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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.
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
Read the article. The cancelled mission was not just to service the telescope in terms of maintenance, it was also to install new instruments worth $167 million as an upgrade.
If they can upgrade what's already there to new technology, why launch a new one? I'm sure the idea of replacing it completely has been considered and the costs weighed.
No no.. You're completely wrong -- The two previous posters are clearly more 'in the know' than the people who actually deal with this stuff for a living.
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?
It would be nice though to put Hubble into a maintainable orbit, maybe even rent it/sell it to a company who wants to take pictures of the heavens and sell them. Even with it being aging technology, I don't believe it should just be discarded like the other aging satelites.. it is a testimate to human ingeniuity that it lasted this long and I believe it should be preserved.
Maybe if we can't put it in a sustainable orbit (for repairs and such) why not bring it back to earth? AFAIK this has never been done and would be a huge test of the space agency... but once it was back on earth, not only could it be in a museum for all to see, we could also test all the different pieces of equipment on it for radiation exposure levels, and see just how well it held up to micrometorites and the like. There's a wealth of knowledge hubble still holds, discarding it now is a complete waste.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
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!!
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.
For (probably) 3 times the cost of the repair mission, a telescope of (probably) 100 times the quality of hubble could be deployed.
Do you have *any* basis for a claim like this, other than "your gut feeling"?
14 years is a long time, around 10 iterations of the "performance doubling every 12-18 months" if you're talking about computer technology. But optical technology has been stable for quite some time. Or, do also claim to have binoculars 512x-1024x better than your dad's?
Remember, Hubble is not a computer - it's a telescope. And, since image processing is done on the ground, advances in computer technology are likely largely irrelevant to the Hubble.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
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
NASA could have one. Build a robot to fix a broken telescope laying around the southern California desert.
Only thing I can think that might be different between the time when Hubble was launched and now is the technology used in the collection of the image itself. We can make much more sensitive CCD's (or CMOS's, which NASA would probably prefer...) for cheaper now, allowing for a much higher resolution picture to be taken.. BUT: since we're already building another telescope, there's no reason at all to throw money at upgrading this piece of hardware, since it would undoubtedly require quite invasive work.
Sure, we have much better technology now to make a lighter, cheaper telescope with a much better eyesight, but nothing can escape the allure of those awesome pictures Hubble has returned to us. Since Webb is looking to be more like an infrared telescope, Hubble's the only imaging device we will have to take pictures like these..
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
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.
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.
It's also worth noting that the costs to build upgrades to Hubble have already been incurred, since the development of more Hubble telescope additions has already completed (176 million USD worth). It'd be worth it just to put these new additions to the telescope into use, and upgrade it's batteries and gyros so that the instruments are given a real chance at life.
The James Webb cosmic observatory isn't ready yet (Hubble's successor), and won't be until 2011, whereas Hubble was due for retirement in 2005. That's an automatic 6 year wait, which is absolutely devastating to our scientists. On top of that, what happens if the rocket smokes on the pad and the James Webb observatory is no more? Another 6 year wait? These are things we need to think about before deciding Hubble's fate, which, IMO was never given a thought outside of the costs of getting three men up there to service the thing.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Yeah, well don't post an ignorant opinion if you don't know what you're talking about. Insightful not! Other posters have pointed out that the servicing mission is to install more modern technology on the telescope -- EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT! And for image quality (spatial resolution, which is what Hubble does best) 100 times that of Hubble, you'd need a 250 meter telescope in space, which we probably can't do this CENTURY unless we spent the entire GDP. We have a better telescope planned right now (the James Webb Telescope budgeted at yes, about 3 times the repair mission cost), for probably 2012, which is better, but not 100 times better, and won't work in the ultraviolet AT ALL. I'm an astronomer who uses Hubble, and I bust my ass working on proposals to use the thing because I have science to do that I can only do with Hubble, not for sentimental reasons. With new instruments, there is more unique science to come that can be done no other way. Sorry for YELLING, ErichTheWebGuy, but I've had a few glasses of wine and my tolerance for ignorant spouting off tonight isn't too high. There are pros and cons to the Hubble servicing issue, you sound like an idiot telling astronomers like me that the telescope is obsolete.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
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
The distinction btw. visible light and infrared probably shouldn't make a difference in the visible appeal. Most of the pictures you see of extraterrestral objects have had their color manipulated, and many are completely false color. In fact, ALL of the pictures you see from Spitzer would be false color, unless you can happen to see infrared light.
And what, exactly, is obsolete about Hubble? Seriously, tell me. Sure, the computers are slow, but they do the job fine. The gyroscopes could last longer. But those are functionalities that don't affect the bottom line if they do their job. The instruments could be updated, the very key thing, AND THAT IS WHAT THE SERVICING MISSION WILL DO. Hubble is still producing great science still today that no other facility can touch. When we've already spent a few billion on the thing, a few hundred million is CHEAP in relative terms to get a few more years of service out of it.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Impressive rant! Simple and to the point. Being in the community and being a bit more circumspect, I would say that O'Keefe has not shown any of the vision that marked Goldin. I wasn't always happy with Goldin, but the man was visionary in the best sense of the word.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
And even so, I don't believe Hubble should be obsolete then. It's still the 14 years tested platform for taking pictures; it can serve as a benchmark for new telescopes, and a fallback in case new telescopes aren't working the way they are planned.
Just because something is old, in no way makes it obsolete.. We still use virtually the same aircraft since the 1980's, the Boeing 737 and 747 have been obsoleted many times over by the 777 and other new aircraft, but the 737's and 747's are still in constant usage. Why? Expense and Risk Management. It's simply cheaper to use and maintain a working platform, than to build a new one and have it fail in some catastrophic way nobody could have planned for.
When Hubble was first launched, the disaster struck and it couldn't take pictures correctly, it taught us how to repair it, and since then, maintainance has been a breeze. Something tells me new telescopes will be prone to lots of problems like this, especially with the new ideas of building cheap and launching cheap that NASA's subscribed to.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
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.
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
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
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 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.
And even so, I don't believe Hubble should be obsolete then. It's still the 14 years tested platform for taking pictures; it can serve as a benchmark for new telescopes, and a fallback in case new telescopes aren't working the way they are planned.
Just because something is old, in no way makes it obsolete.. We still use virtually the same aircraft since the 1980's, the Boeing 737 and 747 have been obsoleted many times over by the 777 and other new aircraft, but the 737's and 747's are still in constant usage. Why? Expense and Risk Management. It's simply cheaper to use and maintain a working platform, than to build a new one and have it fail in some catastrophic way nobody could have planned for.
Ah, but the Boeing 737s are controlled by the private sector, which is very very good at continuing to use old resources, or finding a new use for them if they expire. (Take an example - the owner of a factory which manufactures steel rods goes bust. A new owner takes over, who manufacturers skateboard axles. A crap example, but you get my picture).
Hubble is controlled by the public sector, which is inherantly crap at finding new uses for old resources. You can justify a vastly larger budget by putting something completely new into space than you can by servicing something old.
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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.
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?
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.
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.
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?