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Instead of Revamping Hubble, Replace It
Neil Halelamien writes "Astronomy Magazine reports that an international team of astronomers has proposed an alternative to sending a robotic or human 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 under $1 billion to build, less than the estimated cost of a service mission."
.. than the hubble. And scientists would get more bang for the buck to replace the hubble than to send up a robot which would have a likelihood of failure.
The $1 billion cost is not just parts, it's mostly the money to launch the shuttle, pay for mission support, etc.
Even if they can build a replacement for less then $1B, it would still be about one billion more than repairing it.
These guys might be good astronomers, but their math ain't that super.
Really, think about it. If NASA sold Hubble off to the highest bidder, that buyer would have much more motivation and commitment to keep it around. Besides, why let NASA keep the monopoly on space programs? Let industry and private entrepenaurs have a go at it.
The US has much more pressing problems in this post 9/11 world. I'd rather my tax dollars go somewhere to things more immediate and important today.
not necessarily, a lens is a lens, they can i think change the CDD and com easily
There are still shuttles and shuttles are not the only way to send something into space. Shuttles are usually the very last option since they are far from being the most cost-effective solution. There is no problem with a new satelite.
Qui ne va pas à la chasse n'a pas de gibier
PHP Queb
1B isnt anything compared to the overall amount on repairing and operating the old hubble. Note that the advanced technologies today, are hundreds of times faster and more efficent. 1Billion over 5 years
"To be is to do." -Socrates
"To do is to be." -Jean-Paul Sartre
"Do-be-do-be-do." -Frank Sinatra
Bah. The hubble had to be hacked in the first place because they made the lens wrong and no one noticed before launch. Because of the initial screwups, the hubble has never been able to achieve its full potential anyway. It'd be better to have one that was built right from the start. Anyway, by your reasoning no one would ever build a new house, we'd all still be living in caves. "We've got this cave now, there's no guarantee your hut will get built, let's concentrate on this cave we've got already."
If it was their own money? Well, think about it. You can repair a dying telescope, or you can build a much better one. From this point, it seems better to just repair it. However, building a better one WOULD BE CHEAPER. So, if it was their money, I think they'd all arrive at the decision to replace it.
I don't get what you're complaining about the taxpayer stuff for. A REPAIR MISSION WOULD BE MORE EXPENSIVE.
Let's think about this logically for a second. Building a new version of the hubble will give us a better telescope, create extra jobs for 65 months AND be less expensive than the mission to repair our existing telescope. Now, you say it's a bad thing that this is being considered?
I understand and agree that americans tend to throw out more than they should, especially in the realm of automobiles, but you've picked the wrong example to illustrate that.
The Hubble space telescope was sent into orbit via Discovery. We still have that one.
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Another advantage of the Hubble Origins Probe is that it can be launched and deployed on a multistage rocket instead of the shuttle, creating additional cost-effectiveness and also putting to rest any fears for astronauts' lives.
I wondered whether the Bush administration's willingness to junk Hubble was a symptom of the same American retreat from Science as th pressure to give "Scientific Cretionism" equal support and prestige in America's schools.
That retreat from knowledge is a crying shame.
I had a buddy who always referred to it as "Scientific Cretinism -- I'm sorry Creationism".
http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/book/chpttwelve.pdf
What about it? Look at the wavelengths observed by each of NASA's first generation of orbital "great observatories," and you'll realize that James Webb isn't comparable to Hubble at all - it's much more a successor to Spitzer.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Here are his instructions to Abram, who was renamed Abraham: "Look attentively, I pray thee, towards the heavens, and count the stars, if thou art able to count them". (-;
On a more serious note, yes, the rise of the Religious Right presents a steadily increasing problem. Did you know that "religious nuts" are responsible for the separation-of-church-and-state provisions in both the US and Australian Constitutions? A chap by the name of Alonzo T Jones dunnit. The Powers That Were wanted to enact blue laws, so Mr Jones and crew first directed them to a literal reading of Exodus 20, and then when the politicians switched to walling off Saturdays instead of Sundays, convinced them to - if there is such a word - deshrine religious holidays in the law: make sure that none were enforced, all were permitted.
From your tone, you would like to outlaw what you see as religion, which would in reality be outlawing every religion but one: Atheism. Let's put this another way: you would make Atheism the State Religion as the Religious Right would make a concensus "Christianity" the State Religion.
Not only is Atheism a social disaster (France tried it, along with China and the USSR, North Korea and numerous others; go read the dismal record if you want to get depressed), but it's actually being done by stealth all across Western society as we type, using the exact same Constitutional provision intended to prevent it. The Religious Right is both a reaction to this and an excuse for it. If they get their way, we'll be living in a Puritan state, re-living the Dark Ages. If they don't, we'll be reliving Lenin's purges. The end of both their actions or yours will be a disaster, either way.
What we really need is to properly enforce the Constitution. To do this, simply formally recognise Atheism as a religion and enforce the existing no-religious-preferences rules rigorously. That would both starve the Religious Right of fuel by removing an excuse to react, and begin to remove the existing shackles from science. Scientists today are forced to ensure that their work fits within Materialist (Atheist) dogma, or face systematic attack from powerful religious forces. Without that handicap, they'd be free to explore a lot more options.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Crap should be shouted down, always. Evolution, no matter what you or 44% of Americans think about it, isn't religous or a bad scientific theory.
Those who do not accept the basic tenets of evolution are usually not well educated about what it is and isn't, or are not careful thinkers. Such people will not succeed in science, except for perhaps in some minor way, so no great loss.
I submit that if 44% of the US population do no accept evolution, science and science educators need MORE SUPPORT, not less, and that perhaps the largest degree of blame falls with extreme popogandists (e.g. pathlights.com, not exactly the NAS is it?).
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Looking through your links, I see a lot of rhetoric, but no actual information. As for mathematical calculations, I can accept that biological molecules could not form completely randomly, since they didn't need to. Chemical reactions (whether biochemical or not) are not totally random. They rely on the interactions between atoms. With large numbers of atoms, it is impossible, even today, to fully model all the interactions. In 1967, it was totally impossible.
Also, atheism is not a religion.
Oh, and scientific truth does not depend on popular opinion.
OK, I like this post better than your previous one. I read the previous one as very disingenuous, arguing that evolution was accepted primarily because scientists were athiests and that they thought there was infinite time for it to work. I called crap, because I disagreed strongly with those two notions, especially the "primarily" part.
If you want some more math, assume a 10% error rate is acceptable, and use something one tenth as complex as the simplest known bacteria (60,000 base pairs) as the target. Then we have 54000^6000*4^6000 ~= 4^47162*4^6000 == 4^53162 correct combinations of 60000 base pairs. (explanation of figures 54000^6000 is the number of places you can put an error to the power of the number of errors, 4^6000 is the number of possible errors if placed in series ~= means approximately equal and if you don't know what I did there don't bother talking to me) Now 4^53162/4^60000 = 4^-6838 ~= 10^-4116 is the probability that a string of 60000 base pairs will be close enough. Again with a generous one try per atom in the known univers per second since the big bang, this is 10^106*10^-4116 == 10^-4010, which is still well within the "impossible" range. Of course, feel free to tell me I suck at math if you can correct me. Although I do think my little overestimate with regards to hom many trys chance gets should make up for any inaccuracies.
Now, the problem here isn't your math, but your assumptions. You're doing a calculation assuming that somehow this entire bacterium, or at least its DNA, self-assembles from random. First, evolution does not address the origin of life. It addresses the origin of species. Therefore such math has no direct relevance to the core ideas of evolution (mutation, natural selection, variance across a population, changing environmental pressures). Second, no non-Creationist would make the claim that bacteria self-assembled from random processes. Presumably selection processes would have been involved and you don't do it all at once, and you don't do it from random. There are theories for how it could have happened, none of which are as robust as evolution, but with much more reasonable "odds" than what you suggest.
But that whole topic is beyond the scope of a slashdot thread on Hubble.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
While I agree Creationism isn't science, almost by definition (it doesn't use the Scientific Method), I would hardly agree that evolutionism is a good scientific theory.
Where's the prediction of the theory? Where's the experimental verification of the prediction within the experimental error? Maybe I'm demanding this because I'm used to a more rigorous (and arguably, the only) science, that is to say, physics.
Then, for those of you who feel more comfortable with soft sciences (i.e. "stamp-collecting" sciences), well, where's the fourth step in the scientific method, "experiment"? Well, actually, I guess that isn't possible to begin with, since we lack the third step, "prediction from hypothesis" (and not some vague prediction like "organisms fit for survival survives"---something quantitative that can be measured!).
As you should see, if you can see as an objective scientist, evolutionism is not such a great science either---it's better than Creationism simply by virtue of just trying to imitate real sciences. Modern biology would benefit greatly from de-emphasis of evolution in the curriculum, and avoiding the turning-away of quite a few bright students who could have made great contributions in the fields of molecular biology and others (egh, never bothered to learn all the little fields in biology).
If you recall that there are small packet of people disbelieving Special Relativity (mostly trolls and Darwin Award candidates, but recently some research suggested that the second postulate of SR may be wrong in the long run---i.e. speed of light is variable over time comparable to the age of universe), despite a wealth of experimental evidences, well, why aren't you surprised that evolutionism is so well-accepted given the lack of unambiguous experimental (or, as is the case, "observational") evidence?
I would hardly agree that evolutionism is a good scientific theory.
Where's the prediction of the theory? Where's the experimental verification of the prediction within the experimental error? Maybe I'm demanding this because I'm used to a more rigorous (and arguably, the only) science, that is to say, physics.
Evolution prefectly adequatly explains the apearance of antibiotic resistant bacteria populations.
Then, for those of you who feel more comfortable with soft sciences (i.e. "stamp-collecting" sciences), well, where's the fourth step in the scientific method, "experiment"?
It isn't that easy to devise an experiment to test many things in physics. Yet nowhere near this kind of fuss is made about ideas such as singularities...
Well, actually, I guess that isn't possible to begin with, since we lack the third step, "prediction from hypothesis" (and not some vague prediction like "organisms fit for survival survives"---something quantitative that can be measured!).
You can quite easily measure what proportion of a population of organisms survive in a certain environment.
"Less evolved" isn't correct. "Less developed" certainly is. It's demonstrable that a first-trimester embryo is only as complex as a lower animal. Killing lower animals has never been against Christian ethics.
There can be no doubt that you're destroying human potential - for good or ill. That is a different argument however.