O'Keefe Under Fire for Hubble, ISS Decisions

chuckpeters writes "The battle over saving Hubble is just starting to heat up! The House Science Committee Democrats released their views and estimates report. Recommendation number two was that until Congress gets better information on the long term costs of Bush's Moon/Mars initiative, NASA's 2005 funding requests should go to existing programs. The House Science Committee has also decided that they want to hear from outside experts on Bush's space initiative. Just as Hubble isn't going quietly into the night, Bush's Moon/Mars plan isn't going quickly into space!"

Comments

Re:The Usefulness of HST

[mph]

Apparently, the scientific community think that the Hubble has become limited in usefulness. The new observatory observes infrared and some visible (though not optical blue.) Everything is red-shifted, they say, so visible light telescopes like Hubble serve no purpose.

Everything in the world (or orbiting it) is limited in usefulness. Things are built by imperfect humans, with finite resources and finite knowledge. Saying that the scientific community says Hubble "serves no purpose" is a gross, terrible misrepresentation of the astronomers' stance.

I am an astronomer. I do not want to see Hubble decommissioned, nor do I consider it useless. Nor does any astronomer I've talked to. Nor does the American Astronomical Society, the largest professional society of astrnomers. Your statement is simply absurd. HST time continues to be heavily oversubscribed, and numerous papers using HST data are produced daily.

Your argument seems to arise from HST having a planned succesor, JWST, which will be better in many, but not all, respects than HST. That does not make HST useless. Take a look at ground-based telescopes; despite the 10-meter Keck telescopes, the 5-meter Palomar telescope remains a very useful astronomical tool, and so does the 60-inch Palomar telescope, which was recently renovated and automated. HST would not become "useless" even if JWST existed today, and is sure as hell not "useless" with JWST years away.

Re:O'Keefe

[comedian23]

> Conservatives love killing off all parts of government not associated with the military or law enforcement.

Well there is certainly military value in space, so that point is moot. Also the NASA budget DECREASED under Clinton a number of times and was actually lower when he left office than when he started( and this doesn't include inflation either) and this was during the prime years of the dot-com boom too where the government was rolling in money. Bush is INCREASING the total budget. Data is below:

1993 $14.309 billion, existing NASA budget when Clinton took office;

1994 $14.568 billion, $259 million increase, first Clinton budget;

1995 $13.853 billion, $715 million decrease;

1996 $13.885 billion, $32 million increase;

1997 $13.709 billion, $176 million decrease;

1998 $13.648 billion, $61 million decrease;

1999 $13.654 billion, $6 million increase;

2000 $13.601 billion, $53 million decrease;

2001 $14.253 billion, $652 million increase;

2002 $14.892 billion, $639 million increase, first Bush budget;

2003 $15.000 billion, $108 million increase (estimated);

2004 $15.469 billion, $469 million increase (proposed);

>and this new program simply isn't viable

Why? Not that I agree or disagree but this is a pretty sweeping statement to claim without backup. Which parts of the Moon and Mars plans are not viable? What do you like about the Hubble, and ISS which you would like spared? Give us details, not generalized Bush bashing.

-Comedian