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Repair Costs for Hubble Are Vexing to Scientists
wallstreetprodigy23 writes "Some scientists questioned whether a repair mission for the aging Hubble Space Telescope was worth a projected cost of $1 billion to $2 billion at a hearing of the House Science Committee on Wednesday.
Both scientists and legislators praised the orbiting observatory for the many contributions it had made to science since it was launched in 1990. But the telescope needs servicing to continue working...
"
Here
Indeed. The couple billion for Hubble is a tiny fraction of the unaccounted for and otherwise lost money in Iraq.
That $2 billion price tag they mentioned was the cost of a robotic repair crew. $2 billion is a lot of money... it's hard to imagine all the R&D and other work that must go into a project like this.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
How much would a new telescope cost? I mean, $1 billion is a lot for repair costs -- if a new one costs somewhere around there, why not just replace hubble altogether?
$1.5 billion. But that was just to build it. NASA claims it would cost much less to service and repair the Hubble rather than to launch a new one into service.
It is being replaced. The Hubble is expected to end service around 2010. The James Webb Space Telescope, a large infrared-optimized space telescope, is scheduled for launch in August, 2011.
JWST is designed to study the earliest galaxies and some of the first stars formed after the Big Bang. These early objects have a high redshift from our vantage-point, meaning that the best observations for these objects are available in the infrared. JWST's instruments will be designed to work primarily in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability in the visible range.
JWST will have a large mirror, 6.5 meters (20 feet) in diameter and a sunshield the size of a tennis court. Both the mirror and sunshade won't fit onto the rocket fully open, so both will fold up and open only once JWST is in outer space.
JWST will reside in an L2 Lissajous orbit, about 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from the Earth.
most of the cars that moved eastward were stolen.
and oh yeah i am a german one from west germany not the DDR.
In relative terms, the Hubble is very easy to repair. The problem was the loss of the Shuttle. Remember that the Hubble has been serviced several times now with excellent results.
The Hubble is supposed to end service around 2010. The James Webb Space Telescope is slated for an August 2011 launch. We just need to ensure it launches both successfully and on time.
What complicates the question are the breathtaking advances in Earth-based astronomy since the Hubble was conceived. During the 1970s when Hubble was designed, the conventional wisdom was that ground based telescopes would never have the resolution of space telescopes because the atmosphere seeing limited the resolution of ground telescopes. In fact, microcomputer technology starting in the 1990s allowed for adaptive optics which adjusts the mirrors continuously to compensate for changes in the atmosphere.
This means that there is not any need replace the Hubble to obtain better astronomical imagery in the visible range. The new ground-based telescopes can do the job, and even the most ambitious of them, like the Keck in Hawaii and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, are much less expensive than the Hubble and much more sensitive to light. This naturally is much easier to service and update. For example, the VLT cost was roughly 1/7 of the HST cost, and gave the astronomic community four 8.2 meters telescopes, with a resolution almost as high as the Hubble.
Anyways...
The James Webb Space Telescope is a large, infrared-optimized space telescope scheduled for launch in August, 2011 . JWST is designed to study the earliest galaxies and some of the first stars formed after the Big Bang. These early objects have a high redshift from our vantage-point, meaning that the best observations for these objects are available in the infrared. JWST's instruments will be designed to work primarily in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability in the visible range.
JWST will have a large mirror, 6.5 meters (20 feet) in diameter and a sunshield the size of a tennis court. Both the mirror and sunshade won't fit onto the rocket fully open, so both will fold up and open only once JWST is in outer space.
JWST will reside in an L2 Lissajous orbit, about 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from the Earth.
While the JWST will indeed be a big improvement over the HST for the projects you mention, it will not be as versatile an instrument, and so cannot really be considered a replacement. It's good, but different.
Repairing the Hubble might be prohibitively expensive, but a simpler retrieval mission shouldn't cost much more than your average shuttle mission. That thing belongs in the Smithsonian once it's out of service, not vaporized in reentry.
The wheels of the space shuttle would collapse upon touchdown from the weight of the Hubble. It was never designed to land with cargo still in the hold.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
"Please tell me, how was invading Iraq "protecting ourselves"?"
... Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a lic! it missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." - Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, December 5, 2001
.. We also shoul
---
Hmm. Good Question. Lets ask some leading democrats:
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"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line." - President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." - President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998
Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the Greatest security threat we face." - Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten time since 1983." - Sandy Berger, Clinton N ational Security Adviser, Feb 18,1998
"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the US Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." - Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI), Tom Daschle (D-SD), John Kerry (D - MA), and others Oct. 9,1998
"Saddam Hussein has been engage! d in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." - Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998
"Hussein has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies." - Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999
"There is no doubt that
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandated of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them." - Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002
"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chem! ical weapons throughout his country." - Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." - Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." - Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..." - Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." - Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9,2002
"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years
Private health care costs more. For example:
Illness and medical bills now cause roughly half of all bankruptcies in the United States, more than a 23-fold increase since 1981, according to a new study. The study, which estimated that medical bankruptcies affect 2.2 million Americans annually, also found most of those bankrupted by illness had health insurance or lost it only because of the illness. (Emphasis mine)
STFU about slashdot bias.
The wheels of the space shuttle would collapse upon touchdown from the weight of the Hubble.
Nope: NASA originally intended to recover the HST and stick it in the Smithsonian, as the parent suggested, see the second to last paragraph in this story, for example.
The retrieval mission was cancelled for various reasons, but collapsing wheels wasn't one of them.
It was never designed to land with cargo still in the hold.
The shuttle has landed with cargo still in the hold numerous times, albeit not anything that massed as much as the HST. Indeed, so called the shuttle's large 'downmass' capability was one of its big sells, and is still something unique to it.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
It's a decision that can only be made when looking at the entire NASA budget (which Slashdot posts never do).
So here you go: http://www.nasa.gov/about/budget/
It's far more important to determine how agencies will make better use of their reduced funding... like deciding if the Hubble should be repaired or if the money should be spent on something else.
Or not at all, don't forget that most important option. It is not like this money is sitting in some big pile and will go to waste if we don't use it. We are borrowing from social security and foreign institutions in order to pay for a 400 billion dollar yearly deficit, so it is not just a matter of what to spend money on, it is also a question of whether the money should be spent at all.
Aside from life-extension repairs, the mission would also replace two instruments (one not really an instrument) with two brand new instruments providing greatly increased capability. Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) will replace Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), and Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), will replace the no longer needed corrective optics of COSTAR (the corrective optics are now incorporated into the individual instruments). To call this strictly a repair missing is a wild understatement.
--- What?
No, the grandparent is correct- the James West Space Telescope will indeed be in a Lissajous orbit- that is the name for a particular type of orbit around a Lagrange point and is a slight variation on the simpler "halo" orbit (basically just an ellipse or circle around the Lagrange point). This may seem counterintuitive, as the Lagrange points are just empty points in space, but in fact you can orbit spacecraft around them just as you would any celestial body. In the case of (IIRC) Langrange points L1, L2, and L3, you pretty much have to do this- those points are unstable, so some station keeping is required (about once a month at L2). The principal advantage of the quasiperiodic Lissajous orbit at L2 is that it experiences fewer eclipses (L2 is collinear with the sun and earth), important for probes using solar panels. An example of a recent mission using a Lissajous orbit around L2 was the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
I'll probably get modded down as well, but I fear not. If I am to be modded down as off-topic, there's 80 other people that they'll need to do the same to; this entire article's comments are half about this subject.
/06/last_minute_iraq_offer_cited/
> Ah, how soon we forget. The UN weapons inspectors found WMDs in Iraq
Then document it. I've read the Dueffler report. Even despite being a Bush-chosen war hawk, the best he could come up with was possible low-level "programs", and even that is doubted, given the evidence cited, by most experts.
> Hussein never accounted for them
Hussein did account for them; unfortunately, his account was "we unilaterally destroyed them". UNMOVIC/UNSCOM had detected evidence that various chemical weapons had been destroyed in the locations stated, but were unable to assess the quantity. When we invaded, they were working on a way to try and assess the quantity.
> Intelligence agencies all over the world felt Iraq had these WMDs
That's why the IAEA was near certifying Iraq as nuclear free, and why UNMOVIC was reporting significant process, right? Why the heads of both organizations were mad at us for invading? Why the US was pretty much laughed at for pushing many of the claims, such as the "uranium from Africa" and "aluminum tubes" claims. Any of this sound familiar to you?
> Hussein had failed to respond to numerous UN resolutions.
Funny thing - turns out that he was in compliance on most of the things that we asserted he was in violation of. Then, we go and invade, violating the very UN charter itself.
> The US tried to get UN action, but was blocked by France, Germany, and Russia,
> all of which had either economic or military ties to Iraq.
But economic ties a hundred times greater to the United States. This line of argument is pretty dumb, and I'm surprised that people still use it. The populace of France was 3/4 against the war; Germany, over 4/5ths. Russia, about 3/4ths. How dare a country do what it's citizens want!
> Oh, and don't forget that Hussein could have left Iraq before we invaded and
> the invasion would have been called off...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1079 76 9,00.html
http://www.iht.com/articles/116629.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3247461.st m
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/ 11
This can all be summed up here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_Iraqi_p eace_in itiatives
> There were plenty of terrorists in Iraq.
Surely you will cite them, then!
> It was also well known that Hussein paid the surviving relatives of suicide
> bombers after each bombing.
And the Saudis ran bloody telethons for them.
> He certainly wished to do harm to the US and US interests.
He joined about 80% of the world in that regard.
> Plus he had openly defied us and the no-fly zones for years.
You mean, the no-fly zones that the French called harmful and pointless, which the Russians and Germans called illegal, which the Chinese condemned, etc?
How would you feel if, without a resolution, French military aircraft flew over America, shooting down anything that flew without their permission (and attacking US bases), and then when the US tried to attack them, they condemned us for "defying the no-fly zones"?
> Taking his regime out sent a clear message that the US is serious and
> not to be trifled with.
That's why Iran and North Korea are openly building nukes, eh? About the only message that it sent is "If the US says disarm, don't - they'll invade anyways, so you need your weapons". That and "Freedom is defined by a dozen deaths a day", "Democracy involves a couple dozen dead, the almost complete sitting-out of a religious/ethnic group (Sunni arabs), the blocking of anot
Freeze Ray. Tell your friends.
The only Space Shuttle with a cargo bay large enough to hold Hubble was Columbia. No longer an option.
To use any of the other shuttles would require major, major structural modifications to them-- probably more expensive than just repairing it and leaving them there. And, as another poster pointed out, shuttles aren't designed to land with cargo, so more modification would be needed to bulk up the landing gear and drag chutes.
Comment of the year
Less than it does now?
I've heard estimates that suggest up to ten percent of spending on healthcare in the U.S. is related to billing and insurance issues--just figuring out who has to pay for what. Public health care at least solves that problem, plus it usually fixes a schedule of fees and precisely delineates what procedures are covered.
~Idarubicin
Here's my recently-rejected slashdot submission on this, which has more info:
Hubble Origins Probe: replace instead of repair?
An international team led by Johns Hopkins University astronomers have proposed an alternative to sending a robotic or manned repair mission to the ailing Hubble Space Telescope. Their proposal is to build a new Hubble Origins Probe, reusing the Hubble design but using lighter and more cost-effective technologies. The probe would include instruments currently waiting to be installed on Hubble, as well as a Japanese-built imager which 'will allow scientists to map the heavens more than 20 times faster than even a refurbished Hubble Space Telescope could.' It would take an estimated 65 months and $1 billion to build, approximately the same cost as a robotic service mission.
For those wishing to avoid NYT's soul-eating registration, try:
Congress Debates Saving Hubble
What the coward fails to recognize is the reason that Bush is accountable is that as the President he is in a unique position. He has more access to more intelligence than anyone else, he has the power to distribute that intelligence so as to alter the debate, and he has the power to alter the manner in which intelligence is gathered. Bush did not use his unique ability to gather intelligence to come up with an accurate picture.
You might take another look at the dates of the statements and when President Bush was first elected - or do you honestly mean to suggest that Bush is somehow 'accountable' for these Democrats coming to the same exact conclusions about Iraq and WMDs years before he became president?
+5:offtopic,but anti-American