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Astronauts, Robots to Save Hubble
BungoMan85 writes "Astronauts who serviced the Hubble Space Telescope, among others, feel that NASA's administrator Sean O'Keefe shouldn't be too quick to abandon the now 14 year old space telescope because of safety concerns arising from the Columbia disaster." And an anonymous reader writes "At the insistance of congress, NASA is looking for a way to save the Hubble. "It's the most unpopular decision I could have made," Sean O'Keefe said of his decision to cancel the shuttle mission planned to fix Hubble. He has authorized his engineers to pursue the possiblity of a robotic rescue mission. This could be a great opportunity for private industry contractors."
I'm sure they could find a couple dudes who would be willing to take the risk, they should just suck it up and go.
vampirical
I know the Hubble telescope has done some great science, but shouldn't we just let it go so we have more money to put up the next generation telescope?
Or is this really about hating Bush's attempt to bring a man to Mars, and undermining it anyway possible just because he's Bush? I can't see why people are suddenly spendthrift when a Republican president wants to do something, but we can spend billions on welfare and hike taxes up to strangulating levels without anyone complaining under a Democrat.
with the above post. 14 years is an eternity in the world of technology. For (probably) 3 times the cost of the repair mission, a telescope of (probably) 100 times the quality of hubble could be deployed. I can see why hubble has sentimental value, but really, it's time to move on.
bash: rtfm: command not found
Remember, if we go, then it sucks a bunch of money out of the space budget that could go to--maybe--a new better space telescope.
Ebay should buy the telescope just to sell it. They'd make a packet in exposure and hopefully break even on the sale.
Translation: Good business opportunities for private enterprises here. No need to waste the damn thing.
The "Flight Telerobotic Servicer" was supposed to maintain the International Space Station. Didn't work, but total spending was somewhere around $50 million before Congress pulled the plug.
i for one, think that nasa is scared more than anything. I mean, the space shuttle blew up this past year, and it would be bad PR if another one did as well...
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people have been saying that tehse shuttles are unsafe for years http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystor
I agree that the Hubble is getting old, but it's still got plenty of useful life left. There's just no way that any current ground-based telescope can get the same kind of data that the Hubble can right now.
A better telescope can certainly be designed now, and NASA should get on the ball with designing and building it -- but that will take some time, and in the meantime, we should keep the Hubble in good repair because it's still a very powerful and useful tool.
I'll go.
I even promise to walk around all stiff legged like a robot.
I only ask that you pay me whatever you were going to spend on that robot... or twice as much to my family if I die on the mission. (they need some incentive to bring me back I think).
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
How about we hire the Russians either to do the work themselves or to transport our guys up to do it?
They seem to have manned launch technology available with a decent reliability and safety record.
It may well be cheaper that it would cost to do it ourselves, as well. Outsourcing, right?
Hrm, if I was cynical I would say that this was the plan all along.
1) Scrap really popular program.
2) Get everyone yelling to bring it back
3) Say you can't unless because you lack the budget
4) Profit!!
This could be a great opportunity for private industry contractors.
This is a great opportunity .. for my army of robot drone-slaves!
Quick, R67/345! Use the InnerNet to relay these commands.. We must SEXTUPLE drone-slave production! Our country needs us.. even though they shunned us after the unspeakable Werner incident, I believe this is our opportunity to make amends.
Yes I agree, Q22/141, that was due to HUMAN ERROR. The family should not have approached L3/35 while he was charging his ESS. But perhaps we should've left of the Barnhart QuickKill(tm) module on such a simple surveillance drone. No matter, our latest drones have triple failsafes against that happening again. Not to mention new SHINY paint.
I bet NASA will LOVE what we've got cooking in Facility 7.. TWELVE different manipulators on that bad boy. Well, better not give away the secrets until we have contracts in hand, eh?
No more idling about, to the ROBODRONE FACTORY!
According to current plans, there will be several years between the Hubble being decommissioned and a new space telescope taking its place, and that's assuming everything goes according to Bush's plan. There's no alternate instrument that can do what the Hubble does during that time, so a large subsection of astronomy as a whole would be crippled.
I find this comment in the article interesting..
.. deeming it too risky to astronauts in the wake of Columbia...
The risk factors haven't changed, those running the space program have always known the risks. It's not like Columbia's terrible accident made those in charge suddenly go "oh, maybe this space stuff is dangerous after all..."
It's not the risk factors that have changed, it's the public's view of the risks that have changed.
Live in your skin. Keep changing the scenery.
But wouldn't an expensive manned repair mission set the new telescope back further?
Lets face it the Russia is the only country right now with a viable manned presence in space. They would be the perfect ones for the job. There the only ones bringing our astronauts to the space station as well.
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
And then there's the fact that it's just insane to throw away something that is doing a fantastic job and can continue to do so if a small investment is made to keep it running. It's like throwing away an old Civic just because you might buy a BMW -- no reason you can't keep both cars in your garage, and there are just some things that a Civic makes sense for. Plus, with two cars you have more resources available.
And, the additional Hubble instruments have already been built and are just waiting to be launched!
i am a soviet space shuttle
Along with the repair mission, I believe they were going to upgrade the existing sensors onboard Hubble, which themselves have been upgraded at least a two or three times over the last 14 years, and are really the only part of Hubble that will become obsolete any time soon. The only major changes in telescope technology in the last few decades has been stuff to counteract the effects of looking through miles of atmosphere, which obviously Hubble doesn't have to worry about.
As far as capabilities are concerned, building a whole new telescope wouldn't be substantially different than just upgrading the existing one. Well, except for the slight cost of designing, building, and launching a new telescope. And doing it again in five or ten years sensor technology has advanced some more.
Another reason to keep Hubble around: in five years when there's better cameras and sensors, we can just send up a shuttle to upgrade Hubble. Can't do that with Hubble's proposed "replacement" (I forget the name...), what with it being way out at L2 and all. No way to repair a warped mirror either, so if that happens again we're stuck.
NASA could have one. Build a robot to fix a broken telescope laying around the southern California desert.
I know the Hubble telescope has done some great science, but shouldn't we just let it go so we have more money to put up the next generation telescope?
No, we should not just let it go, especially not when we've already spent $200 million on the instruments that are supposed to be installed in the next mission. HST is quite possibly the greatest scientific instrument anyone's ever built. You don't just throw it away unless you really have to.
Or is this really about hating Bush's attempt to bring a man to Mars, and undermining it anyway possible just because he's Bush?
Look, no one believes that Bush is serious about a manned mission to Mars, least of all the man himself. His proposed reshuffling of the NASA budget to pay for it is sub-laughable.
I can't see why people are suddenly spendthrift when a Republican president wants to do something, but we can spend billions on welfare and hike taxes up to strangulating levels without anyone complaining under a Democrat.
Please, get serious. What are these "strangulating" tax levels you are talking about, and under whose administration did they occur? If you look at this page, you'll see that tax rates have not appreciably changed since 1980. In fact, that same chart will show you that most people's taxes were actually lower in 2000, when the Man You Love To Hate left office, compared to 1992, when he took office.
Maybe people seem spendthrift because the Bush administration is mangling our budget with explosive spending programs coupled with irresponsible tax breaks for the rich. This results in (suprise, suprise) huge deficits which our children's children will be paying for. This isn't "just party politics"; fiscal conservatives are crying foul about Bush Economics as well.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
instead of letting it crash down to earth. just send it to a deep orbit and fix it later. or better yet just attach it to the spacestation so its always nearby for repairs from the onboard crew.
NASA is I'm sure hesitant to send up another shuttle crew for any reason. They are asking astronauts to willingly go into space on a vehicle much older than most peoples cars, to fix a telescope that also has "dated" technology. We are young enough into space exploration that these accidents may happen. We just don't have the tech to make space travel safe just yet. But how many people does the world have that would line up to go into space despite the risks? More than you, or perhaps NASA might think. I for one would like to see the Hubble get repaired/upgraded. They already have the parts. Even if they don't send them up on a NASA shuttle, they can still do the repairs. The pictures that the hubble has taken and can still take are part of what keeps the public interested in space, as well as providing usefull research for the scientific community. 2011 is too long to wait for another deep space telescope.
Also, the Hubble's replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope isn't quite a replacement for Hubble. It won't be launched until 2012, does not see in quite the same region of the spectrum and will be sitting at L2, well out of the range for servicing.
One of the things that has made the Hubble truely unique is the ability to be serviced. Each service mission has improved the telescope's capabilities tremendously. The Webb, for all its grandure, once it is up, it is up. No serviceing mission to bolt on a new camera, no trips to fix the optics. What we get day 1 is what we get day 100 and day 1000.
In the meantime, we will have at least six years without an optical range space telescope. That's six years of supernovae, six years of gamma ray bursts, six years of star formation, six years of light echos and six years of deep field astronomy that simply WILL NOT HAPPEN.
This is rediculous. Fix the damned telescope.
I don't want to sound rude, but why must we take this to politics... this is a civilian space agency, and we should treat it as such (and not some government pet project as most administrations have used it: Kennedy for the space race, Bush for gaining a stab of popularity and spicing up discussions everywhere).
Politics aside, we've made an investment. 15 years of a working Hubble telescope. That time runs out next year and we're still a solid 6 years behind on a solid replacement (which, is still questionable, since everything I read tells me it is planned to be like the Spitzer telescope and take pictures in Infrared). We also made the investment on 200 Million USD on upgrades to Hubble. 200 Million dollars is a lot of money to put towards something that can probably never be used with any other piece of equipment except Hubble, and not put it to use.
And I don't buy this Bullshit O'Queef is selling us about the worries of the shuttles. They're operable as is already, and what happened on Columbia was a freak accident that nobody thought to try to explain until it was too late. Maybe the money that could be going to building these "robots" could instead be used to build a wing crawler, to crawl out and service the underbelly of the Shuttle in case of such a disaster.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
In a desperate effort to save his ass from public flames, NASA's new administrator is backpedaling in the face of enormous opposition from the community he's just been put in charge of.
Fuck. Him.
and fuck that back when it was first mentioned that K. was going to kill Hubble, that there were a lot of people (including me) who were talking about tele-operated missions to save Hubble (but hey, that would be a budget saver, wouldn't it, Sean, and you're just backpedaling eh? -> you are a fucking political shill who is grasping at straws in the face of huge opposition) but now... oh....wait...it's an election year....
O'Keefe is a worthless POS. Fuck him and all he stands for.
/personal
Hey, Sean. Fuck you. I'm not a professional part of the community, so I can really speak out, you can't take my job away from me. You are a two-bit POS administrator who knows jack-fucking-shit about how important this all is. You're a simpleton political appointee who has no idea how important all this is, or how many people's lives you are screwing up. You goddamn heartless bastard.
Kiss my vampire-hours lily-white ass.
Shadowbearer, an extremely pissed off 25+ yr amateur astronomer. Oh, and Sean, Fuck You, but there are really no words to describe how disgusted the community from Pro-2-Am is with your bullshit.
Yeah, I know I should rant this elsewhere. I will. I have a weekend project now.
SB
PS Mad doesn't even describe my feelings right now.
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
The Hubble telescope continues to make headlines after more than a dozen years. Only last week on the news I saw photos of the deepest (and consequently earliest) space pictures ever taken, and they came from Hubble. Dropping this incredible resource into the ocean because of a relatively small budgetary shortfall is a horrendous waste of taxpayer money.
Chances are, if we crash it, we'll never get another. I'm getting old, I want to see some of those ancient mysteries of space solved in my lifetime.
Oh, I didn't realize that the money saved on the servicing mission would go into another space telescope. Oh, that's because it won't. There is already a Next Generation Space Telescope, and it is already funded. The servicing mission money will just go toward the deficit, a tiny drop in the giant bucket, and the billions of dollars invested in Hubble will not produce any more science or pretty pictures or good will of any sort. There are some valid reasons to question the servicing mission, but money is not one of them (and O'Keefe has not claimed money to be the issue either). I'm not wild about Bush, but I'd love to see people land on Mars -- the money spent servicing Hubble has zero bearing on that issue.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
As time passes, especially after a SNAFU or a poorly executed Let's Go To Mars! speech, the public's perceived value of NASA falls. Everyone's talkin' trash, saying "Why do we need to spend billions to develop a pen that can write upside down when people are starving?" and the like.
However, if the government, unprovoked, says "Hey everybody, we're going to disintigrate the Hubble and how do you like that" then the people apparently have the opposite reaction. Most people do not know anything about the Hubble other than it's a Good Thing. What a shame it would be to destroy it! So, by announcing plans to toss the Hubble in the garbage, NASA effectively primed the public to be willing to spend more dollars on space-related stuff.
I honestly don't understand this American concern for human life in such insular situations. Instead of asking for volunteers to rescue the Hubble, NASA has to spend some inordinate amount of money to reduce the risk factor by an impressive tally of 0.01%. There is no shortage of people who would be willing to risk their lives for the advancement of scientific discovery and human knowledge as a whole, yet apparently their passion to actually do something is nothing but vestigial barbaric brovado. Deaths that transpire under mundane circumstances (car accidents, drug-addiction deaths, gang shootings) are shrugged off as just a "fact of life," whereas sacrifices made for the selfless pursuit of nobility are deemed unnecessary and wasteful. Its absurd. There are people in the world who would end their lives forty years before their time in return for the chance to look out into the inky void and see a lone blue-green planet from a vantage point that few others have even dreamed of scaling, yet they are held back because of the terrible national tragedy that might occur if a nameless, faceless human were to die contently in one location rather than despairingly in another.
I dunno. I suppose I'm still bitter about the whole Columbia thing. Millions of people who a week ago didn't know of either the mission or the astronouts on the flight suddenly took it upon themselves to be morally outraged. The astronouts became greater heroes in death rather than life, and even then only to the masses who two months down the line wouldn't be able to remember a single, solitary name.
~Tirinal
In fact, that same chart will show you that most people's taxes were actually lower in 2000
Hmm, you may want to check the data you linked to (I had ditfully transcribed it but apparently too many numbers triggers slashdots lameness filter *shrug*):
As for the average tax rate (average rate you pay for each dollar in a tiered tax system such as the one the US has), correct me if I am wrong but 7.54% is less than 10.58%, 14.36% is less than 15.67%, and 20.33% is less than 20.90%.
Those are the numbers I get if I follow the yearly rows for 2001 vs 2000. It seems you are paying less in 2001 vs 2002.
The only place you payed more is on your marginal tax rate (Marginal tax rate is the tax rate on the last dollar you pay taxes on - that is the highest rate you qualify for) if you make half the median income. I would bet that has more to do with moving into a higher tax bracket than anything (median income changes each year, typically so do where the brackets are placed). If that marginal tax rate is on the last 300 dollars of income it's not very relevant.
By your link the last time the 1/2 median income people payed that little tax was 1967 (mostly in the 12's and 13's so 7 is a good deal different), median income 1974 (stays a little under 17 mostly, once more 14 percent is a signifigant amount of money when talking yearly income), and double median income 1998 (it fluctuates from 20 to about 21 from 1978 on). Most would consider that to be different from virtually unchanged since 1980.
So where do you get taxes rose in 2001 vs 2000? Heck income rose and tax rate went down, that meets most peoples definition of "more money in my pocket" or "less payed in taxes"
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
The fact that you connect these two unrelated issues together shows your bias. How could the desire to keep a source of unprecidented scientific discovery operational be related to an opinion of a politician?
Even knowing the risks, I'd gladly go myself on a mission to service Hubble. And even if I were told up front that it was a one-way mission, I'd still go. I can think of many worse ways to give up one's life.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
He was talking about Bill Clinton, not Bush Jr, as the man we love to hate. He also was not comparing 2000 to 2001, but as he explicitly said, 1992 to 2000. He was showing that the average income rose and the percent taken from taxes reduced.
I do think this aspect is out of context, though.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
While I have no doubt that some is, I suspect that the majority are like those of us who have (or still do) work at NASA who oppose illogical choices.
I can't see why people are suddenly spendthrift when a Republican president wants to do something, but we can spend billions on welfare and hike taxes up to strangulating levels without anyone complaining under a Democrat.
Yeah, those pesky democrats. Clinton received a government with more than 200 Billion / year deficit and in 8 years "balanced" it. Yeah, it wasn't really, but nor was it bleeding us dry like Reagan's and W's.
This is not about Republican vs. Democrat. It is about bad policies all the way around. Bush's people are gutting a good working system. You do not stop things that are working and cheap. Consider what happened to NASA when Nixon killed the moon shots and replaced it with something new and better; the shuttle. We now have no real lift capacity, a partial lab in space, and a looming space race 2 (cool, I say). That is what happens with stupid choices. W and his crew are trying to do the same.
FWIW, I am a huge fan of getting us to Mars. Just not the way that W is talking about it. I maintain that if we really wish to get to Mars, we send 60 people there to live out their lives and establish a forward colony. Screw the return trip.
OK, so NASA can't save Hubble for less than a billion, I'll bet there are companies out there who can.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The "Bush Plan" is yet another purely political move, from an administration that insults the intelligence of its citizens.
They allocated only a small token amount, enough to get the press for supporting this "bold initiative", but nowhere near enough to really accomplish such a mission (or enough to materially effect the budget).
This was the same thing as the Anti-Gay Marriage Constitutional amendment.. They know it has no chance of actually getting passed, but they throw it around to gain support from the fuckwits on election day.
Sort of like the crusade against steroids kicked off in the state of the union address. Yeah, we're in an unpopular war with more soldiers being killed, and we have the threat of terrorism... but what we really need is the fucking president to take a stand against steroids! Bringing down a wealthy black man like Barry Bonds should really secure Bush's power base.
"Mission Accomplished"?
"Bring 'em On"?
STFU!
Sure there are astronauts that would do this, and test pilots and jet jocks galore. Fortunately it's not their decision to make. An older and wiser head has looked at the risk (much larger then previously thought) consider the consequences if it went to hell (loss of yet another shuttle, loss of five to seven MORE astronauts, NASA being gutted after Congress and the public scream in outrage about "Why did you ever do such a thing after the Columbia boards recommendations???") and all the various other fall out, and decided the game ain't worth the candle. Look nobody wants to see Hubble fail, and NASA isn't talking about splashing it down tomorrow. It's got a few good years left. The problem is that the upgrades would only keep it going for five to seven years longer then otherwise and it simply isn't worth risking the human lives and cost to the program. The stars and galaxies and all will be there in a dozen years, why not use this sudden outpouring of concern for this myopic bird, to build a better scope and launch it? Why so much sudden attachment to a scope that everybody and I mean EVERYBODY jumped all over as a bat-blind hair-brained piece of junk when it was launched? I mean it's nice to be loved and all, but let's get some perspective. The truth is that it would be much more fun to design and build a better scope and do even better research. I'm not talking James T. Webb here, I mean a new visible light to UV scope, with better resolution and more thought into the science we would like to do, now that we know what kind of science we can do. And build one that doesn't require the Shuttle, because Shuttle is gone once ISS is finished.
We have three shuttles left out of five (which means that we can only do 3/5 of the mission flights we had planned to do every year), we have much more hardware for ISS, which is even more expensive then the repair and replacement parts for Hubble, sitting around in Florida. We have numerous international treaty commitments to our partners, many of whom are supposed to be paid with flight time on ISS for their contributions, which have to be honored. And after the Columbia boards recommendations any NASA administrator that decided to still go ahead with shuttle mission, at those orbital parameters, would be putting himself out on a very long limb, far, far above the ground, and inviting old man Murphy to come along with a saw. Commonsense says "Sorry, but this is a bridge to far." Understand that the game is changed. We got burned once, thought we had learned our mistakes, fixed the obvious problems we saw and went back to flying it. Now we've been burned again, and a LOT of the reasons sound hauntingly familiar. Well fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. NASA manned flight has suddenly gotten VERY, VERY RISK ADVERSE. The idea that "Oh well we fixed these problems, now it's all better" suddenly sounds like a lot of Pollyannaish nonsense. NASA will do what it must with the shuttles, but it will hold its collective breath every time it launches one from now on. Safety is no longer our watchword; it's the ONLY damn thing I hear about nowadays. Congress might vote to override O'Keefe, if they do then on their heads be it. If they do then they better get ready to collectively resign if anything goes wrong, and they better have the letters to the families written in advance, just in case, cause that's what Shawn O'Keefe would have to do if he had made the decision and it went pants, as the Brits say. Those who are so quick to judge aren't the people that will have to explain it to the president, congress, the families, and the general public, until they are, they can darn well be a lot less dogmatic about this. And that's my view for whatever it's worth.
200 Million dollars is a lot of money to put towards something that can probably never be used with any other piece of equipment except Hubble, and not put it to use.
This is actually a logical falacy. I learned about this in a decision theory class I was in for a while at Cornell University. Previous investments should not directly affect economic decisions like this, only the current situation. That is, just because we spent lots of $$$ to make Plan A work does not mean we should continue with Plan A even if Plan B does the same thing for less additional money.
Imagine that you buy a truck for $10000. You then end up putting several more thousand dollars into it for repairs (like we did with the hubble). You even got a nice big turbocharger to put on it for when it's fixed next... however you get a bill saying it'll cost $4000 to fix the truck. And it's getting old. And lets say truck technology has advanced so much that for $4000 you can get a nice brand new truck that's even better. Rational decision-making dictates you would purchase the new truck - despite how much money you put into it in the past.
I'm not suggesting that we currently have an alternative to Hubble that does the same thing for a better price, however previous investments SHOULD NOT dictate our policies, only the current scientific/economic facts.
Disclaimer: I work for NASA/JPL, but as a software engineer.
Cheers,
Justin Wick
"but as he explicitly said, 1992 to 2000."
Ahh, sorry, I thought he said 2000 vs 2001 (he was complaining about Bush so I read what I expected to see I guess).
Though the drops correspond to a republican congress also.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Let California or Texas run it. Some state with skill. Some non-welfare state.
but shouldn't we just let it go ?
If you are asking that question honestly, then its obvious to the scientists among us that you have little or no appreciation for the information that this great instrument has brought us, and will continue to bring us for quite some time if its maintained. That instrument has single-handedly multiplied our knowledge of the universe we live in by a factor of at least 100, and refined some of our +- 50% guesses down to +- 5%, simply by being beyond the reach of the limitations in optical bandwidth that our planets atmosphere places on all the ground based scopes. Its done things that all the active optical stuff we've put on mountains so high that they are run by remote control still couldn't do.
The "next generation" telescope everyone is drooling over is designed to do an entirely different job, and is in no way capable of overlapping what the Hubble can do in the visible and near infrared spectrum. And it will be like the Hubble in terms of delays, so I don't see it going up in my remaining lifetime since I'm 69 now. Yes, it will also do good science when it goes up, but it cannot do what the Hubble is doing in the wavelength range between visible light and near infrared, say an octave either way from yellow/green as our eyes see color. IIRC its designed to work in the far infrared and into the microwave, where its resolution at best will be 1/10th that of the Hubble. But it will see thru dust clouds the Hubble can't too. We won't know what the region around Sag A really looks like until it does go up, Sag A IIRC, is supposedly very near if not the black hole this galaxy spins around.
As far as a manned mission to mars is concerned, thats where I feel that the remoteness and generally inhospitable conditions which combine to make it a one way trip preclude using anything but prisoners already sentenced to death for such a mission.
Considering the intelligence level of someone dumb enough to have gotten themselves in such a predicament in the first place, I'm not too sure that we would gain much in the way of scientific knowledge by following that distastefull to many path.
I look at it as political posturing, an attempt at giving NASA a "reason de terre", as opposed to fireing that whole bunch and starting all over again. Thats something we should have done when the first one blew up. This new shuttle loss just confirms that the old boy network that covers their ass MOST of the time by sheer luck alone, is still in place.
Human nature being what it is, I'm not even 75% sure that a total housecleaning would even fix it now. But I think a wholesale fireing, and maybe even a highly public manslaughter prosecution of the decision maker who passed on the loose foam problem might have a sobering effect on all the pie in the sky folks NASA seems to have collected down thru the decades. Nobody learned anything about common sense safety after the fire in Houston (and the test admin who ordered that test should have been prosecuted for murder) nor from Apollo 13 when there was a clear indication of a problem with the tank heaters thermostat before they launched, the only thing actually fixed was the booster seals after the late 80's blowup, and this time the loose foam was known, and had been known for at least the last 20 launches, possibly for much more time than that. But nobody has stepped forward to actually admit that doing the launch was a bad idea, "after all, it hasn't been a problem before now, why should this time be any different?"
IMO that attitude will not change until someone actually does some hard time. The agency needs the same accountability as you and I would get in a prosecution for no less than manslaughter in 3 of these 4 "accidents".
Cheers, Gene
the excuse is that if the shuttle is damaged, it wouldnt
be able to get to the ISS which is in an entirely different orbit?
presumably a fuel issue?
so they want to waste money researching and perhaps building
an untested robotic system, and then *launch that*.
couldn't they devise a method for using a soyuz to propel
a shuttle to the ISS. then launch at same time (or have ready
to launch) a soyuz? (or if the soyuz has the room, simply
take the shuttle astronuats home directly.)
surely paying the russians for a soyuz launch is cheaper
than a robotic development program that probably wont
do as well as human repairmen? and infusing money into
the russian space program may not be such a bad idea anyway.
oh wait, cant have other countries helping, that would be
just plain un-american. much less embarassing to abandon
useful technology.
oh well.
Secondly, people undermine Bush's plans because only an ass would approve of them.
Thirdly, you are an ass.
How long did we wait after Skylab for the ISS?
How many times was it delayed and scaled back?
Do you honestly think that this new telescope will actually launch in 2012? It won't even be fully designed by then. The Hubble is not some old, obsolete piece of equipment. It's the best we've ever had, and will still be the best at what it does, even if the Webb telescope goes as planned.
The Webb telescope only sees infrared. It can't see what the Hubble can and never will. There will be no pictures from the Webb that can show what the human eye can see. The Webb telescope is intended to augment Hubble, not replace it.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it fall, does it make a sound?
Maybe the EU could chip in the money and resources instead of launching a redundant GPS system of satellites?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
This could be a great opportunity for private industry contractors.
No one is gonna do this work for free and who says NASA has the money. IMHO,the moon and Mars mission stuff is a shellgame with Hubble a victim. The administration says it wants to do something big but it will cost a lot of money. So, to "save" money, it will do some preliminary research. To fund this research, they cancel other programs. These other programs cost more than the research so they save money now (to pay for Iraq? tax cuts?). And since the research never comes to anything, they save money in the long run.
Remember, this is the administration that cancelled much of NASA's earth observing work and then turns around and says, "Gee, we can't find any signs of global warming."
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
No, it's not really that possible or easy. It would take a lot of energy to change orbits that radically. Things don't go around the Earth at the same height (and I'm not talking a few hundred feet, either) the same direction (angle), and for that matter, the same speed. Hell, some orbits are highly eliptical and some are circular. To match an orbit with an object you pretty much have to launch into that orbit. Slight corrections can be made in-flight, like moving up close to it, but this also pushes you to a higher altitude due to your increased speed. Likewise, if you slow down, you tend to fall as well. The Hubble is quite a ways out there IIRC, now imagine the ISS being on the other side of the planet when the crew needs to get there, and you quickly see how this becomes pretty impossible. Unfortunate, but that's physics for ya.
PS: Gratuitous rant about America becomming more tightwad'd every day has been *BAHLEETED!*
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
my main issue with bush is that he seems to magically pull money out from nowhere.
throws a buncha money at Iraq, throws a bunch of money into the military, thros a buncha money into organizations devoted to give companies more control over the consumer, more money towards homeland security and the FBI, etc.
There are many others as well I dont feel like listing...
For a wishy washy economy at the moment, we sure have a lot of money to throw around.
This is why your analogy is bad. The point is that it is not a small investment. NASA would have to violate the recommendations of the CAIB report for safety, actually create known unsafe conditions, and risk the entire shuttle (and ISS) program just to keep the Hubble alive. This is most definitely not a small investment.
But is it worth the substantial risk? I'm not sure. I'd need to know more about what progress can be achieved in the few years between Hubble's planned shutdown and James Webb coming online. Would this loss put science decades behind in progress, or just a few years? It's something the whole community (NASA, astronomers, Congress, public) would have to decide, with promises not to shut down NASA programs if things go awry.
Actually, while you're logic's correct, it's not quite the same situation.
It's more like you have that $4000 bill to fix the truck, and while you can buy a new truck for $4000, you can't take delivery for a few years.
So, either you're without a truck, or you suck it up and spend the money to fix it in the mean time, while ordering that other truck.
After decades of war across the galaxy, I'm glad that Astronauts and Robots have joined forces to save mankind.
There is a matter regarding developing a robot to service the Hubble. Part of the party line on the manned space program is the limitation of robots. While the Hubble optics error was a dark moment for NASA, the Hubble repair mission with a lot of complex, long space walks was a "jewel in the crown" of the manned space program, and if they can get a robot to do the repair, it would kind of puncture that concept.
On the other hand, given both the cost and risk of manned space flight, oh forget the risk because people are willing to take risks, simply the cost, I am beginning to agree with Freeman Dyson that instead of one complex, man-servicable Hubble, NASA should have built a series of throw-away Hubbles with specific missions launched on expendable rockets. What is a Shuttle flight, anywhere from 300 mil to a cool billion depending on accounting? Couldn't you build a whole new telescope and launch it for that money?
For a wishy washy economy at the moment, we sure have a lot of money to throw around.
No, we actually don't. That's the whole point. Hence our huge deficits. We actually had a surplus just 4 years ago. This administration is fiscally reckless, no matter what your politics are.
The deficit, in pure dollar amount is now higher than it has ever been. The previous record was set in 1992 (see same story). In terms of GDP percentage, it was actually a bit higher under Reagan and Bush Sr. The Beeb has a nice article about all of this.
So why do Republicans seem to love huge deficits? My speculation is that by running up the deficit, they starve Congress of money that could otherwise be used for social programs that they are morally opposed to. $1600 from every American is now used to pay off the deficit. Think what we could do with that money, if we now had a $5.6 trillion surplus instead of a $1.5 trillion deficit (as was the projection for 2004 at the end of the Clinton administration).
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
I think your analogy is bad. It's as if you had already purchased some new part for your old truck for $4000, and had hired someone to install it. You are already planning to buy the new truck in 4 years. So, you can either pay the guy $50 to install the part and drive your awesome tricked-out truck for 4 years, or you can refuse, and walk for 4 years. Oh, and you'll have that fancy $4000 part lying around your living room, doing squat. Maybe you can make it into some kind of ashtray!
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
I was responding to a post that claimed that Democrats in office cause "strangulating" tax rates. By no account do the numbers show that.
Yes, taxes went down in 2002, halleluleah and all praise Bush (peace be unto him). Well, No. As I expressed elsewhere in this thread, I believe these tax cuts were fiscally irresponsible and motivated by a desire to starve congress of money. Tax cuts are fine, if we can afford them. I think it's obvious that we cannot in this case.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
An older and wiser head has looked at the risk (much larger then previously thought)
No, that's not right. The risk of failure after the wiser heads of CAIB investigated the Shuttle fleet was the same as the assessed risk before the accident. Nothing has changed about our knowledge of the risks involved in a shuttle mission before and after the accident. Only the willingness to face the risks has changed, and that abruptly.
In your post, you sound as if it's some huge suprise that there's a risk of death when a shuttle launches. This has always been known. Spaceflight is inherently dangerous. That's why astronauts are Heroes.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
It's funny how the Russian Space Agency has been slagged in the Western world. Their stuff is "antiquated", "backward" and their astronaughts(sp) are drunks.
I was extremely annoyed at how the Russians were represented in Armageddon. News flash gentlemen...their station didn't fall into the ocean til it was told to (aka Skylab) and their Soyuz may be dated but at least they doesn't blow up.
As usual, the Americans open up a field and then surrender it through sheer lack of ambition/dedication. Sorry I know this is a tangent but damn it NASA seems to be in the way of innovation ala Microsoft these days.
Oh all that will happen. We just won't see it.
Unfortunate choice of words here. You do know that the Christian right started complaining about Hubble as soon as it started to show images that might conflict with creationism?
Its like the 9/11 thing, catastrophe happens, the immediate Bush response is 'how can we take advantage of this for our own political ends'. The economy goes into recession: 'how can we use this for tax cuts'. The Columbia disaster: 'how can we use this to kill Hubble'.
If the risk of another shuttle disaster is significant the entire fleet should be grounded completely. The space station should be de-orbited, the mission to mars cancelled. Of course this is very likely to happen after the election in any case. The next shuttle launch has already been moved to after the election.
Going to the space station only provides a marginal safety improvement. The same gain could be realized by reducing the crew by half.
The other option is to abandon Hubble I and replace it with a Hubble II designed to be serviced by machines. There are duplicates of every Hubble part. The duplicate mirror is actually better than the orbiting one, the fabrication on that one was not botched unlike the orbiting one which has spherical abberation defects.
After the Challenger disaster a replacement was quickly put together using spare parts. There is no reason this cannot be done with Hubble. There is even a spare ATLAS launch platform which could easily carry it, although one could be bought from the Russians or Chinese at a good price. I don't know if Arianne has the capacity but I would not be surprised.
Cancelling the space station program would free up plenty of cash in the NASA budget. The science return on Hubble is vastly greater than any expected from the station and a manned trip to mars combined.
Arthur C. Clarke is right, its time for the robots to take over here.
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I thought that Monsignore Bush has declared there'll be no more money for a fruitless project like Hubble, and all the money he wants to borrow in the future will flow into Mars bases, Mars hotels and the new CIA center on Mars.
Astronauts have been dying in accidents since the 60s. One shuttle blew up in 1986, before Hubble was put up. You think the mission to put Hubble in orbit was risk-free? The repair missions? Of course not. And it was known then that they were risky. Nothing has changed except the identification of a new flaw in a field where errors can mean instant death.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
okay... so space robots are going to fix our space telescope? we really are liveing in the future... I complain about the lack of flying cars and stuff, but really this has it beat. the fact there is robots on mars too...
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
I'm reminded of the story of the Shackleton expedition, and others like it, when men risked their lives to advance human knowledge. Where is that spirit of adventure today?
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
And we were insane and stupid to go to the hubble and repair it all those previous times? Out of our minds to retrieve that Intelsat satellite? Lunatics to repair and release Solar Max? Irresponsible to retrieve a comsat whose kick-motor failed to start?
Where were all the naysayers then?
i am a soviet space shuttle
"We have three shuttles left out of five (which means that we can only do 3/5 of the mission flights we had planned to do every year)"
Someone just missed the old logic train, there. We have NEVER had 5 shuttles at any time. (Unless you count the Enterprise. In which case, the same assement of your facts and/or ability to interpret them applies in as much as Enterprise isn't flight-worthy.) After Challenger, a new shuttle was built to replace it. So we are *not* now in a position to do only 60% of what we had planned. At worst, we're in a position to do 75% of what we would have planned to do each year, as of a year an a half ago.
But, see, it's not even that bad. NASA's ability to launch shuttles isn't really limited by the number of shuttles in existance. With 4 shuttles we were only launching 10 times a year. The limiting factor is how quickly they can repair, overhaul, check over, and prep the shuttles between missions. That's a man-power and money issue.
"we have much more hardware for ISS, which is even more expensive then the repair and replacement parts for Hubble, sitting around in Florida. We have numerous international treaty commitments to our partners, many of whom are supposed to be paid with flight time on ISS for their contributions, which have to be honored."
Whoops, false dilemma time! The choice isn't an either/or between HST and ISS. O'Keefe's statment that every future shuttle flight is needed for ISS is either a load of bullshit or it implies that we should just scrap ISS now. (Projects *always* have overruns. ISS is notorious for it. If O'Keefe wants us to believe that that one extra flight is already known to be the deciding factor between success and failure, then NASA already knows to a high degree of certainty that ISS has failed.)
But failing that, realisitically one extra flight to HST will have little affect on ISS. They'll probably had a slightly longer gap between shuttle visits, but little else. Given how often the shuttle missions are pushed back anyway, this is probably lost in the noise anyway.
"And after the Columbia boards recommendations any NASA administrator that decided to still go ahead with shuttle mission"
Which recommendations, exactly? the CAIB didn't say, "Don't go to HST." They said to have an autonomous repair kit ready for non-ISS missions. Then they said to have the kit ready for ISS. So which recommendations are you talking about that O'Keefe doesn't dare ignore?
"Those who are so quick to judge aren't the people that will have to explain it to the president, congress, the families, and the general public, until they are, they can darn well be a lot less dogmatic about this."
Actually, a lot of the people in NASA, Congress, and other positions of authority are judging O'Keefe's decision on this one. These *are* people who have the decision on their heads, just like O'Keefe does. And since O'Keefe refuses to open the issue to a review, no one knows what *his* real reasons are. So why should we trust him more than anyone else in the know?
"NASA will do what it must with the shuttles, but it will hold its collective breath every time it launches one from now on."
Ya know, if it's this bad, why are they risking DOZENS of flights to ISS and killing ONE flight to HST? We can back out of ISS. If the problem is as bad as you want us to believe, none of our partners would blame us particularly for bailing.
"And that's my view for whatever it's worth."
All things considered, very little.
This looks like a job for Space Systems Lab! In fact, RTSX had already been under consideration for the Sept 2004 Hubble servicing mission. I think this would be a great opportunity to give Ranger a spin. With the increased interest in astronaut safety, there's a very real opportunity here for the space telerobotics community. After all, why do a dangerous all-hands spacewalk outside the ISS, as they did recently, when they could send a robot out to do the dirty work, instead?
no I do not use a spell checker ... deal with it ...
... more likely to be killed in one of those then in any of our spacecraft.
... the buch plant does not science & does not like to fund it ... no i'm not talking about his giving us not enough money to go to mars & cal that science.
if Sean O'Keefe is woried about safty he better not let any one onto a car
it's just about the money
thanks for your time
FiberOPtic
Cancelling the space station program would free up plenty of cash in the NASA budget. The science return on Hubble is vastly greater than any expected from the station and a manned trip to mars combined.
Yeah, maybe one day humans will be able to colonize pictures of stars.
You do know that the Christian right started complaining about Hubble as soon as it started to show images that might conflict with creationism? Its like the 9/11 thing, catastrophe happens, the immediate Bush response is 'how can we take advantage of this for our own political ends'. The economy goes into recession: 'how can we use this for tax cuts'. The Columbia disaster: 'how can we use this to kill Hubble'.
Not that I would put it past the Christian far right to try something like this, but where did you get this conspiracy theory from? It sounds like something out of science fiction comedy.
bit trollent
just save the damned thing because we've got plenty of science projects already waiting; have invested already in the repairs; and in the meantime, be working on putting some type of telescope on the moon?
Try not to let life get in the way of living.
That is not science.
The unmanned exploration program results in more knowledge than joy riding in the shuttle does.
And before we get to any stars we need to invent a space drive considerably faster than our current technology.
Hubble is telling us which stars have planets we might want to visit - kinda useful for colonization eh?
Not that I would put it past the Christian far right to try something like this, but where did you get this conspiracy theory from? It sounds like something out of science fiction comedy.
Suggest a more credible theory that is consistent with the facts.
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The Shuttle mission to Hubble got cut because of scheduling pressure, not safety concerns.
We are comitted to completing the International Space Station, and we are comitted to retiring the Shuttle soon.
There is no way to meet both of these mandates unless every remaining Shuttle mission goes to ISS.
The sad and tragic thing is that these scheduling pressures are already setting up the next big Shuttle disaster.
I'd say there are better than even odds that we will lose another Shuttle and crew before the Shuttle fleet is finally scuttled.
Oh goodness, what shall Astronomers do all day then? (Yes, this is sarcasm.)
+++OK ATH
"In your post, you sound as if it's some huge suprise that there's a risk of death when a shuttle launches. This has always been known. Spaceflight is inherently dangerous."
Yea, but you miss my point. Both these loses were not the result of engineering failure as such. Instead they both came from acceptance of a risk that had been flagged and ignored. When the review board considered the background of this failure it found that the previous 40 plus missions had shown a pattern of increasing tile damage and abrasion, yet NASA had ignored the problem cause it never seemed to cause a problem. That's a management failure of the first order. It's not the shuttle that we have come to see as horrendously more dangerous, it's the whole human decision making team behind it. That was the huge pile of donkey poop Happy Danny Goldin left behind for Shawn O'Keefe to have to deal with, and it's an not a problem he can wave a magic wand at overnight and clean up. What you (and to be fair) everyone else who has posted the same way you have) seems to miss. Is that we don't just haul out a shuttle, stuff some parts aboard, and light the fires. There is an ENOURMAS Human machine that goes into motion planning every single part of every single minute of every single mission NASA flies. The paperwork, checklists, documents and other dreck would fill the VAB if it was all on Dead tree format. And that Machine is very, very, clearlly broken. So Shawn O'Keefe has a problem. He can cancel every single shuttle flight, or he can try and put the bandaids in place to handle one set of orbital requirements that we're going to have to do several times. Trying to put in place enough fixes to deal with the subtly different set of challenges that a Hubble mission (which NASA would be doing only once) simply isn't worth it. If you read carefully what O'Keefe said, that was the jist of it. I assure you, that man is gonna be one sleepless individual every time STS launches. Since it's his head on the chopping block, he made the call, you may not like it, but it was his to make and he did it. Thats why it's called an executive decision, because if he called it wrong we execute him (in something less then a figurative sense, of course)
The Wildman
Where to begin, where to begin?
Ok, look if Congress overrides this decision then the blame is on them, and you know what? Given that politicians have a wonderous ability to point anywhere else then themselves they won't take that blame. Shawn O'Keefe doesn't have that option. He can't run away or hide if it all goes to Hell in a handcart. He's saddled with an organization that ignored obvious warning signs of a problem (and in my belittled opinion, that was the most signifigant finding of the Review Board) and theres bugger all he can do about it in the short run. So he looked at the manifest list for the shuttles, saw that every single one, except one, was to ISS. Decided that maybe with a year or more to rereview every single thing, have some quiet reassignments of personnel for the more obviously neglectful, and drum one set of procedures for the one set of orbitals and mission procedures that we were going to have to do again, and again, and again, and maybe, just maybe his people might not miss such obvious signs of problems as six inch gashes in protective tiles again. The one lone mission that had signifgantly different parameters, with no safe harbor in case it all went kablooey, got dumped. That was the nuts and bolts of his decision as plainly as he was allowed by political constrants to give it.
As for the board recommendations. True they didn't say "don't go to HST", but they sure did say more then just "have a repair kit handy". Them carbon/carbon edge pieces on the wing fronts were never actually intended to be repaired in space, neither were the silica bricks that make up ninty percent of the rest of the thermal shield. Nobody is really sure if that damn repair kit is worth bupkiss and nobody really wants to put it to the test. This ain't exactly like using a "Fix-a-Flat" kit.
As for scrapping ISS, maybe I wasn't clear, but I gotta say that my sneaky suspicions tell me that nothing would make O'Keefes day more then if he was allowed to. The problem is there is simply no way he can. The ramifications of dunping it are vast (and just 'tween you, me, and the wall, they have very little to do with science. Let me lead you on this one. Take a look at how much of the US manned flight budget is being quietly diverted to the Russian space agency. You gotta read NASA's budget very, very closely to get the right numbers, they've buried it fairly well. ISS is the explanation for a lot of that diversion, the real reason is a litle more convoluted) Leaving that aside, the series of very real commitments we have to numerous nations means we can't unilaterilly terminate it, even if we want to. We owe folks on this one, the previous two administrations, purely in the interests of international brotherhood mind you, made a bunch of commitments to various countries on this, so support it we must. Nah Shawn O'Keefe might want to scrap ISS (and that's just my guess mind you) but there ain't no way he can decide that.
On turn around time at the Cape. Fewer birds means each one flies more often, which means each one has to be serviced more often, each one wears out faster, each one has to be cycled a little faster cause it has to be ready sooner, which means that people stand a better chance of making mistakes, which means, that your risk of going from 3 shuttles down to 2 starts increasing. It makes any delay or problem become even more schedule impacting and things back up more. Argue wither that's 60 or 75 percent imparement, it's still imparement. Quibble me not with the 15 percent when your talking human lives and several Billion dollar investments and unreplaceable launch assets.
To put it bluntly.
IN the end Hubble is just a scope, we didn't have it before it launched and still managed to do good astronomy, we won't have it after it fails and we'll probably manage to continue to do good astronomy without it then too, and even if we do the repair mission that's only another five to seven years of time in a best case scenario), and rather then risk it for that I'd rather deorbit
I agree with you when you say that several people should have paid for this fiasco. Certainly a few highly prominent firings at the least, and some probes for negligent homicide might not have been out of hand. And I'm glad that Hubble's been useful, but....
As far as manned flight's usefulness in general, well maybe I an misperceiving your comments, If I am please forgive me, but if we ain't going to settle out in space, start colonizing it, and harvesting the mineral wealth energy abundance, and just plain breathing room it offers then frankly I couldn't care less if the moon is made of green cheese, the stars are little balls of light shining through from heaven, and the Sun revolves around Pluto. At the point that we decide that we don't want to exploit the rest of our system, then learning about it becomes nothing but an exercise in intellectual masturbation. It becomes knowledge that might make a few intellectual elites feel good, entertain and astound a few more outside that clique, and a colossal waste of money for the rest of us. Pure knowledge that is NEVER going to be turned into practical application isn't worth the effort. It might get somebody a university chair somewhere and be good for settling some Oxford Dons argument with his chums, but beyond that I consider its utility pointless.
I think your other points are valid, but the perception I get of your opinion of the relative worth of pure science and astronomy verses manned flight and getting out into the solar system ourselves is completely opposite of my own. Again if I have misperceived it, I apologize, but I'm tired of intellectuals that think the government should be taxing money from people that could be spending it on their own needs, simply to satisfy the intellectuals curiosity on some sterile point about their particular theories of astronomical structure or origins. If that description does not fir you, then again I apologize.
The reason for colonizing Luna and Mars is not science. It is to exploit and use all of the wealth of our system, to expand the collective opportunities for the human race, to challenge our technological ingenuity and provide technological advancement for our society in the feedback, to harness the energy and abundance of all our resources, and in the end - with a little luck and a lot of hard work - give human kind a chance of surviving a single point failure hear on Earth. Hell maybe we can even move our dirty industries to space and clean old Mother Earth up.
If it ain't getting us that, then we're wasting EVERY dime that NASA spends on space and we ought to dump everything that isn't to do with improvements in aeronautical engineering and forget about the rest.
And now you know why I'm often called
The Wildman
Read the CAIB report. Nobody really understood the risk then. The shuttle had been prematurely declared "operational" (for political reasons) when it was (and is) still experimental. NASA had become complacent in failures and irregularities because they were "within experience", meaning they were using the faulty logic of "these things have gone wrong before without disaster, therefore they are ok".
And yes, "we" (NASA) were a little stupid to go to Hubble in the first place with an experimental vehicle with multiple known problems and little means of detecting or fixing them. It was, and is, a big risk. We just got lucky for awhile but the odds finally caught up with us.
In this case, its a $2million package for Hubble, which is going to cost you somewhere in the region of $600million to fit. Or you could just go without, as you did before Hubble existed. Seriously, is something going to happen in the 6 years between Hubble being decommissioned and JW being commissioned?
In this case, its a $2million package for Hubble
You are off by two orders of magnitude.
Or you could just go without, as you did before Hubble existed.
Well, obviously. The whole point of the discussion is that some of us think it would be better to accept the risks of SM4 and keep HST operational, rather than let it die before its time.
Seriously, is something going to happen in the 6 years between Hubble being decommissioned and JW being commissioned?
No, if HST is let go, I think much less will happen in that time period, than if it was kept going.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
I have read the report. And we actually knew all along about this particular problem and had developed, or started to, ways to inspect the tiles and repair them in orbit. At the time, there was no way to get it working, but not for lack of trying. (That research has been resumed with new information and knowledge developed over the past few decades.)
It's ridiculous to change our tune this late in the game and decide we're a bunch of wimps. And I'm ashamed to say some of my taxes go toward such idiotic notions. If we were too scared to do these sorts of things we should have decided that in the first place. Now we have a beautiful vehicle that is largely useless for many of its major intended uses for no real legitimate reason.
If you look at the report yourself, it says to develop an autonomous repair capability. Apparently, some people in the goverment can't read very well and didn't see that word, or didn't look it up to see what it means...
i am a soviet space shuttle
The unmanned exploration program results in more knowledge than joy riding in the shuttle does.
It's not the destination, It's the journey. The ability to consistantly and reliably take humans to and from space requires such technical prowess that only three nations have done it successfully so far. Is it any coincidence that these nations are also among the most technologically advanced on the planet? Hubble may provide more information for astronomy textbooks than than manned space flight but pictures of stars are far less usefull for mankind than the experienced gained from sending people to explore what has previously only been photographed.
Hubble is telling us which stars have planets we might want to visit - kinda useful for colonization eh?
We can't colonize far away planets if we can't land on Mars. We can't land on Mars if we don't develop our manned space exploration skills. The Shuttel and the ISS (which is not finished and requires more shttle launches before it is complete) do more to develop these skills than Hubble ever could.
Suggest a more credible theory that is consistent with the facts.
My theory is that Hubble simply isn't a high enough priority for NASA to justify the expense and risk of a Shuttle launch, especially when the ISS has modules waiting on the ground. Religous nutcases don't bother messing with NASA satellites to promote their agenda. The evidence that disproves creationism is abundent on earth and any insight gained from Hubble doesn't add that much to the case against them, after all there are other telescopes. Creationists concentrate their efforts on schools trying to breed ignorance in children so that they may become ignorant adults who believe that religon is science.
bit trollent
The ISS/shuttle/moon/Mars are incremental steps. Those programs should not preclude the (admittedly remote) possibility of a discovery that will make a vast change in our capabilities.
A successful R&D operation needs the opportunity to persue the ridiculous as well as the plebian, just in case the phenomenal reward is not where we thought we should be looking. We're talking about hedging our bets with a tiny investment. Penny-pinching here would be extremely short-sighted.
"Do not drill any holes in your cat - it will not like it."
-- Nick Davies
So what happens to the already built parts for the Hubble that was supposed to be installed in the HST anyway?? Also NASA is still going to have to send someone or something to make a predictable course for the HST to fall toward the Earth. No.. it won't totally burn up in the atmosphere, because of the titanium parts. So.. it would be a disaster even if the HST is not serviced. This is the last mission so there won't be any more going back anyway.
>
In what way? How is ISS going to teach us something that over a hundred shuttle flights, dozens and dozens of capsule missions, Mir, and Skylab didn't? They've already gutted ISS of anything that looks remotely like science (such as the centrafuge experiment that was designed to epxlore how much gravity humans need to maintain muscle and bone mass). The only thing ISS is ever going to tell us is that we can build ISS. Even that's not much of a revelation.
Thing about it, when's the last time you heard of any kind of scientific (astronomical, chemical, biological, medical, etc.) result from ISS? I get NASA's press-releases and I can't recall a thing in quite some time. (NASA puts everything that they do into press-releases. Sean O'Keefe uses the lavatory on his own and the press office springs to life.)
If you mean the foam, yes, that's the point. NASA knew about it, but didn't consider it to be serious because it had been seen a number of times before without damaging the wing, and therefore is withing "engineering experience".
What nobody paid attention to was the seriosness of this danger, and the logical fallacy of the "it hasn't caused significant damage yet, therefore it must be ok" belief.
At the time, there was no way to get it working, but not for lack of trying
Actually, it was in large part due to lack of trying. Nobody considered it a priority or a serious problem. That's a major point in the CAIB report. Part of the problem was also that the technology didn't exist to detect the damage they need to look for. The high precision 3D sensors they are putting on the shuttle for inspection (as low as 1/4" holes and 0.03" wide cracks) didn't exist at the time.
It's ridiculous to change our tune this late in the game
What?!?!?! So you're telling me that once a serious risk has been identified, and that we've been putting things at great risk for years, that it is wrong to now recognize it is a serious risk and act accordingly. Does this make the least bit of sense? It's a serious risk. People's lives are in danger. Billions of dollars are at risk. Whole space programs could shut down if another shuttle is lost. We've been doing it wrong for years, and you seem to think this is justification for continuing to do it wrong. That just baffles me, and makes me glad you are running any high-risk programs that I'm involved with. Perhaps you should re-think your case here.
In what way? How is ISS going to teach us something that over a hundred shuttle flights, dozens and dozens of capsule missions, Mir, and Skylab didn't?
Manned space flight is still in its infancy. I would liken it to where airplanes were when pressurized cockpits were first introduced. You might say, congratulations on being able to fly to 39000 ft. but what is the point of doing it 3000 times just for fun and research? Think about that the next time you cruise at 39000 ft. with 500 other passengers.
bit trollent
We need to get something straight here, and the point I was trying to make was apparently completely missed.
There is fixing a problem by burying your head in the sand and claiming you're not going to deal with the situation that causes the problem, thus "fixing" the problem. Which is what's going on. What was done in the past isn't as relevant as what gets done now and what kind of attitude there is toward getting it done. It's nowhere near satisfactory.
And then there is really fixing the problem by actually going to the effort of figuring out what needs to be done and doing it, none of this complete bullshit that's flying around. The excuses keep morphing as the reasons continually keep getting shot down. That's a hint of the Ostrich Mentality.
Frankly I'm tired of all this taking the easy way out. The bullshit-mongerers need to be fired and real engineers brought in who will come up with a real answer. Nobody's acting "accordingly", they're just playing ostrich.
i am a soviet space shuttle
uhhmmmmmmmmm. ol'papa bear thinks life is a series of challenages.
lets see if this is right, Shawn O'Keefe, the big kahuna at nasa says its not safe; he's very correct.
some simple math shows us that we've only got 3 workable shuttles; that's very correct.
simple aero dynamics demonstates that falling from a 400 mile altitude to a 10 mile altitude stresses the hell out of everything man-made, and god-made.
when americas finest die going into space, people cry, scream with rage, point fingers, find someone to blame, and generaly feel sad; that's human nature.
now for the tough love part.
short on shuttles? build'em.
astronauts fearful? get new ones.
people screaming? ask for volunters.
boss kicking your butt? gotta move faster.
As one of the engineers who is working on getting the shuttles back up and flying, I take offense to that. Just getting them back up to the ISS is extremely expensive and difficult. Examining the thermal protection system for damage is no simple task. And that's just detecting and measuring damage. Fixing damage in space is far more difficult and expensive to develop. Finally, the necessity for an alternate return method, i.e., a lifeboat, can't be met going to Hubble.
Can the shuttle be made to go to Hubble safely. Probably. But the expense and time involved would be astronomical. It'd probably be cheaper to build and send up a new Hubble on a rocket.
But if you think the problem is people making excuses, you're full of crap. Real engineers are working their asses off just to get the shuttles to return to the ISS. Hubble is a magnitude more difficult and expensive to reach. It's simply been decided that it is not worth it. Nobody is burying their head in the sand here.
I am not saying we shouldn't go to Hubble. But the problem, as I see it, is that nobody has even come close to demonstrating that the effort and expense are worth it yet. Yes, some areas of scientific work will suffer for a few years, but these are just a small fraction of the whole field of astronomy. There are alternatives to some of this work, like the Keck I and II observatories and other adaptive optics telescopes which can rival or better Hubble in many areas. Yes, admittedly, there are some wavelengths that can't be matched by ground-based. But I have yet to hear any convincing argument about why the work in these wavelengths over the few lost years of Hubble would be significant enough to make the expense and effort to get the shuttles safely to Hubble worth it. For the most part, it sounds more like impatience with a little bit of "spoiled" whining thrown in. (That is, a lot of "We've been able to use Hubble before so why should we give it up now.") No, I don't believe that is the "best" level of argument for keeping Hubble, but it's hard to find the good arguments through all the "noise".
To me, the "bullshit-mongers" are those who suggest that NASA isn't looking at this seriously, or those who seem to think Hubble is some sacred god that must be saved at any expense. Most people arguing it needs to be saved don't understand the amount of time, expense, and effort to do so. The opposite also applies somewhat, those who would have to make this effort (and time and expense) don't fully understand the importance of this apparently "short-term" loss of data over a "few" wavelengths. You'd do much better to make your case on why this is necessary than spewing untrue claims and insults about "heads in the sand". My mind is open, but all I'm hearing is insults and contempt, not reasons.
Then we'll probably end up disagreeing to some extent. That's life, it's to be expected. Nobody's necessarily an idiot. I just happen to think it's perfectly doable and a lot more "worth it" than a lot of people do, after lots of skims of different discussions of this that have turned up on Slashdot and elsewhere. Some people think it's even more "worth it" than I do. And I know other space-buffs and program engineers and all kinds of people who know what they're talking about if I ask them about something, and I've talked to some of them about this.
... which, ironically, is better suited to the shuttle than the orbit the ISS is in, which was chosen to please the Russians, or at least accommodate them, depending on the sort of mood you're in.
A few quick comments - As for lifeboats - if you look at the report, it calls for autonomous capabilities, which means not having to have the station handy. And it doesn't seem, to me at least, that that's really being taken care of. Over and over the argument trotted out is that Hubble is in the 'wrong' orbit
Science - well, honestly, I think part of the reason the scientists are so upset is that they know full well that they can't depend on having a replacement any time soon like they supposedly will get. And the "replacement" isn't going to have all the capabilities Hubble has. It essentially is the equivalent of razing an irreplaceable instrument when it is quite possible to save it. Perhaps a lot of the people arguing to save it don't know all the reasons they're being argued against, but I would say in return that I think a lot of the people who are arguing in favor don't know all of the scientists' reasons fully.
And there's always going to be disagreement, no way around that. People involved in this debate are going to be biased in favor of their own position. Yes, that includes both of us. That's how it always is.
My mind is open, too, but all *I* see is a rather lopsided mess with the scientific and engineering community trying to actually do work to come up with something and ever-morphing justifications to maintain a unilateral "forget it" from the feds. Admittedly I'm not happy with the government in general, but it seems to me like they could seem a lot more willing to listen than they are at this point.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Si tibi te corpus pulchrum habere narrem, habeasne id contra me?