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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.
Can we get this lens right the first time, too? :)
The coolest voice ever.
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.
But, if you build a new one instead of repairing the old telescope, you get:
1) New technology, which will help you take more pictures faster and observe more.
2) Ability to send the satellite back to earth after it's life has passed, reducing the amount of junk orbiting earth
3) Don't have to pay for a shuttle mission ($500 million), it is planned to use a cheaper Atlas 521 rocket to send it into orbit
4) Don't have to risk human life to fix the telescope
The plan to fix the telescope estimated cost is 1.5 billion. With the new telescope designed and built for less than a billion, an Atlas 521 launch costs much less than half a billion to launch.
This is cheaper, and will provide better science.
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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)
It's here for the great colour scheme.
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In Korea, long hair is for old people!
For one thing, the doubling was supposed to happen over 5 years. It certainly hasn't doubled yet, and in fact it certainly won't.
Quite the contrary. The FY 2005 NSF budget for research and related activities is being cut by .7% from its FY 2004 level, the first such cut in many years. The other main part of the NSF budget, that devoted to education, is being cut even more. The "doubling" bill is now very much no longer operative.
The rational conclusion is that Bush just isn't serious about this.
"I used to be a dilettante. Then I thought I'd try something else for a while."