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Scientists Debate Robotic Hubble Mission
An anonymous reader writes "Some scientists are questioning whether the robotic mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope is worth the risk and cost. After the Columbia disaster, NASA cancelled its shuttle mission to Hubble, and replaced it with a robotic mission. However, the price tag of the robotic mission is between $1 billion and $2 billion, almost the cost of a new space telescope. Optics expert Duncan Moore is unsure whether the mission will bring the most scientific return per dollar spent. Hubble director Steven Beckwith says the mission will lead to breakthroughs in space robotics."
There's nothing to lose.
1) The Shuttle is a waste of time and money. It should be grounded, and the remaining shuttles given to the Smithsonian.
2) The Space Station is useless too. Time to just declare victory in the War against low Earth orbit, and bring it down.
3) The replacement vehicles suggested for the Space Shuttle are scaled-up and enhanced Apollo capsules. We should just be buying Soyuz from the Russians. It works, it's safe. We'll never use it because it was Not Invented Here. Stupid. In case you missed it, I said not using Soyuz is stupid.
4) Going to Mars in the short term is dumb. GW Bush likes the idea, and that's a bad sign, because he's a fuck stick. But besides that, it's just too soon to go. There's a tremendous amount to learn by robot right now, and that's what we are doing.
5) So, we may as well save Hubble. It's not like we have anything else that is better to spend the money on.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Well said.
And besides, it's science. Who cares whether or not the money gets spent on some piece of lens up in the sky.
If the Hubble gets repaired, the money spent on the robotics can be reused and the development will not go waste. But if we were to rebuild the Hubble, there is no real progress - we're just reinventing the wheel.
And another idea is the idea of organizing a contest on the redesign of Hubble -- cheapest guys get X% of the amount as the prize money. Or something.
Even with the original blueprints, some of the original parts, manufacturing processes, and even suppliers DO NOT EXIST ANY MORE.
the mission to India, it would be way cheaper.
That said, all science is good science
While true, the real question if whether that $1-2b could be spent on doing better science. Of course, merely because $2b can purchase a new telescope doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile to do a robotic mission if the science and engineering aspects involved are new and exciting enough, or if the robotic equipment could be used for future time/money saving work.
If its going to be a relatively routine job, then maybe its better to say a fond farewell to Hubble and build a new space telescope drawing on all the lessons learnt from Hubble's shortcomings.
I don't quite understand what the debate is. Even if the mission fails and billions of dollars are "wasted", it will not all be in vain. Using robotics like this are exploring a new frontier of space exploration. The first few manned shuttle orbits weren't risky? Of course they are! The Columbia accident proves that they still are today. Money is valuable, but exploring new scientific frontiers is much more valuable.
- dshaw
No one else has the capability right now except perhaps the Russians. Scaled Composites isn't an option at this time. They don't have the skill set or the technology. From what I hear, this thing needs to get done by 2007.
Well, it is most likely that the robots will be pretty single minded about this mission. But, unlike the early apollo missions, NASA does a better paper trial and documents much better. In addition, this mission will enable us to test al sorts of new control systems for doing robotics. Some will be total manula, some semi-autonomous, and others full-autonomous. If we can get to the point where we can give instructions to robots to preform a task and not worry about how it does the task, than it allows us to send robots to future remote mission. Such as building a base on Mars. Or exploring Pluto. Or walking on a comet, mining it, and sending back chunks of it. etc.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This money might be better spent on terrestrial research right now.
Look a story down at the hydrogen development... this could change the world on a much bigger scale than anything...effecting us right here ont eh ground right away. 2 billion can do so much good right here.
Yeah, I sort of hate the idea of not looking toward the stars even for a moment, but look around here, things are pretty messed up, and I dont like the dependence on gas and oil. 2 billion could go towards alot of infrastructure for hydrogen cars.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Another good point.
Since when is it an acceptable project or endeavor only if a US space agency takes part? If it can be done by the Russians, good for them.
The sentence "It's good for science" isn't exclusively a US phrase.
I'd like to understand why they must crash it down into the ocean?
Because the stuff on it that's not expected to totally disintegrate has too large of a footprint and is statistically dangerous. The primary is going to come down as a big hunk of hot glass, propellant tanks will probably survive, as well as some other bits.
It's also cheaper to build a new telescope than it is to try to figure out a way to get the existing HST into a station in some other orbit.
2) The propulsion module needed to deorbit is much smaller and therefore cheaper to build and launch than one to move it.
3) Moving it then requires keeping it in place and also repairing it, if it's to be useful.
4) After moving it, it would still be nice to be able to dispose of it once it's no longer worth maintaining.
5) You do realize there's a plan to put the replacement at the (Earth-Sun) L2 point, right?
There's also the fact that a robotic repair mission would serve as an excellent opportunity to learn a lot more about robotics in space, something that is very valuable in it self. Both NASA and ESA have sent up missions that do basically nothing but test new technology. This would be new technology that does something very useful other than "being new".
Give me a job. Please?
The problem is which way will people whine about the most. When astronauts are lost NASA is bombarded with "Save the Astronauts!" slogans. Lots of BS about why we should send robots instead of people.
Then when the price tag for sending robots into space is talked about people start screaming "Why are we doing that? Send astronauts instead! It's cheaper."
It is decisions by committee and it works in the same way as if you were driving a bus down a multilane freeway at the beginning of rush hour with a cloth tied over your eyes. Your only method of knowing what to do is what everyone on the bus is trying to tell you. So everyone gets to scream out what they want the bus driver to do and then he tries to react to the orders. And just like the bus - NASA is going willy-nilly down the freeway trying not to hit anyone, trying to apease each and every person on the bus, and to reach the destination each and every one on the bus is screaming at them to go to. It is a thankless, almost impossible task to perform.
The people of America need to realize just how stupid their over-the-top reactions to problems with space travel are. This isn't Star Trek, BattleStar Galactica, Star Wars, or any of the other truly great (IMHO) space shows. The physics alone are no where near the same. Yet these TV/Movie shows are what are held up as being totally correct and truthful. Further, when someone dies (as in Star Wars when trying to take out the Death Star) no one goes "Wait! Oh my GOD! Think about the insurance! Oi-vey! What about the children? His/Her wife/husband? Friends, relatives, and countrymen? Who's going to pay for all of this?" Everyone goes "Oh Wow! Did you see that? His head flew off into the window next to where Luke was trying to save Obiwan!"
So what am I trying to get at? The country needs to decide, once and for all, whether it is worth the lives of our astronauts to send people into space. If it is - stop complaining and start supporting that way of going into space. If it isn't - stop complaining about the cost and lend your support to the cause. The main thing is - you can't have it both ways. Either people are going to die up there or we are going to probably bankrupt the country trying to build a robot capable of doing everything a human can do.
And don't think that just because businesses are starting to get into the space business that things are going to change for the better. The problem isn't going to go away just because you've changed who is going into space. It doesn't work like that. You are still going to have people dying up there if you send them up there. You just will have more of them dying at one time. Just like in an airplane crash.
So come on America! Make up your mind! People or robots?
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
What do you think NASA does? They do outsource HUGE amounts of work to various companies to build stuff, they don't build it all themselves.
Gosh, everytime we have some sort of problem in goverment, why do so many people think that simply shutting down the goverment agency and handing out huge wads of cash to companies will solve it?
Look at what Haliburton did in Iraq. Arguable the Army Corp of Engineers could have done a lot of that work for less.
It will be years still before commerical interest and technology improvements will allow a non government sponsered agency to pull something like this off. I'm not discounting the amazing achievement of the SpaceShipOne people, but a short, suborbital flight was something NASA was doing back in the 1960's.
Someday technology improvements will push costs down to the point that something like this will be some kid's high school science experiment. But that is not today.
Peace, or Not?
Hmmm, yet another post that assumes telescope resolution is the one parameter that determines which telescope is best. A quick analogy would be to claim which is better - a monitor resolution with 1024x768 at 24 bit color, or 3200x2400 resolution with 1 bit color. The answer, of course, is that it depends on your application.
Questions about this project:
- Adaptive Optics (AO) usually need a reference star nearby, or an artificial star produced w/ laser. What limitations will this produce in the images?
- How does this limit the area of the sky they can look at?
- What is the wavelength 'bandwidth' of the telescope, accounting for atmospheric absorption as well as sensor design?
- A good deal of astronomical science is done with spectra. What artifacts are introduced into the spectra through absorption and emission lines of the atmosphere?
- What artifacts are introduced to the spectra through artificial star for the AO?
- How long are the integrations that this telescope observe for? Hubble Deep Field was integrated for 150 orbits (10 days). Can this project integrate for a similar time, observing similar magnitude faint galaxies (sometimes individual photons), while maintaining a similar SNR?
- What is the limit for observing faint objects with this groundbased scope? Ie, the noise floor of a ground-based scope is much higher due to scattered 'light pollution', and it would be harder to see fainter objects.
So basically, image resolution is only one of several important factors and limitations in doing astronomical science.make world, not war
Just tell me, how would you launch the backup HST without using the shuttle. ;)
--- Eat my sig.