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NASA Engineers Dispute Hubble Safety Claim
Zeinfeld writes "According to the administration, the Hubble space telescope is going to be allowed to die in the next three years because the shuttle mission required to save it would be too risky. Meanwhile the public plans say shuttle missions to the space station will resume. Papers leaked to the New York Times say hogwash. The article (free subscription required) reports claims that money and politics, not safety are the reason. The public NASA story is clearly nonsense, and if the science from Hubble does not justify a shuttle mission, then it's time to pull the plug on the space station. I suspect that is exactly what will happen after the November election."
No, there won't! That's the point. Hubble's replacement is scheduled for 2012 and it sees in infrared. Hubble uses visible light spectrum. There is no scheduled replacement for hubble. We can not afford to lose Hubble! I'm outraged, let's just spend 10 Billion USD on football because apparently people care more about that than learning about our universe.
These funding cuts will happen with or without George Bush. The raw truth is that the public, as foolish as it may be, don't have alot of support for a serious government funded space program. Thus it will likely die on the vine. Isn't that the idea of "by the people, for the people"?
Furthermore, we're really fooling ourselves badly to think that NASA is going to do any real advances in the near future. Unless old George goes against the edict of the people and dumps cash into the space program NASA is going to continue to spend it's budget sending out failure after failure instead of working with what we have in our hands and what's on our doorstep. And since NASA really doesn't answer to anyone there will be no recourse for the blatent waste of taxpayer cash.
I've said it before ad I'll say it again, there will be no serious movement into space without the large backing of private enterprise. Give corporations a reason to get to the moon/mars and it'll be done in a third of the time of NASA's best estimates.
As for Hubble? If NASA is saying no than guess what... you're SOL and frankly I doubt this decision was based on anything that George Bush does or says.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
My Question is this: If the Hubble resides above the 6 mile mark and is going to be left to die a fiery death, can't someone else just go up there and fix it? It should be in international waters, so to speak, and salvage rights should be in effect. I know it'd be expensive as hell, but with the push to privatized space flight it doesn't seem to be that far out there. I can think of a few private companies and institutions that might want access to a decent space telescope and would be willing to take the "risks".
Learn from other people's mistakes, you don't have time to make them all on your own.
Ames should be cut back to a wind tunnel operation. Slidell (now "the Stennis Space Center", a "multi-agency center for 30 resident agencies"), should be sold off to a private developer. The "Independent Verification and Validation Facility" in West Virginia should be consolidated with some NASA facility that needs its services. Goddard needs some major cutbacks. (Goddard just awarded a $34 million contract for "conference support, duplicating, computer graphics, publication, and documentation" on a cost plus award fee basis. Then they issued a press release about it.)
NASA's non-flight research should be funded through the National Science Foundation. Environmental resarch should be moved to the EPA. In fact, even space science should go through NSF. NASA's job should be limited to flight hardware and support systems.
If NASA got rid of about half its organization, and insisted that the remaining half build stuff that flies, they might get somewhere.
What we should do is ASK those who have to fly the shuttle. We have heard a great deal from the leadership at NASA and everyone else. What do the rank and file Astronauts think? Is it worth the risk do they want to fly on the Shuttle?
I grew up in the Fulda Gap, where did you?