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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"
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... to somewhat a safe distance, and GIVE it to someone, like a school, or something. Im sure SOMEONE can put things like this, or a SPACE STATION to good use. Maybe if it isnt even in the immediate future, I think there is plenty of empty space out there, that we can even park them anywhere. Even if that is orbiting the moon... and if it gets destroyed, there will be no issue
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Without the shuttle to replace the failing gyro's onboard the Hubble, their isn't much that NASA can do, besides boost its orbit... Pretty much their choices are: -reconsider shuttle usage -ask the Russians to help with a manned mission (would need to send up a capsule, and something to hold the paylod - Soyuz is too small to hold all the replacement parts and astronauts) -come up with an unmanned mission to boost the orbit (this still wouldn't address failing gyros and other critical parts wearing out)
Their previous decision may have been unpopular, but this is ridiculous. NASA needs to learn how to make a game-plan and stand by it, rather than trying to do everything in a really half-assed way. Plus, if they had waited a bit longer, I think they might have seen some interesting proposals on Hubble's future come crawling out of the woodwork from the private sector. Private investment and innovation in space technology is something NASA definitely needs to encourage rather than trample on in the years ahead.
AC.
Legos decided to get free press by saying they were going to stop creating Mindstorm legos. This got a lot of people up-in-arms and they started spilling the wonders of Mindstorm everywhere. Then lego states that they have decided not to stop making them. What free advertising!
I feel that NASA has used the same technique here. The general population supports NASA but it's hard to get the people to publically stand for NASA's support. By saying that they are scrapping the Hubble, they found a way to stimulate the public into lobbying for the program.
Way to go NASA! Marketing brillance!
AC
It's possible that some of the decision makers at NASA may have expected (or at least hoped for) this sort of reaction. If you want to boost your funding, propose cutting an expensive but popular program, in the hopes that you'll get an outcry and support for budget increases.
(I'm not complaining if this was intentional, mind you; I'm just congratulating them on their clever strategy if it was.)
How much would keeping the Hubble active cost compared to some of the proposed massively powerful earthbound scopes, anyway? Given the choice, I'd probably go for buying the OWL or the like rather than the Hubble if the costs are similar.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Here are a coulpe links to articles:
From today's NY Times:
NASA Chief Affirms Stand on Canceling Hubble Mission
Also,
O'Keefe has sent a second letter (dated Jan. 28) to Senator Mikulski.
Well, look at it this way. If you, Administrator O'Keefe, order a Hubble servicing mission and something goes terribly wrong, your career along with several people's lives are almost guaranteed to be forfeit. Are you going to make that order against the better judgment of the CAIB which was responsible for unravelling the previous catastrophe? No -- if you're even thinking about going back to Hubble, this guy needs to be involved.
Now think what you could build with that money in todays technology. I would suggest reusing some of the detectors designed for the next service mission. Use a modern light-weight mirror. No options for repear in space, just launch and forget. If it blows up, build another one. Mightbe be really modest in your goals, don't go for a design that is 10 times better than hubble, but try to equal it with a mirror of 1.5 - 2 meter. I don't know the exact number, but i believe SIRTF was built for something between 0.5 and 1B$. I would guess this could be done for less than 1B$ within 3 years to close the gap till NGST is built.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
O'Keefe is obviously being pressured by Hubble's political constituency. He needs validation of his controversial (but in my mind correct) decision to quell the disent. Who better than Adm. Hal Gehman who effectively put severe limitations on the further use of the Space Shuttle without being completely specific about its future use. I think it is very clever on O'Keefe's part. NASA had to swallow all of the recommendations of Gehman's board of review, whether they made sense or not. O'Keefe just wants to put responsibility on Gehman if an orbiter is stranded servicing Hubble. It is against O'Keefe's better judgement.
an ill wind that blows no good
This wasn't Bush's call. This was NASA trying to appear "decisive" in implementing the new space push. Mismanagement on their part as usual. Don't be so dismissive of it either. If we do establish a presence on the Moon, we'll be able to build a telescope that will make Hubble look like a 25-cent plastic magnifying glass.
Blaze a trail to the New World
If we can't even justify servicing Hubble that means that the shuttle program is now completely dead. There is no other mission that could possibly be as important scientifically.
Of course everyone knows that the shuttle is dead, 14 dead people in two separate disasters mean that it won't be going back. But instead of facing up to that fact NASA will continue to burn money on projects that are meant to disguise the fact. The announcement of the Mars mission being an example, Bush announced the Mars mission as a way to cover the fact that shuttle was going to be all but terminated. The problem is that 'all but' part. Don't want to end all those jobs with contractors making juicy donations to the GOP, particularly not Halliburton.
There is a real failure of leadership here. Instead of saying it as it is we have a Karl Rove PR job that in effect will cost the tax payer a couple of billion dollars in futile attempts to fix a shuttle that no President is ever going to let fly again.
As for Hubble, the cheapest solution is probably to deorbit the current one into an ocean and send up a completely new Hubble. We already have a mirror for the thing, and it does not have spherical abberation defect. Kodak made a standby mirror for use in tests that they did not want to risk the real one on. Slap on the backups of the backups for the detection equipment and you can probably build Hubble II for $200 mil or so
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It's simple, really. To sink the Hubble, NASA already plans on firing off an un-manned mission to drive it down into a decaying orbit:
This shows the resources for manuevering the telescope are already budgeted. There may be added expense in engineering a mount point on the ISS, and additional risk & effort involved in calculating a safe vector, but as the following (kick ass) tools can show you, the HST and the ISS have practically identical orbits assigned them. The difference in orbits between the ISS and the HST are in almost identical orbits, as regards altitude, speed and direction of travel. It would be simple and cheap to re-purpose the end-of-life booster pack to serve as a tow truck into ISS space.
What problems would this plan solve? Well, service missions are suddenly a matter of popping out on the patio and replacing a fuse, instead of a multi-billion dollar voyage risking the life and safety of many billions more worth of equipment, personel and reputation. Extra parts can be tucked in with ISS mission carry-on baggage if necessary. and the HST would still be one of the finest optical instruments ever imagined.
Would there be problems with this solution? Yes. There may be issues with local radiation effects in the vicinity of the station, effects that might diminish the sensitivity of the instrument, whether by heating, light-polution, communications equipment or even vibration from the motors used aboard the station. The HST was not designed to work under such conditions. However, many of these issues can be solved with careful consideration with engineering the mount point spar. Any remaining degradation is worth the pain, as a hobbled hubble is better than a scrubbed hubbled.
This solution is just the first off the top of my head. There are others to consider. Perhaps they could use the booster to park the HST in a non-decaying orbit long enough to wait on the arrival of cherap space flight. On second though, by the time we have cheap space flight, it will be a simple thing to put up copies of the HST and far more besides. I suppose there are other possibilities, but mating the HST to the ISS is the cheapest, fastest, safest and sanest choice for the immediate future.
On the other hand, NASA has developed a new space telescope with a better mirror that is scheduled to be launched in 2011.
It is very important for NASA to do valuable science, but why not do it cost effectively? The cost of a shuttle mission, estimated at about $400m - $500m, is almost half of the whole budget for the next generation space telescope ($825m).