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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!"
I think we need a manned Mars mission badly, and I Am worried the Democrats will kill it just because Bush signed off on the idea. It would be great to keep Hubble but how long can we put off manned space exploration? We have been dragging our collective heels now since the end of the Apollo missions.
Plus, I'd actually like to see it happen in my lifetime.
Listening to O'keefe on a press conference about a month ago, when he addressed the Hubble issue in detail, it all became clear to me: It's pure politics.
After the CAIB, he was blasted, questioned and doubted to no end, so what does a skilled polititian do? cut your losses and move on. Well, he did just that. So now he's gonna follow the CAIB like it's the road to salvation. To the letter.
The CAIB puts forward a number of requirements for shuttle flights, including the ability to service the Shuttle via ISS if something goes wrong...among a host of other "inconvenient" requirements.
O'keefe decided to follow the CAIB to the letter so that means that going to the hubble will "break the laws" of the CAIB (Hubble is in an entirely different, incompatible orbit...still you'd think that being the thing called SHUTTLE it shouldn't be an issue, but it is)
So servicing the Hubble will violate his mandate to play it safest and thus it won't happen because it's "too risky" according to the CAIB mantra.
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
Go ahead, mod me offtopic (It really isn't, though)
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.
If you care about the HST write your senator, don't vent on slashdot. Words here mean nothing, but a cogent, well-reasoned letter to your senator may make a difference.
The last requirement may be a stretch for some readers, but one can always hope.
Find your senator at: http://www.senate.gov/
Who ever said getting onto a pile of explosives was inherently safe? Who ever said leaving the atmosphere and hurtling around at 18K MPH was safe? The problem here isn't one of technology or volunteers waiting to go into space; hell I would.
The problem is political will and political correctness. Nobody seems to shed a tear for the soldiers getting KIAed in IRAQ or Afghanistan, it's past news. The families and friends care, but we as citizens don't. However when a $1B shuttle breaks up over Texas, OMG, stop everything, we have to be "safe." This bullcrap about being PC and "safe" is counter to every exploration ever undertaken.
It took Risk to put Hubble into Orbit. It took people like Storey Musgrave to fix it in orbit, in a space suit hurtling at 18K MPH. Those were risks. Now, we have to have "contingencies" "backups" hell, I long for the days when politicians weren't running NASA, when they had a vision and took risks.
If Lindberg hadn't taken a risk, if the guys in St. Louis hadn't taken a risk, if Ryan aircraft hadn't taken a risk, there'd be no Transatlantic crossing.
Routan and the X Prize folks are taking risks and hopefully, with our prayers and support, will wrench the exploration of space out of the hands of the beaurocrats and politicians who want space exploration, without risk, which is never, ever going to happen.
Accidents will happen in the future. Hell, people still fly in 747s after TWA 800 don't they? People fly in Airbus 3XXs don't they, despite it's safety record.
Life is full of risk, as George Carlin says "take a F***ing chance!"
Fix Hubble, fix the foam, put the shuttles back online and get the next manned vehicle system back online. If you bozos at NASA can't figure it out, I'm sure all of that old CapCom equipment stored in the VAB can be turned back on and we can launch Apollos on Saturn 1Bs or Vs again. Hell, the Russians still launch Soyuz capsules that were developed in the 60s, so why can't we reuse what we've already learned?
Ahh, too much risk, I see. Maybe we should all stay in bed with the covers pulled over our heads.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
> 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
This has been the thinking at NASA for the past 30 years "we need to find out more about X before we go to Mars".
This got us the shuttle program and ISS. The benefits of both I could count on one hand and the wastefulness of which is depressing to think about. While futzing around in low earth orbit for 30 years, we haven't learned anything that we couldn't have if Apollo had continued.
To steal a page from Robert Zubrin, the shuttle paradigm is like if Queen Isabella had sent Columbus out 100 miles to sea and sit there for a few months to study the effects of being on a boat for a long time.
We understand what it's like to survive in space and how to do it. More research is always needed but what's needed more is bold initiative.
Blaze a trail to the New World