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Space Tug to Save the Hubble?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the yeah-that'll-work dept.

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."

4 of 325 comments (clear)

  1. Private management by memmel2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

  2. Business a little slow? by CaptainAlbert · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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 Most satellites are so many years out of date that it makes no commercial sense to get them back again - you'd only have to re-launch them anyway, at which point you might as well have spent the money on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>

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  3. Re:Um by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  4. Why? by MarkusQ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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