Slashdot Mirror
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.
Here
The John Hopkins folks proposed a 'Son of Hubble' for that same cost. It would give the same or better scientific data gathering and also be designed to be fixed in an easier fashion, made with more modern tech, etc.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
It always seems that whenever something needs to be maintained, suddenly, congress is all scared to give them money. Like they never expected a 15yr old telescope dealing with the harshness of space would need lots of money to keep it going. The problem is, they make the initial investment saying "Oh, this will be great", but as soon as it becomes less than popular, they drop support, and thus waste billions of dollars worth of equipment and achievements, just so in the public eye they aren't wasting money. The problem is, the public doesn't realize they are wasting money by NOT spending the money for it. All I can say is "people are dumb" (well, on average, at any rate)
I came, I saw, She conquered.
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.
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)
"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.
Is this thing just an out-dated, broken down piece of crap that people just can't let go of because of sentimentality?
I have a 15 year old car that I'm rather fond of due to all the good times I've been through with it, but when the next major repair becomes necessary, it's going to the dump.
...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.
Don't forget to check the oil and rotate the tires while you are up there
"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.
How to Download YouTube Videos
...are "Why are these costs so prohibitively high?" and "What can be done to correct this?"
The coolest voice ever.
now that the unsuspecting people think that hubble is just floating garbage, it's true purpose can be utilized; a High powered Super Laser.
I suspect the Chinese could get it fixed for a lot less than $1 billion. It's called trickle down economics, I think.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
NASA should have read the contract, Hubble was a loss leader for the manufacturer. As we all know the profit is all in the servicing of it.
Hubble $$$
Replacement gyro - $5,000
Replacement screw - $0.05
Replacement nut - $0.05
House call - $1,000,000,000.00
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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)
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.
"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?
If we allow for a 0.5% probability of the loss of austronauts, the costs would drop dramatically. For example, they don't want to send the mission without another shuttle on "stand-by", because, if something is wrong, this mission will not be able to repair itself (unlike those, that are sent to ISS).
If lives can be and are lost for a good cause in Afghanistan, Iraq, in fighting domestic crime, and in firefighting, I say, we are overly protective of the space crews.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
"Argument by quotation is silly" -- Anonymous Coward (???? -- present)
duh, just outsource it to india.
what good has the space program done for mankind? Anything other than .... knowledge?
/. topics linked to every article, so every time someone posts a question asked and answered ad nausem, we can just point them to it.
*sigh* This question comes up every time space exploration comes up, and everytime it's answered. Really, there should be FAQ's for
Discounting scientific knowledge, we have, briefly and non-comprehensively:
1) Satellite monitoring, navigation and communications technology.
2) Mass produced integrated circuits.
3) Major contributions to the environmental movement.
4) Advanced management techniques.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
Hell, we're now spending our tax dollars to buy Viagra for seniors.
link here
As a friend of mine put it. The seniors have been screwing over the young for years... now they've got Viagra to help.
- 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.No, no, no - I meant important things like this and this.
The solution is synthesis of a sky-time market from scientist demand. Scientist demand should derive money provided by their funding source to purchase required sky-time. If there is sufficient market demand for Hubble sky-time it will be profitable to repair. Otherwise it should be sold for scrap/ditched.
Seastead this.
Err, I think you mean it will be at the second Lagrange point (L2)..
Actually, it'll be in orbit round the L2 point, but now I'm just getting picky.
I think you'll find that the French physicist Lissajous had very little to do with orbital dynamics, and much more to do with fascinating sqiggly loop patterns that provide endless entertainment for thost supposed to be learning how to use an oscilloscope.
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.
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
Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but most options I've seen ask to replace Hubble with something newly designed. Why this seems good, and if we had the money I could see it, I haven't heard the alternative:
Why not replace it with a brand new hubble, using the design of the original? I.e. reduce the costs of design, research and development by reusing what we already know works, of course use some obvious improvements (including avoiding the optics errors), but only replace something in the design if a better, proven, easy-to-upgrade or off-the-shelf alternative has been developed since Hubble was first designed/deployed.
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?
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.
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
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.
For those wishing to avoid NYT's soul-eating registration, try:
Congress Debates Saving Hubble
I'm an unemployed mechanical engineer and my entire family has been completely without health care for almost a year now. This includes two kids and my wife as well as myself. Even when I was working I could only afford the cheapest package. I'm now in the process of applying for welfare health care so that the kids can go to the doctor. In fact for most of my adult life, I have been without basic health care. To me the Canadian system sounds pretty nice.
Clickety Click
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