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NASA to Reconsider Hubble Decision
blamanj writes "It's not dead yet. With cries of opposition coming in from all quarters, NASA has decided to review its earlier decision. Adm. Hal Gehman, chairman of the board that investigated the Columbia shuttle breakup last year, will 'review the (Hubble) matter and offer his unique perspective,' NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said"
The earliest time that the telescope would fall to earth was 2007 correct? That means were have at least 3 years to build, test, and launch a mission to save it. I believe the science community at large would agree with me that this telescope will not go down without a serious fight. On a slight side note. I have noticed that tech issues, other then cs outsourcing to india, have not been discussed much in the US's presidential races so far. Personally I am upset that politicians think that welfare, tax reform, and social security are more important then the advancement of our society. Along with making our voices heard for the Hubble we as a scientific and technical community need to let our voices be heard that all our issues are just as, if not more, important then the common problems that face our society.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
Maybe it is just me, but I don't understand the point of abandoning a space project and crashing it into the earth. Why not push it out to space a little more...
The concept seems so simple, but the reality is much more complex. IANARS (I am not a rocket scientist), but orbital mechanics just don't work at all like you're used to things working on earth (or in Star [Trek|Wars]).
For one thing, if you give an orbiting object a push "up", that doesn't send it away from the planet! It just puts it in a higher orbit, and probably an elliptical one at that. An ellipse (oval) seems fine, but the Earth probably is at a focus, not the "center". If you've lowered the close point (perigee?) into the atmosphere, you've got big trouble.
Hubble simply doesn't have the sort of thruster that could boost it into a higher, more stable orbit. There are proposals to strap on a booster to do that job, but you've either got to send someone up to attach it, or find a foolproof way of doing it robotically. Remember, Hubble wasn't designed to be reboosted by anything but the shuttle!
And things go wrong -- remember the time the Shuttle crew had to build a flyswatter-looking thing to flip a switch on a satellite they'd just launched. More recently, of course, there's Mars, the Ship-Eating Planet.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Adm. Hal Gehman would do well to think of this in military terms: do you really want to give up your best intelligence-gathering source based on the promise from the government that the funds will be available for a new one three years after you give it up?
As a former intel geek myself, I'd say the answer is a resounding "no"... Pay the extra money to keep my current source while you build and deploy a new one for me to use.
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The answer had always better be YES when it comes to scientific research and exploration. If the answer was NO, we'd still think the world was flat, if we'd even exist at all.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
With just one or two spare gyros, I doubt any group would be able to use the Hubble for very long. After the gyros give out, you'll have a very large hunk of hardware travelling at thousands of miles per hour that's completely out of control. Even in orbit, with less stuff to crash into, that's a Really Really Bad Thing. Boosting hubble out to a permenent orbit (or at least out to one that would last 50 years or so until we would presumably have craft more capable of either fetching it or enshrining it) would be a huge cost. We have nothing on the shelf to do it now, and it would be cheaper to just dump the thing into the ocean. What I think we should be developing, in addition to a shuttle replacement, is robotic repair vehicles that we could use in case of a backup, or in cases of hardware that we really don't want people risking their lives for. Hubble, certainly, has intrinsic and sentimental value that people would be willing to take a risk to save. Somehow, I sort of doubt anyone wants to risk their lives repairing generic communications satillite #5 so soccer moms can continue to yak on their cell phones while causing mayhem in their SUVs. That means that we'd have to design satillites for easy repair using robots (more modular, easier access, etc.) Modularity probably wouldn't be a bad thing, anyhow. I suspect if we can develop robots that can (mostly, sorta) work on Mars, we can develop ones for earth orbit that can swap in and out some modules.
And please, put some better gyroscopes on the thing. They fail too quickly.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!