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

Hubble on eBay

[stecoop]

So if there isn't money for Hubble than auction it off as surplus - let free market pick it up if they want to.

Re:Hubble on eBay

[ericzundel]

I don't think NASA is holding anyone back from volunteering to go up and fix Hubble. If there were some huge benefit to doing that, I think you might hear some volunteers out there.

NASA calculated that that servicing mission,whether robotic or shuttle, would cost over one billion dollars US. The only "market" that could pick up that kind of tab (or anything close to it) would be the Japanese or European space agencies. Private companies have a hard time just getting a sattelite into orbit. The Russians might have the technology, but they could not realistically fund the mission.

According to This source, the total annual budget for the ESA is 2.7 billion Euros. The Japanese budget according to This source was around 1.3 billion US Dollars in 1998. So we are talking about asking them to take on a project that would cost them between 30% to 80% of their total annual space budget.

The probability of success of a robotics mission is IMHO extremely low. You would be hard pressed to build a robot that could service hubble if it was sitting on the ground, much less orbiting in zero G in the cold of space.

Assuming the Japanese and Europeans decided they wanted to pool resources and take on this relatively huge project, then farm it out to the Russians for the launch platform and manned mission (because they are the only ones that have that technology), what would be the end result? Another 5 years or so of science. (remember, we have a new telescope that will be online 5 years or so after Hubble goes dark.) The rewards just don't seem to be worth the effort.

I love the science as much as anyone, but for the most part, the great view of the universe from space isn't going away. It will still be there in 5 years, or 10 years, or however long it takes us to get the next great telescope into space.

Re:Hubble on eBay

[GammaRay Rob]

As soon as it gets to the point where it becomes a re-entry risk (which happens when only one gyro remains functional), NASA will drop it into the Pacific. They don't want to risk an unplanned, uncontrolled descent that may put it in the middle of a population area.

Except, of course, it currently has no de-orbit capability, hence the plan to go there and add it. But, if you already have to go there...

Death for Hubble?

[lecithin]

"directed NASA to focus solely on de-orbiting the popular spacecraft "

Well, if we count on the government to fund Hubble, yes.

Perhaps a private party will either donate, or advertise.

This cosmic picture was brought to you by Budwiser.

Re:Death for Hubble?

[Thunderstruck]

Lets work through this:

Judging by your statement, I am quite sure you do not live in the United States.

As for my credentials, I was born in South Dakota, I've lived in 3 states, I've vistied about 25 of them. I've managed to visit about 5 foreign nations from Europe to Asia. I'd like to think that makes me a pretty good judge of culture shifts.

When I drive from Pennsylvania into Maryland and Washington, D.C., I do not feel as though I am passing some geographical flux of cultures.


Drive from Virginia to North Dakota and listen to the accent of the gas station attendants. Look at the condition of the roads, houses, and the styles of public buildings or churches. The change is amazingly cool.

Similarly, the public schools in Florida work just like those found in Maine

How frequent are the private schools, and if they work the same, but Main's are better, are you saying the people in them are different? That would suggest a local culture.

And if I wind up in court in Missouri, I have the same fundamental rights as I would in California.

Not true. Each state has its own constitution and provides very different fundamental rights. For example, the Massachusents Constitution does not provide an express right to bear arms. The Constitution of South Dakota has always declared such right in detail. Or are you limiting your understanding of "fundamental rights" only to those expressed in the federal consitution?

Right-wing politics is in the roots of America now. It's not just another opinion. It's a religion in itself and it is indeed sweeping the United States, which is not so much a collection of states these days as it one giant creature that is currently trying to decide which side of the fork to walk down.

I live in North Dakota and I don't have cable TV. I haven't noticed much of a change.

Being wrong is frowned upon - but STAYING wrong is a virtue somehow. And it is certainly proud and boastful - that's how it sells, because so many people don't think for themselves.

You're right. I do recall President G.H.W.Bush state that he was signing a law prohibitng flag burning when he knew it to be unconstitutional. I still haven't figured out that one.

I also encounter folks all to often who will say without blinking, "I don't know anything about [Insert issue here], but I'm voting for this guy because he's out to help me."

I think, however, that this just illustrates that people in large groups tend to be stupid... whatever their culture.

Re:Death for Hubble?

[mOdQuArK!]

I think the same will happen again when people realize where the policies of the current administration are taking this country.

I'm not confident that the country WILL recover, especially since Dubya seems intent on making the overall government debt as large as he possibly can during his second term.

I'm reminded of a historical program I was watching where some historians being interviewed talked about how just before every large civilization in history that has collapsed, the spending on their military was out of control, and their government's debt had become unsustainable.

Re:Death for Hubble?

[Bachus9000]

Where is this "It's cool to hate Bush" crap coming from? The only people I ever hear it from are his supporters. It's starting to seem like they're getting desperate hunting for reasons why someone might not like him. Stop hunting for conspiracies where there aren't any. Your guy won (not by enough to be a "mandate" however), now quit being such sore winners.

aaaah Political doublespeak...

[tekiegreg]

Bush: "We must further our ambitions in space"...or something like that anyways

Now I see this posted... Now admittedly 1 billion is a pretty big price to save Hubble (would probably be more practical just to send up a new one) but is there a newer one in the near Horizon even?

Politics and space mix badly...but then again what else is new...

Space needs more popular support

[bigtallmofo]

Things like this will continue to happen so long as space use and exploration in general does not capture the public's fascination.

I'm an avid supporter of all things space-related (paying member of Planetary Society, etc) but I find most articles written about the Hubble telescope and space in general pretty boring. Until someone inspires the world with a lofty goal that will push technology or knowledge forward significantly, I think you can expect this type of stagnation or actual devolution.

We ought to sell it before it is salvaged...

[Jerry]

It's too good a technology to waste.

And, no doubt, if we just leave it up there the Chinese and/or the EU will most certainly claim salvage rights and send up a repair crew.

The Chinese would claim it, if for no other reason than to make clear to the world what is becoming increasingly obvious: the USA lacks the desire (funds?) to maintain its status as a space faring nation and is being replaced by China as the space faring super power.

Money?

[heptapod]

Of course there isn't any money. How else is NASA going to develop the James Webb Telescope? The Hubble's expected to last until 2009 and there would only be a two year gap between its failure, de-orbiting or return to earth on a shuttle. I'm sure Astronomy Picture of the Day will do fine in those intervening years.

Sell it to another space program

[cryptochrome]

The ESA would certainly be interested. The Chinese and Japanese might take an interest as well.

Re:Cheaper?

[Martin Blank]

Cost of maintenance: $600M-$800M

Cost of Hubble in 1990 dollars: $1.5B

Cost of Hubble in 2004 dollars: $2.2B

That doesn't include launch costs. It would also probably take ~10 years to plan and build.

Re:Too bad...if only NASA had

[benna]

I'm with you to an extent, but, 150,000 is certainly not the accepted number. As much as I like Howard Zinn, don't do what he did on the Daily Show and give such a high number you lose your credablity. The Lancet said 100,000, and that is the highest estimate out there. Many people believe it is probobly less than that.

Re:"Insightful"? More like "low standards for righ

[Anonymous Coward]

You, idiot. Iraq was one of the few arabic countries where woman had equal rights and you would go to jail for *not* sending your daughter to school. It was a fascist dictatorship, but it was *not* a fundamentalist one. Tarek Aziz was a christian. Of course women rights will go down the drain, now that the US is about to lose the war. well done, morons.

Eliminate other costs

[UnHolier than ever]

Maybe when they find out that no one is doing anything useful on the space station and that you don't need a base on the moon to go to mars, then they will repair Hubble out of the billions saved. Then, they might also decide that invading another country is a better idea. Hey, I know! Why not present Hubble as "a tool to invade the privacy of terrorists who might hide in other solar systems". That might just work!!

Pathetic

[MightyMartian]

Cut the funding to the orbiting pile of crap the ISS and put it into Hubble, an orbital piece of technology that does something useful. If Hubble isn't repaired then we are going to lose one of the most useful cosmological tools available for many years to come.

Wasn't Bush proposing a trip to mars?

[seibed]

We can't hack Hubble now and yet it was one year ago last week that his plan to go to Mars was in the news? talk about flip-flopping... geez.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3381531. stm

Re:Too bad...if only NASA had

[dillon_rinker]

No, losing credibility isn't the worst thing he did. Announcing that 100,000 had dies was the BEST thing that could have happened to the RNC. After his ridiculously inflated number had been paraded around, the White House released the real number (15,000 I think?) and the nation breathed a sigh of relief that so few had died.

It had about the same effect as the CBS faked memo - it completely destroyed the public's ability to care about a valid issue.

Re:believing whatever you want

[Thunderstruck]

believe should follow evidence, period.
1. What is the benefit of ending a sentence with "period."?

2. What will you allow as evidence? Only that which can be conclusively show by reproduceable experiment? Will you throw out the entire field of philosophy, and the idea that man can learn about his environment by induction? The origin of the universe is not something we can demonstrate by reproduceable experiment.

I'm tired of pretending it's OK to believe everything.

So when the thought police are formed, you'll be first to sign up?

O'Reilly was going on about Intelligent Design yesterday... it's a theory, just like evolution. Right, and just like the theory that the moon is made of cheese... to bad the facts are not on it's side.

Who is O'Reilly? Does she have a website?

Facts are facts, they are not on anyone's side. Facts however must be interpreted by human beings. We do this by looking for similarities between facts that then trying to guess why they happen. To date I've never seen a fact that could not be used to bolster either camp.