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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...
"
If this can be justified, I think a toy like Hubble should be affordable.
However, our parents always tell us they can't afford 10 cents for that yummy candy because they just bought a $40K car.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
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?
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
That 1-2 Billion buys you Human advancement, however large or small, that is permanent. Permanent so long as that 80 Billion we just spent on war doesn't wipe it out.
-Ryan C.
"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free." - P J O'Rourke (1947- )"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
...of the ISS. Is that money pit doing anything for science but falling apart?
I'm assuming that a new telescope can be developed and deployed for the same cost as a repair mission, and that the issue is the 5-7 year delay time from concept to launch?
Maybe it's time to bite the bullet, be without data for a few years, and plan for something grander for the next decade.
Why not look at developing a fleet of Hubbles, each with perhaps a 2 year lifespan, and just keep launching them as the others break down? Or better yet, launch a number at the same time. Hubble often seems very busy, I'm sure people would crave the opportunity to collect even more data?
Of course, Hubble nostalgia is the one thing keeping funding going. Politically, you can continue to argue for Hubble repair, but not for the construction of new telescopes, even if they cost the same thing. The program would be never be approved or scrapped soon after the design phase.
"Both scientists and legislators praised the orbiting observatory for the many contributions it had made to science since it was launched in 1990."
I prefer to praise the humans who built Hubble versus Hubble itself. That damn Hubble gets all the m4d pr0pz.
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...are "Why are these costs so prohibitively high?" and "What can be done to correct this?"
The coolest voice ever.
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.
(It's never too late to join the Renaissance)
I know this is going to start a huge flame war, but seriously - what good has the space program done for mankind? Anything other than cure our lust for knowledge of the unknown?
I think, too, there's a bit of the planned obsolescence attitude. We're used to throwing stuff out instead of fixing it. When have you ever taken an old television set to be repaired? It's cheaper to buy a new one (which will be bigger than the old one, and have a universal remote - universal my ass - but that's another rant). I don't continue pasting my nylons together with clear nail polish - I get a run, I toss 'em and get a new pair. Why won't NASA invent the runless pantyhose? (What are those people with the goat-milk-spider-web creatures doing, anyway?)
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
"Representative Bart Gordon of Tennessee, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the NASA estimate for a shuttle mission needed clarification. In answer to committee budget questions in 2002, Mr. O'Keefe wrote that the cost of the shuttle mission was included in the long-term budget of the space flight office, not the science budget.
Dr. Steven Beckwith, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said previous shuttle missions to the telescope were charged in the $300 million to $400 million range, which was acceptable to scientists. If the cost suddenly went above $1 billion, Dr. Beckwith said, he would have to reconsider his strong support for a service mission."
So the Hubbell costs $300 million to service when you don't add the cost of the shuttle flight? I can't believe that NASA ever tracked the cost of their programs this way. Does it make any sense not to include the cost of the shuttle flight in the Science budget if that is the only purpose for the shuttle flight?
That $2 billion price tag they mentioned was the cost of a robotic repair crew.
The article mentions that they don't want to risk stranding astronauts at Hubble since there's no haven there to rescue them if something should go wrong. So they *have* to use robots.
I'd fly up there and do the repairs for $1M regardless of the risks. Ok, maybe I'd ask for $50M since there's so much money floating around... but really, I'm sure if NASA offered $1M and training, they'd have thousands of volunteers regardless of the risks.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
This hits me as a more effective use of $1 Billion than repairing the Hubble.
It would be kind of sad to lose the Hubble after so many years of astounding imagery, but if we can have something even better launched in 5 years for the same price (or there abouts), well that seems to make sense.
My biggest concern is, can this really be built for $1 Billion, or is it going to turn into $3 Billion? Only to be scrapped because it's becoming "too costly" thus flushing billions down the crapper, as our government has been so fond of doing for so long.
I'm too lazy to enter a sig. Hey wait a second! You tricked me!
"Argument by quotation is silly" -- Anonymous Coward (???? -- present)
The competition for use of the HST is still fierce, and for good reason.
The problem is that it still offers capabilities that nothing else can replicate, or will for some considerable period of time.
Yes, there are other telescopes that can do better than HST for some tasks, but there are still many tasks for which the HST is the best there is. Even if we consider planned future telescopes, they are all optimized for different things. The Webb telescope, for example, is optomized for infrared observations.
Yes, we should be able to build someting with the capabilities of the Hubble much more cheaply now, but nobody actually has funding to do such a thing, and I suspect the chances of such a project being funded are worse that a repair (even if the repair is more expensive).
If your 15 year old car were the only car ever built with the features you wanted, and nobody was willing to build another one, you might approach a major repair differently.
-Hil
- Shuttle Launch: $400-500 million
- Additional Hardware to meet CAIB requirements for non-ISS shuttle flights: $80-100 million
- Actual hardware and training to execute the mission: $300-400 million
- Potential Cost of Losing an Orbiter in an Accident: $2.2 billion
- Potential Cost of Losing Seven Lives in an Accident: Priceless (can you put a price on life?)
If this were a systems administration project like many of us geeks typically work on, we wouldn't be trying to sell the boss on a hugely expensive upgrade when we know damn well that we're going to be rolling out a completely new, cheaper, better system within the next couple of years. Sentiment aside, it just doesn't make sense to spend national resources and risk lives when we can devote our energies (and dollars) toward further improving ground-based telescopes and getting JWST aloft. Let Hubble give us the best it's got during its last few years, and then bury it in a blaze of literal glory as it burns up in the atmosphere.Maybe the Canadian government could implement for us. Do you really want to trust the health of all of us to the organization which has brought us the thriftiness of the Pentagon, the respect-for-rights of the FBI, the public transparancy of the CIA, the timely delivery of the U.S. Postal Service, and the warm human compassion of HUD?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Uhm no...
With all deference to Burt Rutan and his accomplishments, he did in 2004 what NASA did in the 1950's and 1960's AND he used all the research findings that NASA discovered while doing it.
If NASA could have copied what others did, they could have done it cheaper too.
Burt Rutan had 40 years of areospace research to draw on. NASA had to do the reasearch and discover the stuff from scratch.
Don't compare apples and oranges.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Answer: Ask them. I'm sure they will all say yes. They know that being an astronaut is dangerous but what they are doing is worth the risk, why can't the NASA administrators?
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Heres why we go fix hubble.
First, its not 70s tech. Thats why we go up there. About the only thing original on the telescope now is the telescope itself. The rest of it has been replaced with modern equipment. And the telescope and its supporting mechanics is the same level of tech we would put up today were we to launch a new one.
The cost of launching anything new will be at least the cost of a servicing mission. It will last 5+ years, which is how long Hubble will last with a servicing mission.
The telescope is there. A new one will work no better. This one has been well characterized and is well understood.
So its as expensive, is well understood, already has the infrastructure behind it for making it function, and all the parts are built and ready to go. Given that...which option seems best now?
Today is a gift. Save the receipt.
Now that you've listed all these Democrats saying this, you can list some Republicans saying it, if you like. But as soon as you're done, why don't you answer the original question?
> Please tell me, how was invading Iraq "protecting
> ourselves
Pointing out that many Democrats considered Iraq a threat is nothing but a defense of Republicans' failed policies. "Well, some Democrats thought Iraq was a threat too...nah, nah, nah." How does this answer the original question of how invading Iraq really protected us?
I'm an independent, and disagreed with the invasion of Iraq as a way of protecting ourselves from WMD. When nearly every Republican AND Democrat voted for the resolution to go to war, I disagreed with both of them.
Demonstrating that Democrat politicians are just as stupid as Republican politicians doesn't help answer the original question. It does, however, show exactly how biased and politically-minded you are. Rather than trying to figure out whether a policy was wrong, or defend that policy, you immediately jump to defend what apparently is your political party of choice. In other words, honesty and objectivism are not important to you, only partisanship.
It is exactly this kind of thinking that allows politicians to make poor choices and not be held accountable for them. People like you resort to partisan hackery, rather than trying to fix the system or question the choices of the people they supported in the election.
Now, history will tell whether invading Iraq was worth the cost. I personally believe that WMD were not even the *primary* reason for invading, although they were the *primary* justification. That doesn't mean I don't see the invasion as having some merit. But it does mean I question whether invading was really done to protect the United States. Even if it was, I believe it was done on a much more general level, because we believe that controlling several key countries in the Middle East will allow us to more effectively combat terrorism.
Again I repeat, however, that the statements of a few Democrats do nothing to answer this question, but rather distort the issue by making it a question of party politics. There has been significant rebellion in govt. institutions and in society on the way intelligence was used and interpreted to come to a certain conclusion about Iraq's WMDs, from Republicans, Democrats and Independents. Recently, this sentiment was tapped in an attempt to take power from the reigning party, but that does not make it a Democratic issue.
Perhaps you should stop thinking as a Republican and start thinking as a person. Then you might be able to start to answer the question that was originally posed.
-Dan
Dumbass.
You can hide a bomb, but you can't hide an entire program, along with the paperwork (everything in Iraq was heavily documented), the people who did the work on the weapons, and the people who administered the programs, and the people who ordered the programs to be created. We've had Saddam Hussein and other top Baath party members in captivity for over a year now, and nobody has decided to rat out the program in exchange for a nicer cell or an early release?
Why would that cost be decreased? Can doctors and hospitals bill the government whatever they want? The same work still needs to be done, but instead of private companies with a profit motive, you have civil service folks doing the work. Guess which one is more effective in keeping the cost contained? The universal Healthcare in UK is the biggest business in UK, bar none.
It's a great idea but the moon has its own disadvantages. Moonquakes are constant, the dust gets into EVERYthing, and a minimum of 50% of the sky is eclipsed by the moon itself, underneath the telescope. NASA has been or is planning to put their new space telescopes in orbits that greatly expand their fields of view by reducing the amount of their sky the earth and moon occupy, and of course in orbit you don't have to contend with quakes or invasive lunar dust.
Now if you could build telescopes on the moon using lunar materials, you could eliminate 90% of the weight of a launch, saving yourself a pile of money. But in order to get there from here, you'd have to develop the ability to build stuff on the moon in the first place, particularly precision-grinding of lenses and mirrors. We should have done that long ago, but we didn't and nobody who controls money wants to take the plunge.
Incidentally, wasn't the $1 billion price tag quoted for the ROBOTIC repair mission, not the already planned human repair mission? Most of the extra cost was going to the Canadian robotics company that builds the Shuttle's manipulator arm, to develop a robot capable of performing the repairs. Money well-spent, I think, because that expertise wouldn't just evaporate after the mission was accomplished. On-orbit repair could be a booming business, if it allowed telecommunications companies to repair their pager satellites without paying launch costs.
But no, that sounds too much like planning for the future. Quick, kill it.
Money does matter to the kin and to the dying, who care about their families.
This is of course a very controversial topic.
My observation is that most people put a dollar figure on life. However, anybody who openly talks about this is looked down upon. It is acceptable to be a bean counter, it just isn't acceptable to actually say that you are one, or that bean counting was the reason for a decision you made.
Kind of like a company I know somebody at. They were doing some testing to marginally improve the safety of their products and to better comply with industry-wide regulations. Two managers got in a discussion, and one brought up cost-benefit analysis. The superior chastised him - safety should come first no matter what the cost. And yet, the project had a budget, and if any body suggested increasing it tenfold they'd be fired. So, there was a cost-benefit analysis, it just was never discussed or analyzed to make sure it was done right.
The problem with not talking about the costs of saving lives is that we end up misallocating resources. We'll spend billions of dollars on medicare so that old people live a few months longer on hospital beds, but we won't spend any money on decent foster homes, so that abused children don't have to live with their abusers. Which is the bigger health problem - people who are going to die in a year no matter what, or people who have a whole life ahead of them who could be destined for greatness or the ghetto? And which costs more, trying to push back death two weeks for somebody diagnosed with a terminal disease, or creating some incentives for half-decent families to adopt kids who would otherwise be abandoned to abuse?
Don't get me wrong - I'm all for reasearch to improve the quality and length of life. However, cutting-edge treatments simply aren't for everyone. We should be researching how cure difficult diseases, and we should let the rich pay for cutting-edge treatment if they so desire. As more doctors become educated in these treatments they will become mainstream, and available to everyone (possibly with government assistance).
There is a price in human life even when we try to save lives - if we don't count the costs we may harm more than we help...
"They DID find a number of chemical precursors..."
Considering the primary ingredients of most chemical weapons are cleaning agents or have other non-warfare uses, this isn't a surprise. You can also find all of the chemical precursors in Belgium.
"...and several 155MM shells with chemical agents that were "leftover" from the war with Iran"
So "several" 20 year old 155MM shells (which might not even fire) are a reason to invade a country? Its more likely these munitions were completely forgotten, or simply stored because there was no safe (enough) way of disposing of them.
"They also found papers that said as soon as they UN guys left, and things cooled down they would re-start the programs."
Overlooking the obvious fact that being a dictator means you don't need to tell anyone your plans (much less write them down), does this not strike you as being a remarkably convenient development for a government under pressure to justify their actions?
"Don't forget the Uranium and the other data."
That would be the uranium they were trying to puchase according to British intelligence? The intelligence that has since been proven to be based on forged documents? And "other data"? Please, be a little more specific: if you have knowledge of real operational plans to develop WMDs, or can point to evidence of such, both slashdot readers and the United Nations would like to hear about it.
"Did we find a "smoking gun"? No, but a lot of circustansial evidence that would probably convict anyone in court."
Technical point: in court, evidence is dismissed if it is deemed circumstantial. Nobody has EVER been convicted on circumstantial evidence (and some convictions have been quashed because inadmissable circumstantial evidence was allowed by the judge). Example: Bill has been found shot. Fred is known to like guns. One of Fred's guns is missing. Bill and Fred recently had an argument; Fred was seen recently driving out into the country, and still has mud on his car from the trip. Circumstantial evidence points to Fred shooting Bill then dumping the weapon, so we execute Fred for murder. Two days later, John turns up with a gunshot wound caused when he accidentally discharged the gun he stole from Fred while drunk on alcohol he bought using the money he stole from Bill during the robbery-gone-wrong. Its a simplified example, sure, but I hope it illustrates why finding the "smoking gun" is far more important than circumstantial evidence to courts. This might also explain why Saddam hasn't actually been charged with any crimes yet: if the evidence actually isn't strong enough to convict him of anything in an international court, the US will have some mighty difficult explaining to do...