Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the no-shocker-here dept.
falconed writes "From the BBC, 'Nasa has given a final "no" to requests for it to change its mind and grant a reprieve to the Hubble Space Telescope.' Not much new info here; canceling the program due to safety issues. This hasbeen discussedonSlashdotbefore."
Makes no sense
by
Wister285
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
It really makes no sense that they decided to do this. Sure, it costs money to run one mission, but after that you have years of data collection. While we may be sending up another telescope, it doesn't matter. The James Webb Telescope can do what it is special at and then have the Hubble do some other tasks. Two telescopes means twice as much data collection for minimal investment!
Re:NASA is full of... well, you know
by
GoofyBoy
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
>The amount of money that will be spent on an automatic de-orbiting rocket for the HST to overcome a 1-in-700 (yes, that small) chance of some *property damage* (not even human injury) is going to be huge.
They are engineers. Thats what they do. Talk to a professional engineer or read up on professional ethics. Public safety superseeds costs.
>Which would seem to indicate an obsession with safety, but really at its core it is an obsession with PR.
Spin and public impression is the obsession of PR. Safety is secondary for PR.
-- The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
It's obvious
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
As long as Hubble is working, there'll be less motivation for the "powers that be" (non-NASA) to fund the "next generation". "Hubble works so why do we need another telescope?" will overshadow any [other] requests. If Hubble were to suddenly stop working finding|funding, the next one [using today's technology] would be much easier to get into motion.
When did the US turn into such pussies?
by
KlomDark
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes, the death of the astronauts last year was very sad, but even sadder is that now they are so worried about someone getting hurt that even willing participants are not allowed to go fix a damn telescope!
And people got killed in the WTC, and we do nothing but make it tougher to get on an airplane. It's all gotta be perfectly safe!
Don't worry, nobody lives forever... Take some risks while you can. Die on your feet instead of your knees.
Re:When did the US turn into such pussies?
by
Zak3056
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Yes, the death of the astronauts last year was very sad, but even sadder is that now they are so worried about someone getting hurt that even willing participants are not allowed to go fix a damn telescope!
It's an excuse.
The idea is to cut costs by removing the large hubble ground support--and the $500 Million cost of a shuttle mission.
"Safety" is a bullshit reason to avoid the PR disaster of saying Hubble is too expensive while ISS continues to soak up money and produce no science.
-- What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Earth to NASA
by
Loki_1929
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Earth to NASA - come in NASA...
You're a publicly-funded, publicly-mandated government agency. If the public tells you to go to the moon, you go to the moon. If the public tells you to land on the sun, you'd best figure out some damn good materials that'll hold up.
If the public tells you to save a telescope that's told us more about the universe in the few years it's been active than we've learned in the previous 2,000 years, you save the damn thing. When you have 300,000,000 bosses, telling them all 'no' is not a good plan. The eggheads are saying safety isn't an issue, and the public is saying money isn't an issue. Hubble's budgetary requirements are infintesimal compared to its value to mankind and the three hundred million people who sign your damn paychecks.
Don't reconsider your decision, change it. Otherwise, you'd best get started calculating the trajectory for optimal burger flipping; got it?
-- --
"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Re:Earth to NASA
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
It doesn't? Wow!
"What programs are you going to bitch about being cut..."
Didn't say, "What NASA programs, etc...."
I personally would welcome cutting some foreign aid and spending that money on existing, proven scientific NASA missions. Sounds pretty on-topic to me.
The Three Biggest Lies
by
Detritus
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The check is in the mail.
I'll respect you in the morning.
It isn't about money.
-- Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Re:It's N.A.S.A., dammit.
by
BigDumbSpaceApe
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You notice tho, that they don't call themselve Bbc.
-- WWJD? JWRTFM.
...due to safety concerns?
by
WheelDweller
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
If we can't maintain a satellite (with no explosives or radiation or whatever) how can we be expected to start a moon-colony or anything else?
The Hubble's been one of the most successful programs we've had; other than a bug in the first mirror, we got it patched and it's show us things we never would have seen otherwise. (And it'd be very useful for spotting extinction-level asteroids.
My bet is that politics got involved and NASA's never been a PR-savvy organization. Shame, really. When you have problems and need to rally around something, you don't just dump a rare success.
The Russians, people really good at rock-simple boosting of many, many tons at a time, could use the business. Now that the whole cold-war thing is over, I'd see reinstatement of this program as big an event as all the detant meetings they ever held.
Back before Britian was attacked by Germany, someone was smart enough to do an "X-pize" kinda thing: they held a prize for making floatplanes to race. Political uproar was surprizingly vocal: "We might head into a war- why does the government want to mess with sea-racers?" Well, take the floats off and replace'em with bombs, and the fastest plane became the Supermarine Spitfire: a plane that very likely saved their lives.
I think the X-prize is a great idea. Maybe let NASA do the core research- let private companies compete on the transportation side. Then we'll be able to fix things like the Hubble and that industry can start making some real progress.
But if not, "Hubble, we barely knew ye."
-- ---
For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
When did we start giving up?
by
Buschman
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Back in the day, people strapped on things like the Wright Flyer, the Spirit of St. Louis, the Bell X-1, the X-15, numerous Mercury/Gemini/Apollo craft, to name a few. There were tremendous risks associated with all this, everyone knew it, everyone accepted it, and not all lived to tell about it. Because of these advances and the sacrifices made along the way, we made myriad technological advances in engineering, medicine, chemistry, electronics, computer science, and of course haberdashery (velcro). The astronaut pool is full of folks brave enough to risk their lives in the name of exploration and science. We should be careless or reckless, but we shouldn't be a bunch of agoraphobic pansies either.
Re:typical NASA
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
>There's a reason why the running joke is that NASA is welfare for scientists. But then again, can you think of any alternatives?
Sure! Outsource all the science to India with everything else. Maybe China or Thailand could even under cut them.
Nasa would have huge pockets then. Their satellite tests would go from costing $800,000 per 1 day test, to $100,000.
We can get outsourced shuttle crews too. Maybe we should outsource our entire military and government to India. That would really cut costs and put some of that tax money back into the pockets of the out of work Americans.
Shoot, if we can get multiple kills per day, for $100 per week instead of those arrogant expensive American soldiers who want $800, the possibilities are stupefying. I am sure that outsourced soldiers could aim just as well as Americans.
I say outsource NASA. Let Sean O'Keefe just be the project manager. There are plenty of Indian scientists who can use a slide rule.
We need to be an intellectual economy and become employed with the next big thing. Leave all that science, engineering, innovation, and money for the suckers to toil over.
If our government supports globalization, they need to put their jobs where their mouth is too. If they gonna talk the talk, they gotta walk the walk. They need to save money, why not?
Re:typical NASA
by
gilroy
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Blockquoth the poster:
Just remeber, there is no problem the gov't can't make worse.
How about anarachy?
(Sure, what the government does may be worse than anarchy -- but it can't make the anarchy any worse, since any governmental intervention into a state of anarchy by defition reduces the anarchy.)
Re:typical NASA
by
luna69
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Bordering on racist.
And not even funny in the bargain.
-- No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
What where we thinking when we went to the moon
by
nexusone
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Using their logic we would have never went to the moon, with out risk we would not have advance as we have.
NASA has become a politcal pig, don't want to take risk. Could be unpopular with the politicans and loose funding.....
-- Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
Re:typical NASA
by
llefler
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It's time to kill the current shuttle. It was poorly concieved in the first place. Maybe we didn't know it then, but it's obvious now. Use a shuttle to launch people, and rockets to launch payloads. Reducing the size reduces the complexity and risk. Not to mention the launch costs.
Replacing the shuttle with something more efficient doesn't necessarily mean few jobs or smaller budgets. Retask the savings to other projects. Like actually finishing the ISS, building an orbiting launch platform, and robotic missions on the moon and Mars.
-- It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
Re:Take it international
by
-tji
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Okay great, the precedent is there.. The concept still stays the same. Ask the Europeans and Canadians to kick in more.. enough to cover the launch. Open it up to other countries for involvement, giving them access to the telescope in return.
Do the Russians have a vehicle capable of this sort of rendezvous while carrying the necessary parts/supplies/tools/crew? Maybe they could provide a cheaper launch option.
The Russians could provide their valuable experience from the Mir.. Their unique brand of duct tape engineering would do wonders for the Hubble.:)
Re:You're missing the point
by
Dashing+Leech
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Please, check your facts before making sweeping statements about how HST isn't state-of-the-art.
Actually, I have been keeping up with state-of-the-art for quite some time, and I do know that HST isn't the best out there anymore for a lot of things. However, you are correct that I was wrong to make "sweeping statements", perhaps laziness on my part. There are still a few things Hubble is currently the best at, but much of its designed capabilities can now be done with ground telescopes, and in the near future with even better ground systems and next-generation space telescopes. Whether the remaining features are sufficient for the expense and danger is a matter for debate, one which Hubble proponents have apparently lost.
Slashdot Mirror
It really makes no sense that they decided to do this. Sure, it costs money to run one mission, but after that you have years of data collection. While we may be sending up another telescope, it doesn't matter. The James Webb Telescope can do what it is special at and then have the Hubble do some other tasks. Two telescopes means twice as much data collection for minimal investment!
>The amount of money that will be spent on an automatic de-orbiting rocket for the HST to overcome a 1-in-700 (yes, that small) chance of some *property damage* (not even human injury) is going to be huge.
They are engineers. Thats what they do. Talk to a professional engineer or read up on professional ethics. Public safety superseeds costs.
>Which would seem to indicate an obsession with safety, but really at its core it is an obsession with PR.
Spin and public impression is the obsession of PR. Safety is secondary for PR.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
As long as Hubble is working, there'll be less motivation for the "powers that be" (non-NASA) to fund the "next generation". "Hubble works so why do we need another telescope?" will overshadow any [other] requests. If Hubble were to suddenly stop working finding|funding, the next one [using today's technology] would be much easier to get into motion.
Yes, the death of the astronauts last year was very sad, but even sadder is that now they are so worried about someone getting hurt that even willing participants are not allowed to go fix a damn telescope!
And people got killed in the WTC, and we do nothing but make it tougher to get on an airplane. It's all gotta be perfectly safe!
Don't worry, nobody lives forever... Take some risks while you can. Die on your feet instead of your knees.
Earth to NASA - come in NASA...
You're a publicly-funded, publicly-mandated government agency. If the public tells you to go to the moon, you go to the moon. If the public tells you to land on the sun, you'd best figure out some damn good materials that'll hold up.
If the public tells you to save a telescope that's told us more about the universe in the few years it's been active than we've learned in the previous 2,000 years, you save the damn thing. When you have 300,000,000 bosses, telling them all 'no' is not a good plan. The eggheads are saying safety isn't an issue, and the public is saying money isn't an issue. Hubble's budgetary requirements are infintesimal compared to its value to mankind and the three hundred million people who sign your damn paychecks.
Don't reconsider your decision, change it. Otherwise, you'd best get started calculating the trajectory for optimal burger flipping; got it?
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
You notice tho, that they don't call themselve Bbc.
WWJD? JWRTFM.
If we can't maintain a satellite (with no explosives or radiation or whatever) how can we be expected to start a moon-colony or anything else?
The Hubble's been one of the most successful programs we've had; other than a bug in the first mirror, we got it patched and it's show us things we never would have seen otherwise. (And it'd be very useful for spotting extinction-level asteroids.
My bet is that politics got involved and NASA's never been a PR-savvy organization. Shame, really. When you have problems and need to rally around something, you don't just dump a rare success.
The Russians, people really good at rock-simple boosting of many, many tons at a time, could use the business. Now that the whole cold-war thing is over, I'd see reinstatement of this program as big an event as all the detant meetings they ever held.
Back before Britian was attacked by Germany, someone was smart enough to do an "X-pize" kinda thing: they held a prize for making floatplanes to race. Political uproar was surprizingly vocal: "We might head into a war- why does the government want to mess with sea-racers?" Well, take the floats off and replace'em with bombs, and the fastest plane became the Supermarine Spitfire: a plane that very likely saved their lives.
I think the X-prize is a great idea. Maybe let NASA do the core research- let private companies compete on the transportation side. Then we'll be able to fix things like the Hubble and that industry can start making some real progress.
But if not, "Hubble, we barely knew ye."
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Back in the day, people strapped on things like the Wright Flyer, the Spirit of St. Louis, the Bell X-1, the X-15, numerous Mercury/Gemini/Apollo craft, to name a few. There were tremendous risks associated with all this, everyone knew it, everyone accepted it, and not all lived to tell about it.
Because of these advances and the sacrifices made along the way, we made myriad technological advances in engineering, medicine, chemistry, electronics, computer science, and of course haberdashery (velcro).
The astronaut pool is full of folks brave enough to risk their lives in the name of exploration and science. We should be careless or reckless, but we shouldn't be a bunch of agoraphobic pansies either.
>There's a reason why the running joke is that NASA is welfare for scientists. But then again, can you think of any alternatives?
Sure! Outsource all the science to India with everything else. Maybe China or Thailand could even under cut them.
Nasa would have huge pockets then. Their satellite tests would go from costing $800,000 per 1 day test, to $100,000.
We can get outsourced shuttle crews too. Maybe we should outsource our entire military and government to India. That would really cut costs and put some of that tax money back into the pockets of the out of work Americans.
Shoot, if we can get multiple kills per day, for $100 per week instead of those arrogant expensive American soldiers who want $800, the possibilities are stupefying. I am sure that outsourced soldiers could aim just as well as Americans.
I say outsource NASA. Let Sean O'Keefe just be the project manager. There are plenty of Indian scientists who can use a slide rule.
We need to be an intellectual economy and become employed with the next big thing. Leave all that science, engineering, innovation, and money for the suckers to toil over.
If our government supports globalization, they need to put their jobs where their mouth is too. If they gonna talk the talk, they gotta walk the walk. They need to save money, why not?
How about anarachy?
(Sure, what the government does may be worse than anarchy -- but it can't make the anarchy any worse, since any governmental intervention into a state of anarchy by defition reduces the anarchy.)
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Bordering on racist.
And not even funny in the bargain.
No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
Using their logic we would have never went to the moon, with out risk we would not have advance as we have.
NASA has become a politcal pig, don't want to take risk. Could be unpopular with the politicans and loose funding.....
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
It's time to kill the current shuttle. It was poorly concieved in the first place. Maybe we didn't know it then, but it's obvious now. Use a shuttle to launch people, and rockets to launch payloads. Reducing the size reduces the complexity and risk. Not to mention the launch costs.
Replacing the shuttle with something more efficient doesn't necessarily mean few jobs or smaller budgets. Retask the savings to other projects. Like actually finishing the ISS, building an orbiting launch platform, and robotic missions on the moon and Mars.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
Okay great, the precedent is there.. The concept still stays the same. Ask the Europeans and Canadians to kick in more.. enough to cover the launch. Open it up to other countries for involvement, giving them access to the telescope in return.
:)
Do the Russians have a vehicle capable of this sort of rendezvous while carrying the necessary parts/supplies/tools/crew? Maybe they could provide a cheaper launch option.
The Russians could provide their valuable experience from the Mir.. Their unique brand of duct tape engineering would do wonders for the Hubble.
Actually, I have been keeping up with state-of-the-art for quite some time, and I do know that HST isn't the best out there anymore for a lot of things. However, you are correct that I was wrong to make "sweeping statements", perhaps laziness on my part. There are still a few things Hubble is currently the best at, but much of its designed capabilities can now be done with ground telescopes, and in the near future with even better ground systems and next-generation space telescopes. Whether the remaining features are sufficient for the expense and danger is a matter for debate, one which Hubble proponents have apparently lost.