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."

Comments

All science is good science

[Amsterdam Vallon]

I worked for NASA for 8 years straight out of MIT undergrad.

Though I left the rocket science "business", I have no regrets. It was a great company to work for and we did some amazing things.

That said, all science is good science, even this robotic HUBBLE mission. I helped with deployment of spacecraft and nothing was more satisfying.

This mission MUST go on else we will fail as scientists.

Re:All science is good science

[Pxtl]

Idunno, to me Hubble is more of just an excuse than a goal - NASA wants to develop robotics as an alternative to EVA. I remember designs in the 90s for a "Canad-Hand" to go on the arm. I think NASA just wants an opportunity to develop this technology so they don't have to risk more astronauts, and Hubble is a popular plaform to build support for it.

Re:All science is good science

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I dare say that while robotics research is a lofty goal, this is the wrong mission for it. We can study telerobotics just fine on Earth, and there are a pile of undersea applications that are far more technicalogically challenging, with more direct applications to everyday problems.

When we say that 1 or 2 billion is going to research, that is the opening bid. Spending 1 or 2 billion to keep an obsolete telescope aloft is a bad use of R&D. Bad with a capital B. Especially since there is no advantage to keeping the old station aloft, nor is there any danger (more than any other satellite at least) in bringing it down.

If the thing had a radioactive power source, or there was a super-expensive rare metal apparatus that we can't manufacture anymore I'd say sure. Otherwise, drop the thing and spend your budget on a new telescope using the lessons learned from the old, and technology that did not exist in the 30 years since the unit left the drawing board.

Cheaper to replace?

[tonsofpcs]

With all the money that goes into sending the spacecraft up, getting the robot out, having him do whatever, then having him either blow up or come down burning, wouldn't it just be easier to make a new one, add in a robotic arm or two so it can do self-repairs, and send that up?

Our eye in the Sky ...

[Gopal.V]

Stupid question, If it costs as much as another hubble up there , why are we not building another one and send it up again ?.

Secondly, why isn't ISS going anywhere in comparison ?. Also that's a more international project for space. I hated the canadian reference ... Also sadly the guy in charge wants to last out till Sept 2005 (you know nothing good or bad happens in the last months of retirement).

Last century, most of the world (with notable exceptions), expected america to do the Right Thing. That's past now (see the Thermonuclear reactor project) and in 4 short YEARS.

Why not build a new Space Telescope?

[WarPresident]

However, the price tag of the robotic mission is between $1 billion and $2 billion, almost the cost of a new space telescope.

Heck, you could shave a few hundred thousand off that pricetag if you built a new HST around the "backup" primary mirror made by Kodak (which was figured and tested correctly). NASA would just have to get it from The National Air and Space Museum.

Why not contract it out?

[Bill_Royle]

I'd suggest that the folks at SpaceShipOne could do it for a lot less money. Heck, set up a contest for it - then you're encouraging innovation in the field. With the savings you could garner you could probably divert that to other projects... or buy more $10k toilet seats.

Re:Why not contract it out?

[bhima]

In order to reach the Hubble a Soyuz would have to be launched from the equator rather than Kazakhstan (where they are now currently launched). As it so happens, the Russians have signed a deal with the European Space Agency to allow them to launch Soyuzes from French Guiana starting in 2006. Additionally the costs of launch are so low, that 3 missions to Hubble could be planned for less than the one mentioned here, or two shuttle missions.

Still I'd like to see James Webb Telescope in place...

$2 billion??

[Joel from Sydney]

I have difficulty comprehending how something can cost that much.

How urgent are these repairs to Hubble? Realistically speaking, if NASA is only debating to whether to spend $2,000,000,000 now, it's going to be several years before anything gets off the ground. So clearly the repairs aren't that urgent. Wouldn't it then make more sense to spend the cash and resources on improving/fixing/replacing the shuttles, so that we can safely send humans to do the job?

Re:$2 billion??

[eclectro]

Wouldn't it then make more sense to spend the cash and resources on improving/fixing/replacing the shuttles, so that we can safely send humans to do the job?

I really think that NASA has a lot of dirty little secrets that no one on the outside knows about, and after this last accident they probably looked close and hard and realized that the number of places the shuttle could catastrophically fail is more than they originally thought.

If there was another shuttle failure (even if it did not result in the loss of life) I suspect that there would be a noticeable chorus to dismantle the agency, that cannot produce very much more than kitsch science and photo ops with school children on the ground.

Though unspoken, I think the three strikes and you're out rule may be in place here. NASA since apollo has always been an agency with self-survival first in mind, so I would not be surprised if they find a way to retire the shuttles to museums.

So much as replacing the shuttles - I do not think that this will even be considered for the next decade as the cost is too steep. It was hard to justify the shuttles when they were first built (and the reason that the space station was built) in the seventies.

But as can be seen, the space station can work with cheap Russian rockets that are more reliable than the shuttle.

The Hubble was designed so it could be serviced by the shuttle (the other justification for the shuttle). But if the Hubble was designed so that parts could be replaced by dockable unmanned rockets, we would not be in this position we are today with it. For an instant, if the power supply and gyros were on a small module that could dock using conventional rockets. But it is not.

When O'Keefe said that a repair mission to Hubble was "too dangerous," people should have recognized that that was code words for "we need to ground the shuttle permanently now."

The fact is that there are earth based telescopes that are catching up in performance to the Hubble. Add to that the fact that the Hubble is old technology, it's pretty obvious that it's time to move on.

It truly would be a better decision to take the many lessons learned from Hubble design and repair and put those in a new telescope, and send it to orbit on a unmanned rocket.

Engineers, not scientists

[fuzzy12345]

I'd say that the people doing cost/benefit analyses and robotic repair feasibility studies are engineers, not scientists. The guys that got hung out to dry by the early mirror troubles, the ongoing gyroscope troubles and the recent "drop everything: We're going to Mars" troubles, they're scientists.

I can see de-orbiting an old, useless analog comsat as being sensible. But for stuff which would otherwise continue to usefully function for years or decades, write-off due to non catastrophic failure ought not to be the natural option. The US space program suffers from an attention deficit disorder.

Re:Engineers, not scientists

[johansalk]

Here's my conspiracy theory of the day; "drop everything: We're going to Mars" is just a distraction to screw those atheist astrophycists who are dabbling in things they shouldn't (origin of universe etc).

Shut them up, those big bangers.

Why crash it into the ocean?

[mykepredko]

If they're not going to fix it, I'd like to understand why they must crash it down into the ocean? If they're going to send a propulsion module up there, why don't they move the Hubble to a Lagrange point between the Earth and moon?

I realize that it will probably take years to get there but I've seen a few proposals for future space stations being placed at the Lagrange points - wouldn't it be nice if they had a high-quality (maybe not as good as when launched) set of optics waiting to be used in a station observatory? I realize that there is a (very) good chance of this never happening, but it seems a damn sight better than crashing Hubble into the Pacific.

myke

Put on the space elevator...

[jim_v2000]

What they ought to do is put the money towards designing a space elevator. They could stick a telescope...or somehow get the hubble...onto the mass that would hold the carbon fiber ribbon taunt. Then they could just climb up and down the elevator to make repairs. This would be cheaper (per trip...not as a whole project), and a heck of a lot more innovative than making robots to fix Hubble.

Re:Critical problem with this argument

[bitingduck]

If there's a real desire to have a Hubble class visible-wavelength telescope in space, it's probably cheaper and lower risk to build a new one. As it is, the Hubble repair is going to eat into the budgets of other missions that are already well into development, delaying them and increasing their costs. The money to fix Hubble is going to come out of other astronomy missions (at least in part).

Repairing Hubble is fairly high risk-- not all the technology is in hand, there are unknowns on Hubble (will the robot arm have to have a hand free to bang on the door?) and there is a very real possibility that Hubble will suffer a fatal failure (battery or gyro) before the mission is launched, but after a great deal of money is sunk.

If you were to build a replacemant today, it would probably have a much lower mass mirror, possibly with a better surface quality, and there would likely be some kind of deformable mirror downstream to improve the image even more. It could also be at L2, where it would have much higher throughput than HST, and very likely could cost quite a bit less than servicing, depending on the set of instruments on board.

(and as mentioned elsewhere, JWST is infrared, not radio)

About time...

[ca1v1n]

It's about time we had robots that could fix orbiting devices. Two billion is a bargain. Oh, yeah, and it might just save one of the most scientifically energizing pieces of space hardware ever flown.

Large Binocular Telescope

[flyingsquid]

The University of Arizona is currently working on the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT)- see: http://www.nd.edu/~science/core/binocular/index.sh tml. The thing has twin 8.4 meter mirrors- their light gathering power is equivalent to a single 11.8 meter telescope, and their resolving power is equivalent to a 22.8 meter telescope. It is supposed to have more light gathering power and much sharper images than Hubble http://www.nd.edu/~science/core/binocular/lbt_othe rtelescopes.shtml. Supposedly the LBT is be able to get around the blurring from the atmosphere by using adaptive optics- deforming the secondary mirrors to correct for distortions. They claim that the construction costs are $80 million. So, an order of magnitude more resolution for an order of magnitude less money. If it performs even close to specifications, it sounds like a good deal. The dedication ceremony has already taken place and the thing is supposed to be operational in 2006.

Re:Just do it

[Anonymous Coward]

ISS gives us the oppertunity to study how long duration space flight affects the human body, we don't know much about that currently and if we ever want to go anywhere far away we'd better figgure out a way to stop the wasting away of our bones etc. So, reason 1 to keep the ISS - medical research.

Reason 2: Nanoscience research: in microgravity you can do and build all sorts of thing that you wouldn't be able to on Earth due to the gravity, you can build all sorts of crasy structures which help our fundemental science knoweledge and can be used for new technology on Earth.

3. Pharamcuticle manufacture, long ago when the first studies were being on on joining the three space stations (MIR2 (RUSSIA), freedom (USA) and collumbus (EUROPE)), Europe were primised by USA that NASA would fly their suppiles to collumbus if they joined ISS and would fly back down the phams ESA wanted to demonstrate-manufacture for things like AIDS, Altshimers, Parkinsons etc big diseases. In microgravity you can mess with chemical structures and build drugs that otherwise would be impossible on Earth and hence improve life for those who suffer from such afflictions.

How is the chinese solution a long way off? they have newer & more working manned space vehicles than the USA right now. China asked to join the ISS and were vetoed by the USA despite the other countries being in favour of cooperation.

can't dispute comment 3, although i would add that the problem with a capsule is that you can't bring heavy stuff back down safely with you. remember, if we are ever to have mass space flight it's going to be private industry that does it, but private industry is rubbish at taking risks, they need to know that they can bring back their recently manufactured phams/nanoscience CPUs/hot grits/etc cheaply, safely and to a predetermined location, this is what the shuttle and space transport system should have done but didn't. if we want private industry to do that, then I think it'd probably help for them to see something similar working first. I advocate using both spaceplanes AND capsules as neihter can do everything the other can.