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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."
Of course we all want a new telescope. However, the Hubble scope is already in orbit. If it is not repaired, it will stop working. There's no guarantee that this new scope would be built any time soon. So, while we all would like a faster, better telescope, perhaps we should focus on the fact that we already have Hubble up there.
Build a replacement and fix Hubble either around the same time or in the near future and have two working space telescopes for scientists to use.
Yes, I know.. money.
There is no spork.
A lighter Hubble-like probe may be fine to take up in Atlantis, Discovery, or Endeavour.
Plus, the main reason Columbia would have been the most likely candidate for Hubble servicing was because it was too heavy to dock safely with ISS, thus the other three had to stay on ISS duty to make sure it got built on time (or eventually, as is the case now, since "on time" keeps changing).
That, though, may still be the biggest obstacle. There's very little chance of using a shuttle in the next five years for anything but ISS missions. The best chance for this telescope would be to design it to be launched on something else, like a D-4 Heavy, but that would make it that much more difficult to build because of volume limitations.
that large floating space palace that was to be a mobile space workshop would be a good tool to use to redezvous with Hubble.
possibly being able to dock with it would allow for more thorough repair time. it just seems a little excessive to keep sending the shuttle up every few years to deal with small problems, why not grapple it, pull it in to the ISS and give it the full once over and set it loose.
The willingness of private investors to put up capital to service such markets shouldn't be underestimated. This is an exciting area of endeavour, just as is space transportation as witnessed by the recent investments in that field by adventurous angel investors.
Indeed, historically there has been a pattern of private financing of cutting edge telescopes without even a promise of any return at all. We can expect the private sector to step up to the plate if the government will stop pretending it is the source of innovation in technology and instead the source of funding for public-domain scientific research.
From a brief history of private endowment of telescopes:
In this stage, which lasted (roughly speaking) from the late 1800's to the middle of the 1900's, rich benefactors donated the money to establish observatories although they themselves were not practising astronomers. I gave some examples and anecdotal histories in class. For instance:
(i) James Lick made his fortune by funding "gold rush" hopefuls in San Francisco. He provided them a grubstake by buying up their land cheaply, and wound up owning most of what is now downtown San Francisco. He wanted to build an enormous pyramid in the city to commemorate himself, but was persuaded by the Regents of the University of California to build an observatory instead: Lick Observatory, just east of San Jose.
(ii) A man named Yerkes made his fortune building street car systems, and donated the money for the Yerkes 40-inch refractor, still the largest such telescope in the world. It is at Williams Bay, north of Chicago, and is operated by the University of Chicago. Yerkes was apparently quite an unscrupulous businessmen, by all accounts, and was never favoured with the respect which he hoped his endowment might buy for him.
(iii) David Dunlap made his fortune in Ontario silver mines, and was interested in astronomy. After his death, his widow donated a lot of money to the University of Toronto, who built the David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill. When it opened in 1935, it was the second-largest telescope in the world.
(iv) The Carnegie Foundation, established by the Scotsman Andrew Carnegie, funds many philanthropic endeavours, including public libraries. It provided the money for the famous 200-inch telescope on Mount Palomar, which saw first light in 1950.
Amazingly, the days of such generosity are not completely gone: the new Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea are being provided by a Mr. Keck, the head of Standard Oil (I believe). The total cost is in the region of 200 million dollars; the telescopes are operated by the University of California.
Seastead this.
on the other hand, some of those students will get to work on building the new scope itself - which is an opportunity rarely available.
interesting dilemma for the future graduate students.
It is time to say goodbye. been saying this for a while now. THere was a good article on spacedaily a while back too:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/hubble-04p.html
in fact they suggested even building 2. If Hubble keeps going a while longer, (it could go 2010 with luck) we would then have 2 scopes going!
Dont get me wrong, its been fantastic, but it is in essence 70's tech with upgrades bolted on. I think some of the bits are still original - they have been going a long long time, so when they blow thats it. There are a lot of things that can be done better too..
Tech has moved on - time to stop putting money into Hubble, great tho the old horse has been..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Why can't we sell it or donate it to another country as a gift if they are willing to take over upkeep?
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
From a sentimental standpoint I really like the idea of recovering the Hubble and sticking it in the Smithsonian. I've been told that it is a feasible idea, aside from the ridiculous cost. The Hubble really was one of the technological icons of the 90's.
Maybe, if Amazon sells it, they will offer free shipping.
What I think would be cool, if they decide to 'scrap' the Hubble (figuratively speaking) would be to sort of Open-Source it to the public.
For example:
Bandwidth considerations aside, perhaps a university could control the telescope and fullfill amateur and public requests for hi-res pictures of a specific point in the sky.
It would be of better use then to either allow the scope to burn up re-entry or let it sit up there unused.
The components using CCD's can be changed and have been numerous times, but it's still expensive to design and manufacture them. The separate costs of all those little developments could probably be more cheaply consolidated in one brand new telescope.
"22,000 per pound" And while you're at it, uses metric instead of imperial, who knows what will happen when you mix units.
This would give you a "lens" much bigger and clearer than the current one, more suitable for stretching the muscles of the newer generation of imaging devices.
It would also be sensible to spend an extra kg or 2 to put in a turret with several of each kind of imager that they want to use mounted on it. That way, if one breaks or degrades it's not such a showstopper. Something as grossly mechanical as a turret does contain moving parts, but isn't anywhere near as delicate as the instrumentation it carries. Providing it with several independent drives and positioning systems would be relatively trivial.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
If history has taught us anything, it is that the replacement is only cheaper if it works perfectly the first time. I suspect the cost estimates are based on current test practices which are insufficient for ensuring that it will work perfectly the first time, as we have repeatedly proven through screw-ups in the past. Thus, the probability leans towards the costs being far higher than estimated, whether as a result of doing extra testing or as a result of going back and fixing the mistakes later.
Of course, the worst case scenario would involve trying to figure out a way to get a shuttle to the LaGrange point (which I'm told is impossible without significant modifications to the current shuttle).
If I believed for a single second that they could replace the Hubble with a new one that worked correctly for less than the cost of repairing it, I'd be shouting "dump it" as fast as the next guy, but I'm far too cynical to do anything more than laugh at the notion.
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
Since when is a new Hubble telescope an IT-related topic? Am I alone in asking, "WTF??"
In fact, this has happened to a very small extent, if at all, in terms of "Creationism" getting equal time in public school curricula.
Which is encouraging, since evolution is the only theory of biological diversification over time that has significant scientific backing...
Regarding Hubble, I'd be curious to see images from the Keck instrument and other diffraction-based dual telescopes compared to Hubble imagery. If Hubble's performance is now equalled by ground-based instruments, it makes more sense to let it go and wait for future, vastly improved space telescopes.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
NASA IS REPLACING HUBBLE ALREADY... and in the interrum Hubble WORKS... and works WELL!!
s are still underway for the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble's successor, which would be launched in 2011."
The new Space Telescope is called "The James Webb Space Telescope." It is (via specs) better than Hubble.
From hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/future/
"Plan
If you guys, and that O'Keefe bozo (formerly) at NASA have their way, a WORKING, and SCIENTIFICALLY SIGNIFICANT telescope will be left to die even while it's STILL producing amazing results!!
And in space, NOTHING is a done deal. Sure we can do better than Hubble. But until said better telescope is in orbit AND working, we need to leave Hubble in place. Otherwise we have a multi-year downtime between two missions... and a potentially LONGER downtime if Webb (et al) fails.
I submitted similar input to NASA during their request for comments about the Hubble-Webb transition.
Please, don't get cocky about this. Sure, we have some high profile successes of late (Mars Rovers, Cassini/Huygens), but before that, NASA's better-faster-cheaper lost two Mars mission (one via a metric/English conversion error), and a Shuttle. Plus ESA's Huygens had one xmitter failure, losing directional data.
-Pie
How can you say that the Bush administration is retreating from knowledge when he:
a) DOUBLED the budget for the National Science Foundation. That's right. DOUBLED the federal outlay for basic research in all matters from health to basic physics.
b) Has FULLY funded NASA's plan to send a manned mission to the Moon and ultimately to Mars.
c) Is FULLY funding the Prometheus project and the Jupiter Icey Moons orbiter.
Thanks to the Bush administration, we are well on our way towards establishing that a baseline for life once existed on Mars, are on our way towards looking for life on Mars, and are taking the first steps towards looking for proof of liquid water not only on Europa but also on Callisto and the other of Jupiter's icey moons.
Just because some idiots in Kentucky vote for Bush doesn't mean that Bush thinks like them, any more than crystal touting LSD gobbling 60's flower relics made Clinton an LSD gobbling cook. Sometimes you just take the vote and move on.
This is my sig.
The Hubble has no boosters, so there's no provision for controlled deorbit. It has only reaction wheels for orientation. If no visit is paid to at least strap on a de-orbit pack, the Hubble will reenter in an uncontrolled fashion.
The US is a signatory on a treaty which prohibits us from allowing dangerous space junk from entering in an uncontrolled fashion over populated areas. Therefore we have to visit the Hubble at least to deorbit it.
If we're going there anyway, why not put on the de-orbit pack AND new batteries, instruments, gyros, etc?
So, in that vein, what else would you have the government reduce? Military spending? Education spending?
With the current expenditures on the so-called "war on terror" above $200 billion, a war that has debatable benefit to the US people, I think $1 billion for something that can have a direct scientific benefit to American lives is but a pebble in the pond. Unfortunately, some people in government now seem to have an active distaste for science...
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
No, your two points are also CRAP. Darwin himself pushed no theology with evolution, and to the extent the theory flew in the face of widespread religous beliefs, that would tend to make the theory HARDER to accept, not easier. Darwin was raised Christian, moved to theism, and settled into agnosticism. Alfred Wallace, a co-discovered of natural selection was also agnostic and was quoted as saying "I cared and thought nothing about [religion]." I think the years of careful observation coupled to the twenty years Darwin spent working on his ideas prior to publication was a bit more important to the acceptance of evolution than their religous implications. The implicit assumption in your point is that all scientists are athiests out to somehow disprove religion, which again, is CRAP.
The second point. While there some may have believed in an infinite universe at the time, and I'm not at all sure that this opinion prevailed, it wasn't based on science. There was certainly no consensus. The sun's power source was unknown. Radioactive dating, and radioactivity itself, was unknown. More importantly, all the nonsense about probabilities and bases pairs is CRAP, since DNA was not recognized until the middle of the 20th century. Who was to say in Darwin's day what was slow or fast, or about how much time was needed? Even though geology couldn't put hard numbers on the age of the Earth, geology alone was sufficient to question a young Earth of 6000 years.
So I'm calling crap. Especially if you "can't do the math." Cite some serious sources, not creationists or their lackeys. I'm not an atheist, but I am a scientist who defends critical thinking and accuracy. I don't even know why you're bringing this up other that to perpetuate myths that hurt science and scientific literacy. The fact that evolution was accepted, and the fact it is still accepted, is that it is scientific and testable, and meets the tests.
Why don't you think evolution was accepted on its merits? Why create this myth that it was initially accepted for political and philosophical reasons, if not to discredit it?
In astronomy, early scientists like Copernicus and Galileo either lived in fear of the church, or were outright destroyed by it, because they pursued better explanations in the face of authority. Nothing sticks in science because it contradicts a religous belief, but rather because it passes experimental verification.
Why not post something thoughtful related to the Hubble Space Telescope rather than spreading misinformation about evolution???
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)