218 is a dazzeling proof of the existance of dark matter. All the stuff we thought was what made up the Universe is only a small percent of what is out there. The Universe is a lot more then we thought it was. In the human races attempt to understand more we have come to know less and less. Long ago we almost knew everything when we "knew" that things that were hot contained fire and things that were heavy contained rock. Long ago we "knew" the Earth was really a flat plat supported on the back of a giant turtle. What if we never explored and tried to find out if the Earth was flat or not? There is no way to make exploration 100% safe. If we were indeed 100% safe we would never have explored and would never have progressed. The human race would be worthless and just a waste of space. As time went on we have come to learn how much there is out there. From the understanding of the galaxy to the realization that it is only one galaxy amoung a vast collection of "island universes." What we know as "the Universe" keeps getting bigger. And now, with this knowlage of the existance of dark matter, the known Universe has become even larger. We need to keep learning and trying to understand the Universe other wise what will become of us?