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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.
It would take an estimated 65 months and under $1 billion to build
Yes, and for a limited time this baby can be yours for ONLY $999,999,999.99!
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Hey, Why build something you can repair when you could just buy a 10 pack of disposables. Sure, it might be *less* wasteful to build a new one from scratch, but it just seems such a sign of the times. Maybe they could get Gillette to sponsor the project.
meh
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.
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.
Can we get this lens right the first time, too? :)
The coolest voice ever.
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.
Oh damn, I really should have reworded that. The $1 billion includes the costs of not only construction, but of the launch as well. From the release:
Norman told the committee that it would take an estimated 65 months and $1 billion to launch HOP, which he stated would continue and even expand upon the flow of science and discovery that has made the original Hubble Space Telescope a "national treasure."
How about we send a robotic telescope instead? One with arms so that it could fix the Hubble, look at the stars and then hurl large rocks at the teeming citizens below...
" Except we lost the only shuttle that could get it up there."
Except had you read the article you would have noticed the plan would use an Atlas 521 rocket to put it in orbit instead of a shuttle
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
You're right, 65 months is too long. For comparison, that's almost 100 Canadian months!
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.
Would it not be much cheaper to make the images it sends back using Photo Shop? I mean, think of the savings!
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
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!"
No sane person would buy the Hubble.
(1) Unless you have the means to "service" it, it will end up to be a short-lived investiment.
(2) To download raw data gathered with the Hubble, you have to use governmental communication facilities such as TDRS, etc. Check out how expensive its bandwidth usage is.
(3) It will eventually tumble down onto the earth one day. You will be held responsible to bring it down to the safe place (e.g., ocean). To do so you have to possess technology and skill for a controled re-entry.
(4) what the hell would the private entity do with a space telescope?
I could go on and on and on...
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.
I submitted the story, and because of some sloppy wording on my part a number of people now think that the $1 billion doesn't include the cost of launching the rocket. In actuality, it does include this cost already.
From their poster, here are the figures which go into the cost estimate (written as low/high estimate):
Spacecraft: $135M/$165M
Observatory ATLO: $80M/$100M
Deorbit Module: $5M/$10M
Optical Telescope Assembly: $150M/$210M
SI Mods: $20M/$30M
SI Integration: $5M/$10M
FGS: $30M/$55M
Fee: $64M/$87M
Contingency: $128M/$174M
Launch Vehicle: $130M/$150M
Total: $747M/$991M
Again, my apologies for wording my submission poorly.
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.
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.
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.
There's less light pollution only half the time. The dark side of the moon, if I recall correctly, isn't actually dark -- it faces the sun as often as the light side. It's the side that never sees the earth, though. This would create a small additional engineering problem regarding communicating with the satellite.
Gravity isn't always an advantage. It has the annoying property of holding gases and things like dust closer to the telescope. Modern telescope designs might prefer freefall operation.
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.
Uhm... http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology /webb_ngst_030108.html
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
The Hubble space telescope was sent into orbit via Discovery. We still have that one.
Waiting for ad.doubleclick.net...
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.
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".
Since when is a new Hubble telescope an IT-related topic? Am I alone in asking, "WTF??"
http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/book/chpttwelve.pdf
i say we blow it up like they do with the casinos... f-in a.
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
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
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)
I was going to post something similar to this.
I'll add that the James Webb Telescope will work at longer wavelengths than Hubble, and will not duplicate Hubble's UV capability. In that sense, I would support the proposed Hubble "copy" that would fly the to-be-orphaned new Hubble Instruments, especially as seeing as how there's no ultraviolet spectroscopic capability in the near term.
I suspect this idea is dead in the water given where James Webb Space Telescope is at the moment. It is viewed by Washington and most of the astronomical community as Hubble's replacement, and attempts to propose new ultraviolet telescopes to advance Hubble's current science have not fared well.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
You only need adaptive optics when you're trying to image through our turbulent atmosphere. Images from space are diffraction-limited -- the only way to get higher resolution is to build a bigger telescope.
The techniques of adaptive optics are used in space to compensate for mechanical stresses of space travel, temperature variations, manufacturing flaws, etc. They are used on the new Spitzer Space (infrared) Telescope.
Basically, if you want a bigger telescope, then adaptive optics (or at least something similar) is the way to do it.
These comments do express the opinions of my employers, and, personally, I think they're complete rubbish.
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.
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)
How do you explain away the many successful scientists who are both out-and-out Creationists and dare to say so despite the risk of being branded heretic and burned at the academic stake for it?
I don't have to, because there are not "many" if by "creationist" you mean disbeliever in evolution, natural selection, etc. Rare, rare, rare. It's possible to get a PhD in science and hold any number of irrational beliefs, but most scientists don't because irrational beliefs are the antithesis of scientific thought. How about we instead talk about the overwhelming number of scientists who are secure about evolution? I'm sure you've heard about Project Steve?
Again, most of the creationist hacks I come across usually argue against what they think evolution is, rather than what the theory actually is. For instance, evolution says nothing about the origin of life, just of species. That's "uneducated" in my book.
Personally, you should peddle your creationist non-science someplace other than slashdot, and, at the least, some thread other than one about the Hubble Space Telescope.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
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)
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.