No Money For Hubble Service Mission

starexplorer writes "SPACE.com is reporting that the White House has eliminated funding for servicing the Hubble Space Telescope from its 2006 budget request. After many options 1, 2 were explored, is this the death knell for Hubble?"

Comments

Just replace the Hubble

[spikeham]

All this discussion of saving the Hubble seems to ignore an obvious solution. Just launch a completely new, improved orbiting observatory. Hubble is nearing the end of its lifespan even if it is serviced. A replacement might not cost a lot more than a servicing mission and would involve zero risk.

Re:Death for Hubble?

[shanen]

Private funding? This is the same level of thinking that caused the problem that killed Hubble, and one of the main reasons America is so quickly falling behind in so many fields of scientific research. There are some things that private enterprise and free markets are very good at, but long-term scientific research is NOT one of them. (The other reason is religious fanaticism directed against science because of the unpleasant truths it persists in revealing.)

Significant research is very risky and rarely profitable--and never reliably profitable in the way that normal business investments are. Yes, there are enormous long-term benefits, but the current CEO will have cashed out all of his stock dividends a long time before major research produces any results. There is a fundamental mismatch between the long-term perspective of pure research and the short-term perspective of a business that will have to show its profit numbers to the SEC at the next quarter--at which time the investors will sell their shares if that company is "wasting too much money" on research.

America is becoming the land of the ignorant. Proud, boastful, even aggressive ignorance.

Re:Death for Hubble?

[CheshireCatCO]

Or, alternatively, count on Congress.

The President only requests money. Congress allocates is. They've overriden this president many times regarding NASA's budget. (The White House has tried to kill the New Horizons mission to Pluto on at least one occasion. Congress put the money back.)

This isn't the end of HST. That doesn't really depend on Bush, that depends on Congress.

Re:What a negative view

[Kenrod]

Who mods this crap "interesting"??? How about "Off topic"?

I guess this lesson here is that it is better to have security under a tyrant that the opportunity to live free. Why are 80% of Iraqis planning to vote? If the situation were truly so terrible, how could that be true?

Re:Death for Hubble?

[Schemat1c]

Too late, however. Karl Rove (using Dubya) has already harnessed too much hate power for America to survive.

Not too late. The pendulum swings back and forth. The US was stuck in the same if not worse conservative ignorant situation in the late 50's - early 60's. Then the pendulum swung back with a vengeance. I think the same will happen again when people realize where the policies of the current administration are taking this country.

Re:Death for Hubble?

[jafac]

2. Name one so called "unpleasant truth" that Hubble has revealed. Heck name one "truth" that the Hubble project has persisted in revealing

Every single time Hubble images an object more than 5000 light years away, it PROVES that God did not create the universe 5000 years ago. There are arguments to support this, of course, but none of them form any basis in scripture. The most logical argument, of course, presented pretty much unanimously by Biblical Scholars, is that the absolute accuracy in the depiction of time-periods as documented in the Bible, has been lost to translation or antiquity (take your pick - since ancient Hebrew is, effectively a dead language, though it bears a striking resemblence to modern Hebrew - ancient Hebrew, particularly when dealing with numerical concepts that didn't exist in that time-period, is open for interpretation).

Thus proving Scriptural Inerrency false, Humanity benefits by eliminating the Fundamentalist Religious Forces that have held our race back with ignorance, bigotry, and endless conflict.

And the great thing is - we can all, as individuals, still Love God. If we want to. We just won't be compelled by scripture to hate and war with eachother anymore.

1. Name one discovery that Hubble has made that has benefited humanity or has the potential to in the next 300 hundred years.

By imaging worlds around other planets, Humanity may one day be compelled to try visiting one. Could this be beneficial? I dunno, ask the dead spirit of Christopher Columbus.

By gathering the data used to demonstrate universal expansion, we may one day solve the puzzle of so-called "dark matter" and it's relationship to gravity and expansion of the universe, which might lead to the technical mastery of the Gravitational Force itself. Mastery of the Gravitational Force would have astounding implications for all areas of transportation. To say the least.