NASA Announces De-Orbit Mission For Hubble

maglor_83 writes "NASA has announced the end for Hubble. It plans on performing a "robotic de-orbit mission", and apparently its not due to the monetary costs associated with fixing it, but rather the risks involved. NASA's new goals are now manned missions to the moon, as a platform for Mars."

Comments

Scientific payoff

[BWJones]

OK....... I cannot see what the near term scientific benefit is of sending folks to Mars. Hubble? Hell yeah. The moon? Absolutely, .......but Mars? Look, Hubble has generated more scientific data per dollar than just about any other NASA program as well as helped out more than one project in the defense department and fed data to scientists and scientific organizations world wide. A return to the moon, could certainly function as a refueling point for unmanned missions to other planetary and stellar objects, as well as functioning as a potential resource for mining (with a space elevator which would facilitate this), and a remote optical and radio telescope on the moon could be an extraordinary scientific resource, but I am not sure the payoff of killing Hubble in favor of manned missions to Mars are currently worth it. I would much rather see more investment in sophisticated ground and space based "scopes".

Given current technology, I see a manned mission to mars as a financial boondogle.

Re:Scientific payoff

[drinkypoo]

The moon would be a good place for a prototype space elevator. If it turns out to be a good source for Helium-3, AND we turn out to have a good use for Helium-3, then the moon may be otherwise useful. Mars, on the other hand, offers us the opportunity to do scientific research that simply isn't possible any way other than landing on another planet, and Mars is the most earthlike of planets around (sad as that is) and may have been significantly more earthlike in the past. It's worth going there. As for measurable, immediate scientific benefits, you have to look further than the end of your own nose if you're going to learn anything, and you have to look further than the end of this week if you want to help humanity.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Anonymous Coward]

Given current technology, I see a manned mission to mars as a financial boondogle.

Not that financial boondogles have stopped this administration from doing anything. :-P

Re:Scientific payoff

[BWJones]

Mars, on the other hand, offers us the opportunity to do scientific research that simply isn't possible any way other than landing on another planet,

Like what? And what can we not do remotely? Why send astronauts there is what I am asking.

It's worth going there.

What I am saying is not that we should not go to Mars. I am saying that sending people to Mars right now would not have the scientific payoff that other investments in our space program might.

As for measurable, immediate scientific benefits, you have to look further than the end of your own nose if you're going to learn anything,

Yes, and your point is?

and you have to look further than the end of this week if you want to help humanity.

See my above comments on best bang for the buck.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Ayaress]

Not just "can't hit what you can't reach," but if we can jump around the solar system in reasonable amounts of time largely under our own power (rather than our current slingshot methods for reaching the outer planets), imagine the sort of mobility that could create closer to home if the technology and techniques were adapted.

Re:Scientific payoff

[drinkypoo]

Part of the scientific process that often goes overlooked is that when you are trying to solve one problem, you often solve other problems that lie along the way, and sometimes you make accidental discoveries that lead to developments that you never thought might be related. Thus, science for science's sake is generally a far more useful [and maybe even noble] pursuit than most of the other things we do.

Consequently, you really have no idea what kind of bang for the buck will be produced by, comparatively, setting up shop on the moon, and setting up shop on Mars.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Anonymous Coward]

Given current technology, I see a manned mission to mars as a financial boondogle.

This is why we go to the moon first. Of course we can't do it with current technology, and if we keep sending up robots, without the incentive to develop better and faster propulsion, etc., that's all we'll ever have - current technology.

Get people up to Mars successfully, and we won't waste any more missions because of stupid "convert to metric" errors and the like that have doomed most of the robotic Mars missions to date.

No more sending up a robot, finding a tantalizing piece of data, and then waiting 5+ years to get the next round of questions answered. This is tedious and silly! Put PEOPLE on the ground with the right equipment for a year, and your precious "science" will start to ROLL in instead of TRICKLING in like it does now!

(sheesh!)

Step 1: Moon base.
Step 2: Build the next generation of spacecraft on the moon
Step 3: Launch Mars mission from the moon, where the gravity well is shallower.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Zocalo]

Actually, apart from using it as a shield against EM interference coming from Earth, there's not all that much to be gained from sticking a radio telescope on the moon. You'd have to either make it small enough to land intact, or build the thing in-situ as well, plus you'd have to relay any data around the moon, most likely via a satellite unless you want a second base station and someone laying a lot of fibre...

A better idea would be to build two orbiting radio telescopes in Earth's orbital path, on opposite sides of the sun and with the same orbital velocity as that of Earth. This essentially fixes the Earth and the two telescopes in place relative to each other and keeps line of sight communications between Earth and each of the satellites at all times. Massage the resultant data together via the wonders of very long baseline interferometry and you effectively have an single radio telescope the diameter of Earth's orbit.

Re:Scientific payoff

[NatteringNabob]

It has nothing to do with Scientific payoff and everything to do with Electoral votes. If you wanted to pick up a key southern state, say Florida, and you knew that their key reason for existence was about to disappear, you might want to invent an extremely expensive, open ended, project to keep thousands of potential voters employed. Let's face it, the Mars Rovers and Cassini probe have demonstrated pretty conclusively that space exploration is a job for the bots. They are cheaper, more tolerant of extreme conditions, and if they die, nobody cares much. The 'man on mars' program has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Ford Prefect]

The moon would be a good place for a prototype space elevator.

No, it wouldn't be. Basic space elevator is essentially just a tower to geostationary orbit. Earth, rotating just over once every day (!), that's an orbit radius of 42,000 km. The Moon's equivalent orbit with it rotating once a month (albeit with lower gravity) is about 90 million km, assuming this back-of-the-envelope calculation is right.

The best place for a prototype space elevator would be a small asteroid with a fairly high rotation rate - you could probably get away with a few tens of kilometres if chosen carefully...

Re:Scientific payoff

[mboverload]

Because there is no financial reason to have one. Unless you got Gates or Allen to fund it, I don't see a commerical one ever happening.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Rei]

So the people get there, find out a tantalizing piece of science, and then keep studying it the same way for the next year. Humans, just like robots, are limited by what scientific insturments they have available to them. Mobility? Any craft that could carry a human could go even further if you didn't strap the dead-weight human to it.

The only thing you gain by having people on the ground is reduced latency. However, it's hard to justify the tremendously increased cost of sending humans along when latency isn't really even a problem in comparison to how frequently we can send new insturmentation to use in studying Mars.

Look at the scientific value of the Apollo program vs. the Russian lunar program. Sure, we got a nice, flashy, feel good event - and heck, that alone may have justified going. But the science didn't. The Soviets spent just a small fraction of the cost that we did, and yet still got sample returns, had good in-situ insturments, and visited many more places on the moon than we did.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Pxtl]

Scientific benefit? No. Political benefit? Hellz yeah. Mars is totally impossible with NASAs budget, even if NASA were efficient. People don't properly consider the magnitude of the Mars mission. Think of the massive Apollo rockets. Now consider how teeny-tiny the Apollo orbiter was, compared to the massive Apollo rockets.

Now imagine an Apollo rocket that has to go way, way further, and carry a vehicle that can keep men alive for months instead of days. Now think about what you do when you get there - the moon is low-G and no atmosphere. Mars is more like earth - and we don't use little bitty landers to land on earth, we use giant-ass space shuttles, runways, and launch platforms. All that stuff has to be moved.

So instead of each Apollo flight being a stand-alone mission, we have dozens of Apollo flights, each launching little bits and pieces of equipment to Mars. Then we get the first planetary atmospheric land-and-takeoff vehicle onto an alien landscape.

I can't say this enough: Mars is hard. Yes, NASA has a salespitch concept - but the first plans for the Shuttle didn't look much like the half-assed end product.

So here's the political benefit: Bush has given NASA a death march. The project will fail, and other projects will stagnate under the resources lost to Mars. Then, once NASA has no discernible product or output, 90% of the organisation can be cut just by eliminating the Mars program, and the public will cheer for the demise of such an incompetent, beaurocratic space agency that had only one job and couldn't even do that.

Sounds fun, don'it?

Re:Scientific payoff

[Zeinfeld]

Part of the scientific process that often goes overlooked is that when you are trying to solve one problem, you often solve other problems that lie along the way, and sometimes you make accidental discoveries that lead to developments that you never thought might be related. Thus, science for science's sake is generally a far more useful [and maybe even noble] pursuit than most of the other things we do.

This is trotted out every time that the space program needs justifying and guess what, its bogus. Non stick frying pans were being developed during the Napoleonic wars when the English embargo prevented the French getting their hands on enough cooking grease. Hence LeCreuset.

It gets even wobblier when you get to the old CERN home of the Web stuff. The folk who go on about that don't mention that CERN never assigned any staff to the Web project directly other than Tim during the time Tim was at CERN. There were three students who worked with Tim and another four people from another group who did the Web because they beleived in it. When it came to setting up the Web consortium the CERN director sent to bat for the Web project EU grant wise told the committee that the priority at CERN was physics and the Web was not considered important.

Even when you get to communications satelites the story is somewhat murky. Most satelites are being launched by the French or the Chinese and NASA has done its best to make use of those facilities as hard as possible.

If you want to research networking then give money to networking, if you want to research biochemistry give the money to biochemists. Do not give the money to a bunch of astrophyscists in the hope that they will solve your networking, fusion, and life sciences problems in their spare time. It does not work that way. The only way you can see a return on 'spinoff' research is if you have programs in place to identify and invest in them. NASA ditched all that years ago and there is zero chance of picking any of it up in the current budget cut environment.

There is no way that shutting down Hubble and spending the money on the space station is going to get even 1% of the science that Hubble has delivered already. The basic problem here is that NASA sees its mission as manned space exploration and that has very little to do with science.

There is one solution to the problem that has not been discussed much. There were two mirrors made, the bent one that is up there today and the reserve that was made (corectly) by Kodak for testing purposes. The Kodak mirror must still be in storage somewhere, there are duplicates of pretty much all the equipment. the parts could probably be bolted together to make a duplicate for $50 million or even less. The French, Russians and Chinese would probably put it into orbit for $50 million at commercial rates and given the cargo it could probably be done at no cost in return for telescope time.

The cost of Hubble is almost all in the design. Making a duplicate should be much, much cheaper.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Anonymous Coward]

assuming this back-of-the-envelope calculation is right.

It might be in itself, but you're forgetting something important: Lagrange points. The link below explains how a lunar space elevator can be done.

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/lunar_spac e_elevator.html

Not only would it be possible, the entire cable could weigh just 6,800 kg according to the article's calculations.

(It's been a slashdot story, but the usual searches wouldn't find it)

Re:Scientific payoff

[quanticle]

Well you never know...

Given Creationism's recent gains, and the growing power of the Religious Right in the administration, one might believe that yes, indeed, Hubble is being brought down to set back science.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Eric Smith]

The cost of Hubble is almost all in the design. Making a duplicate should be much, much cheaper.

Not bloody likely, even assuming that your premise is correct, which it might not be.

First you're assuming that they actually have the correct engineering drawings. A GAO investigation of ISS revealed that although NASA had a system that was supposed to track the ISS engineering drawings, they didn't actually have the correct drawings.

Secondly, the cost of making a one-off of just about anything goes UP over time, unlike the cost of mass manufacturing items which goes down.

And third, I doubt that they would build another Hubble even if they could. They wouldn't be able to resist making a lot of changes to take advantage of advances in technology, so the design work would all get redone anyhow, resulting in no net savings.

Re:Scientific payoff

[AndyL]

Why make a new Hubble? They could just buy back the one in the Smithsonian.

Re:Scientific payoff

[poopdeville]

Hate to break it to you, but Florida's economy is not driven by NASA. Cape Canaveral and its suburbs house only a tiny fraction of the population there. Saying that NASA is their "key reason for existence" is simply retarded.

Re:Scientific payoff

[jelle]

If anything is capable of looking beyond the nose into the depths of the Universe, it is Hubble.

Now, truth of the matter is that they are going to do the 20+ shuttle flights to finish the space station, whose science results have pretty much been limited to 'hey some moss grows in circles in space', and explaining to highschool kids how astronauts live out there. doing valuable circular-growing moss research and all.

But the risk and cost of single flight to keep Hubble operative is too high, and the 20+ for the space station are worth the cost and risk?

Right. I'm not convinced.

This is not about Mars, or the Moon. Mars and the Moon are just decoys. They are only mentioned to make people drool like you are doing.

Most likely, NASA will never get sufficient funding (and balls) to actually go do it. If it's too risky and too expensive to go fix something in orbit, that has been specifically designed to be fixed, then please tell me, how can flying people to the moon and another planet be affordable and safe?

Double standards, that's the only way.

Re:Scientific payoff

[WhiteBandit]

But you could send several thousand rovers for the cost of sending one human, and the rovers can stay longer.

The combined cost of Spirit and Opportunity was $820 million dollars.

The potential cost of a manned mission to Mars, using off the shelf technology and launching today: $20 billion dollars.

Which means you can send 48 rovers similiar to Spirit and Opportunity to Mars, with the same payload.

The "rovers being able to stay longer" is a somewhat unqualified statement at the moment. Sure, they have each lasted a year on the surface. It's up in the air whether they will both last another year or not however.

Humans would be forced to stay on the surface of Mars for roughly 2 (Earth) years, until conditions to launch are optimal again.

Regardless, it is technically "cheaper" to send Rovers, but a human on the ground can do so much more.

(Then again, I might be saying this coming from a geology background. I want to be on the ground, physically looking at the rock, breaking it apart in my lab, creating thin sections and examining the mineral content. Right now, all we can do with the rovers is look at pictures and analyze spectrographs... and dig a few inches into the ground. Please, what is beneath all that sound? What is the bedrock composed of. Etc...).

Anyway, for those who haven't read it, I highly recommend Dr. Zubrin's book, The Case For Mars

Re:Scientific payoff

[daraf]

Think of the massive Apollo rockets. Now consider how teeny-tiny the Apollo orbiter was, compared to the massive Apollo rockets. Now imagine an Apollo rocket that has to go way, way further, and carry a vehicle that can keep men alive for months instead of days.

The bulk of propulsion is used to escape the clutches of earth's atmosphere. The additional propulsion required to coast to Mars is (relatively to the entire quantity) small. In addition, I'd guess that we won't use the same technology as Apollo. Think nuclear reactors and ion engines. A form of nuclear propulsion constantly accelerating a craft to Mars would also cut down on the months of time we currently need to coast there.

Also, with the experience we've gained from in-orbit assembly of the ISS, I would also guess that we might be able to launch a spacecraft in components rather than all at once.

Now think about what you do when you get there - the moon is low-G and no atmosphere. Mars is more like earth - and we don't use little bitty landers to land on earth, we use giant-ass space shuttles, runways, and launch platforms.

The "giant-ass space shuttle" was an overcomplex monstrosity built by a group of people that couldn't escape winged flight paradigms. Just to point out how things have changed, the upcoming Delta IV heavy will have a payload capacity greater than that of the STS.

From the rumblings I've seen / heard / read, the CEV will be more like an Apollo capsule. Also, you don't need to land your entire craft on Mars. You just need to get your people, scientific equipment, and whatever you need to escape the atmosphere down there. All of the support equipment for the trip back can remain in orbit.

I'm not going to comment on the political thread to this discussion, but I'd suggest not labeling the technological hurdles as insurmountable outright.

Re:Scientific payoff

[markov_chain]

The basic problem here is that NASA sees its mission as manned space exploration and that has very little to do with science.

Well that begs an interesting question: why should NASA's mission be scientific? It is the national space agency, I don't see a problem with them working on manned space exploration.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Cecil]

This is trotted out every time that the space program needs justifying and guess what, its bogus. Non stick frying pans were being developed during the Napoleonic wars when the English embargo prevented the French getting their hands on enough cooking grease. Hence LeCreuset.

Guess what -- THAT's bogus.

Great example, by the way. LeCreuset is nonstick cookware, I'll give you that. However, they do not use Teflon for their ceramic cookware. They did not invent Teflon or anything at all similar. They do USE Teflon, however, in their kitchen textiles, as a fabric protector. Because, that's right, teflon is useful for more than non-stick cookware! Hooray!

In fact, Teflon is among the (at the top of the list I believe, but I'm not willing to back that up) most slippery materials known to man. Not simply the cheapest or most widely available, it is extremely unique.

I do agree with you in general that the Hubble has delivered far more science than any manned mission ever has. However, I believe both have their merits, and both deserve funding.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Zeinfeld]

"Why make a new Hubble? They could just buy back the one in the Smithsonian."

Possibly, I suspect that it is not completely functional and the main mirror may not be the optically accurate one made at a cost of $15 million or so.

But it would be a good starting point. I'll bet that even the Smithsonian would rather the thing was put to decent use.

The main problem is the mirror and assembling the whole thing in a dust free environment.

On the subject of plans, the ISS is a completely different botch up. The Hubble plans are really well understood because hundreds of copies were made, checked and rechecked when we were going over the whole saga of the spherical aberation in the mirror.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Almost-Retired]

Unforch, there is no "Dark side of the moon" in terms of a permanent dark side. Its day, and its night, are each nominally 2 weeks long. Yes, it maintains the same face toward the earth, but thats not the same else we wouldn't have the phases of the moon as the 'dark side' rotates around the moon as it rotates around the earth.
--
Cheers, Gene

Re:Scientific payoff

[sjbcfh]

most likely via a satellite unless you want a second base station and someone laying a lot of fibre...

And you know that just as soon as you lay that fibre, a backhoe is going to come along and cut it.

Re:Scientific payoff

[LWATCDR]

"This is trotted out every time that the space program needs justifying and guess what, its bogus. Non stick frying pans were being developed during the Napoleonic wars when the English embargo prevented the French getting their hands on enough cooking grease. Hence LeCreuset."
You sort of prove the point... You never know what you will develop until you have a strong need. BTW Teflon has nothing to do with the space program. It was developed for the Atomic bomb project. It was uses for seals exposed to Florine.

"Even when you get to communications satellites the story is somewhat murky. Most satellites are being launched by the French or the Chinese and NASA has done its best to make use of those facilities as hard as possible. "
THis is just nuts. Of couse sommunications satellites where developed by Nasa and AT&T.

When you push the state of the art you never know what you will develop. IC based computers where developed for the Apollo program. Why never before? because no needed computer that small before. I mean why would you need a computer smaller than a desk or even a room?
Remote heart monitoring systems. Why would you need to check someones heartbeat remotely.
Yes the space station is a waste. Not because it is a bad idea but because it was cut and cut and is now just a shell of what it was going to be. Much like the Shuttle.

Re:Scientific payoff

[kd5ujz]

I think you are refering to one of these two articles

Lunar Space Elevator Instead?

Space Elevator Prototype Climbs MIT Building

Re:Scientific payoff

[Zeinfeld]

You never know what you will develop until you have a strong need. BTW Teflon has nothing to do with the space program. It was developed for the Atomic bomb project. It was uses for seals exposed to Florine.

Hah! see my other post, Teflon was invented in 1938, before the Manhattan project started.

When you push the state of the art you never know what you will develop. IC based computers where developed for the Apollo program. Why never before? because no needed computer that small before. I mean why would you need a computer smaller than a desk or even a room?

The USSR did not develop ICs and still put rockets into space. In fact the ICs did not become important in space until after the Appolo program. They were pretty finiky until the 1970s.

Kilby was funded by Texas Instruments, Noyce by Fairchild. Both companies were working for the Pentagon, not NASA. The first applications for the ICs were in the US Airforce and the minuteman missile (1962). There is a big difference between using an IC in a missile where it has to work for no more than a few minutes and using one in a satelite or such.

There are certainly links between research fields but space is certainly not unique in having a spinoff effect and you do not get spinoffs without also doing basic research in the area in question. The World Wide Web put together ideas from twenty years of formal comp sci research with a different perspective to reach the breakthrough.

I don't see any reason why we should expect that diverting funds from worthwhile science like Hubble to worthless science like the space station is going to result in a net gain through the spinoff effect. Space has been enormously well funded for fifty years. Sending people to the moon does not create any seriously interesting new challenges.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Iron Sun]

Anyway, for those who haven't read it, I highly recommend Dr. Zubrin's book, The Case For Mars

Karma to burn, so...

Zubrin is a barking mad cult leader labouring under the messianic misapprehension that he and only he can get us to Mars. Anybody who says otherwise is a fool and a communist.

If you read his statements made after the release of the basic outline of the current Bush space plan, he stops just short of calling treasonous any effort to go to the Moon as a first step or staging post rather than directly to Mars. He's not interested in consensus building, just his own (dubiously costed and hand-wavingly engineered) master plan. There are a growing number of people in space advocacy who consider him as mad as a bus. In a field full of dogmatic fantasists, he dwarfs all others for sheer cultish zealotry.

Mod me "-1 uncomfortable truth shut up shut up lalalalala"

Re:Scientific payoff

[1u3hr]

Sending people to the moon does not create any seriously interesting new challenges.

I think building habitats on the moon; mining, prospecting for water, growing plants, building a rail gun launcher, etc, are all extremely interesting challenges; if not ones a theoretical physicist could get very excited about. But a farside lunar radio or light telescope might.

Re:Scientific payoff

[javiercero]

LOL, funny how you are denouncing the space program while using a device that most likely uses VLSI components. Guess what the push for MSI and later LSI which lead to VLSI was made mostly by NASA requirements for highly integrated devices using this new thing called a "transistor" which until then no one really had a use for, except for some fancy qualities as an amplifier.

Thank goodness you were in no way shape or form in charge of any basic research programme.

NASA and the space program may not be responsible for some "great new products" however the need to apply new solutions to manned space challenges is what has pushed the state of the art in a significant way. If you can not see that just go and bugger off, sometimes the worst idiot is the one who things he knows it all.....

Re:Scientific payoff

[Shadowlore]

You can't see it because you are looking in the wrong spot. You are only thinking of what NASA has told us is "science" on Mars: poking and scraping rocks and taking pictures of dirt.

Your assertion regarding Hubble returning more scientific data per dollar is specious. The Apollo program has resulted in hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars worth of scientific data and technological advancement and products. Even as recent as the last 9 months has some of the original Apollo data been used to create/do more -- in particular physical therapy. What the Apollo project did for science and technology is staggering. Despite it being a mere flag and footprints set of missions. Hubble's contributions while not insignifcant, are hardly up to the scale of Apollo, let alone Mars. Primarily due to it's extreme limitation.

Furthermore, the roughly 5-6 billion the Hubble cost would have paid for some truly awesome observatories capable of producing images that rival Hubble's for a small fraction of the price. For example this telescope set cost under 170 million to build: http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/geninfo/about.php

This one is about a billion:
http://www.eso.org/projects/owl/

It is a matter of physics that the Moon is a very poor choice of refeuling station for interplanetary travel. Stopping at the moon for feul when goingfrom Earth to Mars is like going from LA Pheonix and refeuling in Portland, OR. The exact same launch capability that took us to the Moon can take you right on to mars w/o "refeuling". Surface to surface, Earth to Mars is cheaper (lower delta-v) than Earth to Earth-Moon.

The best route (in terms of technology, resuability, and performance) is a series of tethers from LEO to GEO and GEO to Mars (GMO and then LMO) for example. The catch is the mass needed to make the tethers. Launched from Earth it is not workable. However, a mission to Mars that established the production facilities to make these would do it quite well.

Mars provides the resources needed to sustain life quite well while making the tethers. You go from Mars surface to LMO and put a LMO to GMO tether in place. Then you utilize this capability to put the GMO tether in place. Now you have Mars surface to Geosynchronous Mars orbit using rockets that are comparatively small (read: already developed) as they only need to go to LMO, rising out of a much shallower gravity well.

With this you could go two ways. You can then build a Mars Space Elevator. We don't need carbon nanotubes for that. Kevlar 49, IIRC, has plenty of wiggle room for doing that on Mars. Again, the shallower gravity well is a boon, as well as it only neededing to be about 10,500 Km on Mars. Of course, a LMO with the tether launch to GMO would make it even easier to make.

Instead of or in addition to the MSE, you put up a GMO->GEO tether. Using these systems you can launch from Mars to Earth using either the MSE, or Surface-LMO rocket power. The tether you put in GEO is then added to the system and you use it to put one in LEO.

Now you have launch windows spanning many months, and transit times as low as 90 days.

The scientific return on manned Mars missions is not necessarily geological. It's largely biological, ecological, and technological. Doing the same thing on Luna is not only an order of magnitude more expensive to start with, it is also going to return less usable data per dollar.

If you go by the old way of NASA Mars, yes it'd be one helluva boondoggle. If you insist on space stations and moon bases to do it, it'd be a ruinous one for all aspects.

The ISS building costs alone are above (last I recall) 60 billion dollars billion, with annual costs to exceed 3 billion. Given it's estimated 10 year life that's 30 billion dollars. So when it is said and done, the ISS will have cost us about 100 billion dollars, and it's scope and capacity have been decreased.

That is a financial boondoggle as well as a serious setback in space exploration.

But if you g

Re:Scientific payoff

[Zeinfeld]

LOL, funny how you are denouncing the space program while using a device that most likely uses VLSI components. Guess what the push for MSI and later LSI which lead to VLSI was made mostly by NASA requirements for highly integrated devices using this new thing called a "transistor" which until then no one really had a use for, except for some fancy qualities as an amplifier.

That is bogus, there were plenty of applications that needed compact logic. The Air Force was a much bigger consumer of MSI and LSI than NASA.

What I am denouncing here is the idea that there is something unique to space exploration in generating spinoffs. All (good) science should produce results in other fields.

Given the choice of Hubble or the space station it is very clear which will produce more science, Hubble is the winner by miles. Hubble is providing more data about the early state of the universe than any other source. The occupants of the space station are doing no experiments at all, they are just keeping the station running.

Thank goodness you were in no way shape or form in charge of any basic research programme.

That really is a funny statement. I don't regard the space station as research of any kind. It is at best an engineering challenge.

But you are completely wrong about influence on funding.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Zeinfeld]

Both applied and basic research are valuable pursuits that have paid off in many ways. Basic research, like astronomy, often pays off much better in cultural value than economic, and that's okay by me. I'm not here on Earth just to make money to leave my family and government.

This is a different issue. What I am saying here is evaluate the programs on their direct merits first.

Hubble has provided real direct benefits, albeit mainly in the cultural field. We know more about the origins of the universe, we are able to better understand basic physics.

The Appolo program produced real direct political benefits. JFK funded the program for one reason, to spend the USSR into the ground. His objective was achieved, the USSR was broken psychologically in 1969, it just continued moving for another two decades.

There were certainly some spin offs from Appolo, but the same effects could have been achieved for far less by direct investment in research into the relevant fields.

The 'spinoff' effect can work both ways. I work in computer security, it has taken us two decades to escape from the seriously warped views that entered the field because early funding came almost exclusively from military contracts. One reason that the Internet is insecure is that the security models being applied are completely wrong for its current application.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Zondar]

"Given the choice of Hubble or the space station it is very clear which will produce more science, Hubble is the winner by miles. Hubble is providing more data about the early state of the universe than any other source. The occupants of the space station are doing no experiments at all, they are just keeping the station running. "

But then you have to answer the next question: "What gain to we get from learning about the early state of the universe?"

Some people might argue that the pursuit of that knowledge is just as useless (in a practical sense) as the knowledge gained through manned spaceflight.

Re:Scientific payoff

[True Grit]

If anything is capable of looking beyond the nose into the depths of the Universe, it is Hubble.

Uhmm, no, actually the Hubble is now obsolete.

[Please read all of this before modding me down.]

Its generated a lot of pretty pictures, yes. Why are those pretty pictures interesting and valuable? Because they let us look back in time to the early period of the universe. Thats why Hubble was created, not because the public would like the computer-enhanced pretty pictures (you didn't think those pictures were 100% virgin, right-off-the-satellite, did you?), but because they help us understand the past.

But there's a problem: Hubble looks in visible light, which prevents it from looking far enough back into time to answer the kind of questions we're asking. In particular, if you want to look deep into the past, you have to abandon visible light altogether and go to the far infrared. But there's another problem: Unlike the visible and radio wave spectra, infrared is completely blocked by the Sun's, the Earth's, and even the telescope's own heat, as well as interference from reflected light. This means that a ground based telescope won't work for far infrared. That is why Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is going to replace Hubble, because it can look much farther back into time than Hubble ever could.

Now, if its just pretty pictures from the visible light spectrum that you're interested in, there are several Very Large Telescope Arrays coming online now that use interferometry to achieve resolutions better than Hubble, but using telescopes on Earth. The Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope has already beaten the Hubble in terms of resolution. These VLTAs though can't beat the James Webb Telescope or its European counterpart the Herschel Space Observatory because these space-based telescopes operate in the far infrared, which no ground based telescope can do (decently).

In other words, the Hubble is obsolete. I know thats an unpopular idea around here, but its the truth. Now that we have VLTAs on the ground, and the Spitzer Space Telescope (infrared) in orbit (both of which together cover the Hubble's range), we'll have plenty of pretty pictures (all the pics you see from Hubble, the Spitzer, and others are computer enhanced, so it doesn't matter whether the scope is far infrared, infrared, or visible light, on the ground or in space, the pictures will always be pretty) to keep us busy while waiting for the James Webb or Herschel scopes to get up there. But if you still remember the reason Hubble was put up to begin with, to look deep into the past, then you should understand why we need to move to the James Webb as quickly as possible, because the James Webb will be just as dramatic an improvement as Hubble was over the scopes it replaced. So at this point, any attempts to keep the Hubble going will just be taking money away from the James Webb telescope. I really don't see the point in that.

I won't get into the issue of Mars and such, except to say in a sane country NASA wouldn't be hurting so much for cash all the time (as it currently is with the James Webb project). Someone mentioned NASA's budget of 15 billion. That is a lot of money, until you compare it to our other spending priorities, like 3 billion a month for the Iraqi War. Its all a matter of priorities.

When?

[Odo]

When do they intend to deorbit Hubble? As I understand it, the first thing expected to die on Hubble are the gyroscopes. One needs three gyros to point the scope at a celestial target. The deorbit module will definitely have its own pointing system (used for docking, among other things). Which means the mere presence of the deorbit module would fix Hubble. So what's their criteria for dropping Hubble into the Pacific?

Re:When?

[stienman]

1. Pointing an object that has as much mass as the hubble is expensive enough as it is. To create a robot that would attach, and have enough energy (via solar cells, I suppose you expect?) to rotate both itself and Hubble would be cost-prohibitive, even if it could be developed, tested, and built in time to save the Hubble in time.

2. There is more equipment on the Hubble that is failed or will soon fail than just the Gyros. The batteries, some of the subsystems, and probably the gas canisters used to boost the hubble back into orbit occasionally are all items which need maintenance. It is unlikely that a robot could be developed in the time-frame and budget given that would not only point the hubble, but interface to its failing systems and supply the needed resources (batteries, especially).

No time frame has been given. This announcement is simply describing the current budget allocation.

Please remember that a controlled de-orbit while the hubble is still retrievable by a robot is much preferable to an uncrontrolled de-orbit where the hubble may take on an orbit, spin, or fall that would make it impossible to attach to once out of our control. It is likely that the robot must be attached before the last three gryos fail if a robot is going to be attached at all. This means it needs to be done soon.

It is unlikely that even given a large budget a reliable robot for fixing the Hubble could be developed in time to attach to the Hubble before it becomes uncontrolled.

-Adam

Gee, I hope ...

[ari_j]

I hope part of it lands on my field. I just haven't had anything to sell on eBay for a couple years. (I am not referring to Columbia. That's just wrong.)

What's wrong with Hubble

[pudding7]

In headline after headline talking about Hubble and how they need money to repair it and what-not, I've never seen a single mention of what's actually wrong with it and why it needs "repairing".

What's the deal?

Re:What's wrong with Hubble

[wikinerd]

You can learn why a fourth servicing mission is necessary by reading my article. I say: "several components of Hubble, most probably its batteries, are expected to stop operating in the next 2-4 years" and "HST was designed to be maintained with servicing missions operated from space shuttles every few years" (i.e. it is impossible to keep Hubble there without launching servicing missions, we need to fix its orbit and replace components every few years). In addition, the gyroscopes will also stop working, but I think the most important problem will be its batteries (Hubble can work with just 2 or 3 gyroscopes, but not with dead batteries).

Re:What's wrong with Hubble

[PixelThis]

The gyroscopes are wearing out. They've done so before and been replaced, but they're going again and the batteries are fading. Without at least 3 gyroscopes Hubble can't be pointed accurately, and with less it starts having trouble maintaining attitude control and could potentially start to tumble and deorbit.

Re:What's wrong with Hubble

[blamanj]

It doesn't need repairing today, but it will in a couple of years. The batteries and gyroscopes have limited lifetimes and must be replaced every so often. These cyclic repair missions, which have been performed in the past, were cancelled after the Columbia accident

While they could restart the repair cycle, NASA no longer feels that repair flights are safe, because, unlike when the Shuttle visits ISS, there are no good rescue options given Hubble's orbit.

Re:What's wrong with Hubble

[Bitsy Boffin]

Dunno about you, but my car doesn't blow itself to smithereens every 100 outings or so.

Moon as a platform for Mars?

[NardofDoom]

That doesn't make any sense. About the only thing that would be the similar between a Mars mission and Moon mission would be terrestrial (or arestrial or lunestrial as the case may be) vehicles.

The moon doesn't have an atmosphere, Mars does. The moon has 1/2 the gravity of Mars. (1/6g vs. 1/3g.) The moon is three days away, Mars is six months, minimum. The Moon has a 28-day sol, Mars has a 24.75 hour sol. Mars has water, the moon's water is still under question. The moon has huge temperature swings; Mars... not so much.

To me, this is like preparing for a mission to Antarctica and saying it's applicable in Canada's North Woods. Yeah, they're both cold, but one has trees, liquid water for at least part of the year, and mud. Not much the same.

Re:Moon as a platform for Mars?

[Anonymous Coward]

what?

it's a lot harder to launch from earth to mars than it would be to launch from the moon to mars

build a moon launch base, build a mars lander vehicle from the moom.. no athmosphere to require you to go like 18X sound to break free (pulling number from ass)

plus the moon probably has stuff we could use for fuel and whatnot

plus if we go to mars it cant be just for a couple days, we need a base.. the best way to to learn how to build a working base in space is to practice on the moon.. that way if you fuck up you're 3 days away from a rescue instead of six months

Re:Moon as a platform for Mars?

[Xshare]

Article wasn't speaking platform in the metaphorical sense, but actually a platform in the literal sense, as in, to launch missions from there to mars, and refuel, etc.

Re:Moon as a platform for Mars?

[mboverload]

You seem to have little concept of the situation.

A rocket/shuttle/anything uses up pretty much ALL of its fuel just to get off the ground. If we could land on the moon, not only could we go faster (full fuel + no air + moon swinging around) it would be safer because the mission would have spare fuel to use on the way to Mars. Plus you have enough fuel to get back since you would be using a capapult+rockets to get on your way.

The billion taco question is...

[Kenja]

Will Taco Bell be doing another of their brain dead marketing schemes and offer free food like sudstance if the Hubble hits an a given target?

Re:The billion taco question is...

[The Good Reverend]

The fact that you're still talking about it, and know it was Taco Bell, 4 years later is a pretty good sign that it's absolutely not a "brain dead marketing scheme". It was a no-lose situation for the company. Consider:

Situation 1: Target is missed. It still captures the public's imagination, gets people talking, makes people like you bring up the event years later. To marketing departments, this kind of exposure is exactly what they love.

Situation 2: Target is hit. They have to give away upwards of 300,000,000 tacos. Except, no where near everyone would go, and those that do would likely order a drink, burrito, or other side dish. Even if none of them did, it's still eyeballs and foot traffic, not to mention amazing amounts of publicity. That, and the promotion was insured.

That silly little $40,000 blow-up target is one of the best things that company every did for itself, second only to a talking dog.

Re:The billion taco question is...

[Mattintosh]

4 years later? Wha...?

I first saw this Taco Bell hit-the-target-win-a-prize thing this past year during the baseball playoffs. Game 3 of the NLCS (Cardinals vs. Astros) had one of these targets in Homer's Landing in Busch Stadium. Nobody hit it. :(

NASA has it wrong

[Garbonzo Pitts]

NASA has consistently pushed the idea that manned space flight gets the public's attention. But the facts indicate otherwise. Photos from the Hubble and interplanetary probes appear on the front pages of newspapers and have a very high "ooh-ahh" factor. In contrast, the public doesn't seem to care at all about astronauts in the space station. Why would they care about people going back to the moon? They've seen those pictures already.

and one giant leap...

[Engineer Andy]

backwards for mankind.

It's a pity to lose such an excellent scientific tool without a replacement either in train or already deployed

Re:and one giant leap...

[Pxtl]

Except that Webb is not a visible-light telescope. So no, a replacement for Hubble is not in the works.

It's not the end.

[Hrodvitnir]

Honestly, all this uproar over downing Hubble is a bit dramatic. It's not the end of space research. We'll keep sending up satellites and they'll keep getting better. There's just going to be a hole fore a few years where we won't get the type of data that hubble was able to provide.

We will put up a satellite to replace the Hubble. Space isn't going anywhere.

Re:It's not the end.

[olafva]

The NASA James Webb Space Telescope" is "on the way". I've heard the
images it can obtain will make the Hubble images look like
junk. Let's move on to the future rather than dwell on the past!

Re:It's not the end.

[Kiryat Malachi]

JWST is not a full replacement for Hubble - it is primarily an IR scope, with some visible capability - it lacks certain wavelengths Hubble covers, like UV, which is one of the primary benefits of launching a space scope in the first place. The band in question, covered by Hubble but not JWST, is the 110nm-600nm band. JWST has significantly more infrared extension than Hubble, but infrared is one of the more usable windows from Earth, especially as adaptive optics techniques improve.

Basically, JWST is not a full Hubble replacement. A good thing to launch? Yes. But we'll definitely lose some capabilities in the bargain.

If they get rid of hubble...

[Anonymous Coward]

...how will they know where Mars and/or the moon is?

So shortsighted

[eisenbud]

This is one of the few big budget scientific missions that's had a clear purpose. The space station -- not so much. The shuttle -- takes people to orbit for way too much money (though it would be nice if they could use it once more to fix Hubble.) This is one of the best possible uses of our space dollars, and it's sad that it's being ignored for high profile but not scientifically focused things.

This makes utterly no sense.

[Cutriss]

So, sending a team of astronauts into space just over 600km away, still within the confines of the Van Allen belts, is terribly dangerous, but sending them out a minimum of 55M kilometres is safer?

This sort of mission was almost *routine* three years ago...and now it's "too risky". Those NASA people sure have turned into wusses. >.>

Re:This makes utterly no sense.

[TheGavster]

I want to know why the moon landing is slated for 2015-2020, while the last time we did it a) not really knowing how to do it and b) in like half the time. Repeating a past mission with modern tech should not be this difficult.

Re:This makes utterly no sense.

[bkrrrrr]

It's just politics. Servicing Hubble isn't good for the politicians. Wasting billions of dollars to show video of some guy putting an American flag on Mars is good for politicians. These "manned missions" are the stupidest idea ever.

Re:This makes utterly no sense.

[pnewhook]

Because now that they know more, they know it is too dangerous.

For the Apollo flights, it was just sheer dumb luck that no solar flare occurred while they were outside the protection of the Earths magnetosphere. If it had the crew would have been killed instantly. Ignorance really was bliss in that case.

No protection from radiation is probably the primary reason why we can't go to Mars yet.

Re:This makes utterly no sense.

[Detritus]

It wasn't "sheer dumb luck". NASA knew about the problem and gave it a great deal of study in order to quantify the risks. The solar flares of the magnitude that could have killed the astronauts are very rare events.

Re:This makes utterly no sense.

[cgenman]

Remember, the apollo missions were taking 10% of GDP for the 10 years or so it was active. I doubt this mission will get that kind of funding.

Plus you're talking about a space agency that goes trolling on eBay for parts to older systems. If they're going to do a moon mission, they're going to have to modernize. Which means re-making a lot of what they had done with a lot of different technology providers.

Re:This makes utterly no sense.

[FleaPlus]

Four reasons I can think of:

1. They had pretty much all the funding they could possibly want.

2. Much greater safety paranoia. When the crew of Apollo 1 was killed, NASA fixed the problem and moved on with the program. They didn't paralyze their manned spaceflight program, go into a period of national mourning, and launch congressional investigation committees.

3. Von Braun and the other German rocket geniuses who essentially designed and built the rockets they used are just about all dead. Granted, there's some folks around who trained under them, but there's no one with their sheer amount of experience.

4. NASA is much more diversified now than it used to be. Back then, landing on the moon was their one and only goal, and they were able to focus all their resources towards achieving that goal. Nowadays, it's almost impossible to cancel old programs and refocus on something else, because some constituency is going to have NASA's head on a platter.

Re:This makes utterly no sense.

[grozzie2]

there's more to it than that. it's actually about die size. When you get the tighter dies you see on modern processors, an impact from a gamma particle is guaranteed to cause a short between 2 traces on chip. The older die sizes have wider spacings on die, so a gama particle actually fits between the traces, meaning it will NOT bridge 2 of them, even if it hits one right on the edge. The same holds true across much of the spectrum of ic's, modern stuff just uses to tight of a silicon matrix for it to be useful in the hard radiation environment.

Many many years ago, i was working with a company that owned a few foundries. One of the projects was quite exciting, it was going to be the first chip they produced using 0.8 micron stuff, a big deal in those days. During my tenure there, I met a venture vulture, and he was quite proud of the fact he had just purchased an old foundry in an eastern bloc country. it was very old, and the best they could do there was to produce 5 micron stuff. i told him he was crazy, and he laffed, said 'come back in 6 months, I'll show you how to be crazy like a fox.' Sure enough, 6 months later, he was the proud owner of a number of military contracts to provide small volume production of very old chip designs, at absolutely exhorbitant prices.

There is no deorbit module

[johnny cashed]

the idea is to bring it down while they still have "robotic" control. There is no robot to send up to bring it down. They want to be able to command it down, in a nice target path, not some crapshoot deorbit when it goes bad and they can no longer control it due to gyroscope failure. BTW my father worked on pointing and control on Hubble. I'm no expert, but I've spent many nights asking him a lot of questions about Hubble.

Re:There is no deorbit module

[Odo]

> There is no robot to send up to bring it down. They want to be able to command it down [...] BTW my father worked on pointing and control on Hubble. I'm no expert, but I've spent many nights asking him a lot of questions about Hubble.

Oh man, you seriously need to have another chat with your dad. Hubble can point itself in any direction thanks to its gyros. But it doesn't have any engines. It couldn't deorbit itself if it wanted to. They have full control over where Hubble looks, but not where it goes. To deorbit Hubble you need a robotic deorbit module (aka a rocket).

For more information, see this page:

HUBBLE ROBOTIC VEHICLE DEORBIT MODULE (HRVDM)
Contract Award Date: DTD 092404
Contract Award Number: CNT NNG05EA01C
Contract Award Amount: AMT $330,578,914
Contractor: TO Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company

[Off topic] While Googling for the above I found this generated ad:

Find HUBBLE DEORBIT MODULE at eBay
Looking for hubble deorbit module? eBay has great deals on new and used electronics, cars, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods and more. If you can't find it on eBay, it probably doesn't exist.
http://www.eBay.com

Re:There is no deorbit module

[johnny cashed]

on Hubble there are reaction wheels and magnetic torquers. there are no thrusters. Hubble can manage its orbit with the reaction wheels and magnetic torquers which interact with the Earth's magnetic field. They cannot provide a large amount of force but like pushing a swing, a little push here and a little push there... Maybe use some atmospheric drag here and there... I would think that NASA would try to save money on hardware and try some orbital mechanics to bring it down without developing a "deorbit module" Kinda like Skylab. (ok Skylab had some thrusters, but it also had control moment gyros) I read the referenced article, no mention of a seperate "deorbit module" Some googling pointed to a proposed "deorbit module" that may cost up to $1bn. I think they will look long and hard at orbital mechanics to bring it down without the expense of a "deorbit module" but hey, I don't work for NASA. Hey, let's give lockmart some more tax money. Yes, I should talk to my father more!

Re:There is no deorbit module

[helioquake]

If the satellite is smaller, one would attempt to position a satellite to maximize its drag force with magnetic torquers and IRW. It makes it easier, too, if the Sun is active (*). By dragging it, it slows its revolution rate, which leads to decay in orbital altitude. We've downed satellites this way a few times. But the HST is probably too large to do this safely.

CGRO was designed to be de-orbited at its end and had a thruster. I guess NASA really was planning to bring the Hubble down with the Columbia, since it has none of that.

(*) when the Sun is very active, it puffs up the scale height of the atmosphere. In turn it increases the particle density in the low earth orbit, which leads to a greater drag force.

If they say it's not about money...

[SteeldrivingJon]

It's about money.

The budget Bush just submitted cuts the Hubble.

Risks too High?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Right, so we've heard the story - they don't want to send astronauts to Hubble because in case of damage to the shuttle they can't get into a higher orbit to dock with the ISS.

OK, fine, and I admit Hubble is probably too expensive to patch up and the money would be better spent on a new telescope.

But since sending Astronauts to Hubble is too risky they're going to send Astronauts to MARS instead? This does not compute.

It's official...

[rasafras]

NASA is dead. When you claim risk and safety as a high priority for exploration and scientific conquest, you know you aren't going to get anywhere. Lewis and Clark didn't wait for the invention of the SUV before going cross-country, they just went ahead and did it.
I'm not saying that exploration should cut corners and put people in unnecessary danger, but there are astronauts willing to risk going up to do things like this. Face it, shooting somebody into the sky on a giant bomb is inherently unsafe, and that's something you've just got to accept. I understand that another accident for NASA would cut approval and potentially cost them far more money, and I'm saying that that's the problem. Trying to be unnecessarily safe is going to cost them far too much money, and that's money that they most likely don't have and won't have to spend.
(I was referring to the Mars mission as well)

We're going to the Moon!

[TheOriginalRevdoc]

Yippee!

It's gonna be just the ISS. They'll spend billions designing amazing machines, the budget will be cut 50%, they'll redesign, the budget will be cut another 50%, they'll redesign again, then they'll put up a half-arsed end result that barely meets its mission requirements.

Then the astronauts will hang out on the moon, kicking rocks and wondering what the hell they're doing there. They'll do a trial collection of Helium 3, but there won't be any point, because there's no use for Helium 3, even if we could get it back to Earth.

Eventually, the engineers will admit publicly that getting to the moon doesn't contribute to getting to Mars in any meaningful way, but boy oh boy, the contractors sure made a shitload of cash off the project, didn't they?

And isn't that what American politics is all about?

Baby with the bathwater?

[fygment]

We have Hubble which:

1) captured the public imagination. How many posters have you seen bearing pictures from SOHO, Chandra, or any IR camera? How many kids turned on to astronomy after seeing a Keck picture?

2) is known to a huge swath of the public. How many know of SOHO?

3) has a very positive track record. How much bad publicity has Hubble generated for NASA? It was recovered heroically from its intial flaws and has performed stunningly ever since.

In its place:

1) a cosmologists dream machine (read: pictures in the IR that show little blobs of the early universe). Not for public consumption.

2) no inspiring name has been fielded though there is time to fix that. NGST? But Hubble was the first so NGST faces an uphill battle.

3) a telescope many people don't want so money can be diverted to a mission fraught with more danger and potential bad publicity than a space walk.

So getting the axe is: a popular, inspiring, positive public face for NASA. In its place, an item on the drawing boards to free up cash for a truly extreme mission. Begging the question, can NASA make any good decisions?

Re:Baby with the bathwater?

[jstockdale]

Begging the question, can NASA make any good decisions?

You're forgetting, they have to answer to the US Government. So I guess your actually getting at the question of whether the US Government can make any good decisions.

I leave the answer as an exercise for the reader (Hint: No.)

-S ...

PS. To be honest ... given NASA's budgetary, political, and social constraints ... I'm just impressed that they manage to get any science done at all.

I know I'm showing my age by mentioning this...

[cutecub]

...but I think I'll have to dust off my old "Official SkyLab Target" T-Shirt.

Seeing as the Government usually can't hit the broad side of a planet, its a pretty fair bet that making myself a target ( again ) will prevent any possibility of me getting hit by Hubble when it crashes.

Cue SNL video of John Belushi smashing his SkyLab model into a Globe of the Earth

M.A.R.S. Mars, bitches!

[mcguyver]

- Dave Chappelle in 'The Black President'
Googled Videos

Re:In other news...

[TheKidWho]

http://www.space.com/news/nasa_budget_050207.html

This is a big loss in my opinion :-(

Re:funny..

[Pxtl]

We Canadians seem to like your space program more than you do... but then again, maybe that's cause we don't have to pay for it, just stick big arms on everything you build.

tektites, anyone?

[jpellino]

that's one honkin' big piece of glass... 1 ton, melts at about 1500F...

A tragic end to a great piece of work.

[Rimbo]

Hubble was one of the first casualties of the Challenger explosion. Remember that the first thing that needed to be fixed was a flawed mirror?

While I was in undergrad at UT, I was an officer in the local SEDS chapter, where Dr. Hans Mark explained that the mirror was known to be flawed before it was launched. When the Challenger exploded, NASA shut down everything. Hubble remained, unrepaired, in a dark warehouse somewhere. When they got the HST program back up and running, they'd long forgotten their problem with the mirror.

HST was a great idea, but there were some big screwups attached to it.

Reason No1 for going to Mars

[Rande]

"The entire planet is a desert! With all that desert, there's gotta be oil!"

Re:Reason No1 for going to Mars

[loubear]

Reason number six, actually.

The Future has to start sooner or later...

[emjoi_gently]

They went to the moon in the 1960's, when I was a little kid.

Now I'm a middle aged man....I'm getting old here, and we still haven't even got back to the moon yet. 2020? I'll be in my fifties. And then will a manned landing on Mars be even in my lifetime?

The future isn't moving forwards fast enough.

In the great NASA tradition. . .

[Zobeid]

Saturn V
Skylab
Hubble

Whenever you get something that's a really huge engineering success or scientific success -- or both -- you proceed to scrap it. Then apply the money saved to other programs that are on their way to becoming hopeless boondoggles (re: shuttle, ISS, Moon-Mars initiative).

Why not boost Hubble to higher orbit?

[wildsurf]

As long as they're sending a booster to Hubble, why not just boost it into a higher orbit, where it can stay parked for another several years, at which time we might have better means to do something useful with it?

Perhaps even bring it down safely for museum display?

It seems like a waste to send the booster all the way up there just to destroy the telescope.

Re:Why not boost Hubble to higher orbit?

[JungleBoy]

Perhaps even bring it down safely for museum display?

Hubble was scheduled to be brought down and put in the smithsonian. In fact, the display mount is already in the air & space museum (or was a couple years ago when I visited). The problem is that the Colombia was the only shuttle decked out to down mass the Hubble. All the other orbiters are setup with an airlock and docking port for the ISS. Hubble won't fit in the cargo hold of those orbiters now.

They are doing it again

[oldFart]

I worked for NASA in the late 1970's. In that period they raped science for the manned program, and accomplished nothing but killing two crews. It is happening again. We get about 10 times the bang for the buck with robots as with manned probes. That is not an opinion - that's a fact!
I live in Houston, but JPL is the most effective organization in NASA. Unless NASA can define a coherent manned mission, they should keep the folks on the ground and use robots.

Hubble Too Expensive?

[Anonymous Coward]

To really lay out the facts, we need to add up the total costs of the "haven't found Bin Laden or the Weapons of Mass Destruction" debacle and then divide that by the number of slaughtered Iraqi citizens.

This will be called a HCU or Halliburton Citizen-Unit.

How many HCUs would it take to go to the moon?

Currently the Iraqi Debacle stands at $153.3 billion. Divide that by 100,000 and you get:

$153,300 is equal to one HCU.

How many HCU's to build a base on the moon?
How many HCU's to set up 8 hubble's in equidistant earth orbits around the sun for fantastic long-wave interferometry telescope the size of earth?
How many HCU's to go from the moon base to mars?

Have fun

Re:Makes no sense to me

[oneiron]

You're looking at it from the wrong angle.. The moon->mars initiative is NASA's new direction. The risk is that an accident while repairing hubble could endanger that new direction. Fixing hubble would be a detour in funding and technology...a potentially costly detour considering the newly proclaimed direction of the program.

NASA doesn't want robots

[matusa]

I was chatting with Marvin Minsky a few days ago, we started bitching about space, and he had this sad story to relate:

Once some of the ISS modules were relatively complete and ready for launch, NASA rounded up a group of dignitaries to bless it (I can't think of another reason why they were called in, and you'll see why I had more interesting things to ask about..), and he noticed an engineer really screwing up a docking procedure. He asked why they didn't just have a simple bit of robotics to handle it (any of a billion implementations would work great for something this trivial), and the answer was that NASA had dictated from high up that a human must be the operator for a wide class of tasks.

So there you have it! The space industry has some luddite motivations, which is absolutely terrifying. And unfortunately the great success of JPL/Caltech's probes gives more justification of their _small_ budgets (wow! you're so great you can keep being great with only $10 !!); I guess a large set of the administration still feels a need to justify 'manhood'. fucking retards.

Hubble ... NASA

[cashman73]

The reasons for cancelling the Hubble program is very similar, oddly enough, to the reasons for cancelling Star Trek Enterprise after this season. Both instilled much excitement and enthusiasm. Both had a decent run during their time period. But the time is over. Enterprise dried up due to poor writing and a lack of new ideas, leading no one to really watch the show. With the Hubble, we've seen more than we've expected with it, and it was nearing the end of its lifetime anyways. So it's time to move on to new and better things.

I think NASA is finally realizing that if they really want to go places (like, how about, off this rock, for starters?), they can't be tinkering with a bunch of cheesy programs in low earth orbit (read: space shuttle, ISS, hubble, etc), which basically amounts to not even leaving your own backyard! NASA is now desiring to get back to the glory days, when at their height, they were launching rockets to the moon in the 60s. Setting rather "lofty" (but not too lofty) goals like that allow you to set smaller goals in between to help you achieve your big goal. But it gives you a definite project and direction that everyone is focusing towards, which makes people happy and brings in more funding, and lets you accomplish the smaller, but arguably more important, goals along the way. It's these smaller goals that we're actually going to see back here on earth: things like Tang (tm), new metals/products/machinery for industry, aeronautics, air travel, faster computers, better telemetry and data systems for relaying vital signs in hospitals,... the list goes on.

You're not going to develop this stuff as rapidly as you would by mucking around in LEO,...

Plus, methinks that the moon would be a much better base to build a permanent space telescope on.

Politics Aside

[Sephiriz]

Ignoring the simple truth of politics, it's a damn shame that something that captured the imagination of millions and in turn gave astronomers unique opportunities will now be discarded. Seriously, this was one of the few "cool" things the government was doing. A telescope in space, I mean, thats awesome! Essentially, the cold reality of business just comes lashing back. But still, I'll miss the sci-fi invoked dreams that the Hubble brought about. Back to "Star Wars" or some other superior alternative (Daft Punk? Heh).

NASA's sole purpose isn't science

[FleaPlus]

NASA's sole purpose isn't science -- if it was, it'd just be rolled into the National Science Foundation. That said, I'm a big fan of spending the money instead on the Hubble Origins Probe -- hopefully we'll see that happen.

Your argument though reminds me a little bit of something I once saw, which said that all/most space advocates were either Saganites, O'Neillians, or Von Braunians (each named after a famous figure in the space field). The descriptions are as follows:

Saganites: "Look, but don't touch." The sole purpose of space endeavours is to increase our scientific knowledge, which will in the long-term lead to the enrichment of mankind.

O'Neillians: The ultimate goal is to turn humanity into a space-faring species. Our focus should be on space settlement

Von Braunians: They want to push the technology to the limit and beyond, and do what's never been done before. Sending huge rockets into orbit and planting flags on extraterrestrial bodies is valuable in and of itself, if only for the glory.

Of course, many are actually some mix of the above. Personally, I'd consider myself a former Saganite, more recently leaning towards O'Neillian.

During the 60s and 70s (the Space Race) the US was predominantly Von Braunian. In the 80s and 90s the US government's space program has been predominantly Saganite, focusing primarily on scientific missions. It's gotten to the point that now many people think that's the only worthwhile thing to do in space. Bush's Vision for Space Exploration is intended to turn the government's space program into a mix of O'Neillian and Von Braunian, doing things like establishing a permanent, self-sustaining moon base.

I'd characterize most private spaceflight folks like Burt Rutan and Elon Musk as a mix of O'Neillian and Von Braunian.

Moon as research center

[dokhebi]

The Hubble was greate, but it has problems. Being in orbit (of Earth) makes it hard to fix, and expensive to fix...

Now, if we had a permanent base on the moon, with a sub-station on the dark side, we could put a Hubble like device in orbit of the Moon (or teathered to the Moon) with a crew that could easily go to the new Hubble and fix it. The graivty well of the Moon is much shallower so going up to fix the device is easier. Or just (gently) yank on the teather to bring it down for repair, then gently boost it back into orbit.

Just my $0.02 worth.

Not really

[SuperKendall]

If anything is capable of looking beyond the nose into the depths of the Universe, it is Hubble.

Or one of a number of ground-based scopes that are doing just as well thanks to increases in technology.

Why can't we...

[firew0lfz]

have the Chinese or the Indians build that 'Son of Hubble' telescope that someone mentioned (I cannot find the linky at the moment)... as I recall, it could be done at around $50 million and would probably be better.

We outsource everything else to them anyway, why not our manned missions?

What we are capable of

[SuperKendall]

Like what? And what can we not do remotely? Why send astronauts there is what I am asking.

What can we not do remotely?

First of all, consider that everything both rovers, combined, have done to date could have been done easily in a day by one human scientist with a buggy. Possibly even on foot.

Now consider what the rovers have not been able to do, such as going on steep slopes or overly sandy surfaces for fear of getting stuck - things a human could have just walked right over to.

Now consider the things that are just unthinkable for rovers to explore, like really complex canyon-laced terrain. You just can't send rovers there at all.

What is to be gained? A deeper understanding of geology and the forces that shape planets - perhaps offering new insights into our own planet. Possibly of course other lifeforms if they probe deep enough. And all the variety of technology that makes working on Mars practical, like improved propulsion systems, life support systems, etc.

But basically it would be a fantastic boost for the human spirit. Look at how riveted so many people have been to Rover progress, and the Titan mission. Lots of people know about these things and it excites them. It could help to really raise a new generation of engineering minded youth, whereas right now I'd warrant a lot of good potential scientists end up as MBA's or lawyers right now. After all, what is compelling or cool abotu going into science?

If you want a planet full of lawyers, by all means lets shut down manned space flight and just sue each other for IP infringements every time we make a sandwich. But frankly I hope for a more inspired future.

I know it may sound crazy to you, but I would quite happily take a trip to Mars knowing I would only live a day and there was no hope of return. And I think there are a lot of other people like that. Let people with the will to explore go forth and inspire others in turn.

we know the real reason

[flacco]

people are starting to talk about pointing the hubble at the lunar landing sites to see the landing craft and other remaining artifacts, only to find that they're not there.

if the truth were to get out that it was all a cold-war hoax, it would send american self-esteem into a crisis.

End of Hubble is Symbolic End for US

[petethemidget]

The end of support for Hubble is quite simply the final installment of proof for whoever still needs it that the US govenment has fallen into barbarism and has abrogated the country's position as a leader in the advancement of science for the public good. All hail the Texas Visigoths! Burn the books, smash the statues, and fire up the barbeques ...

Why don't they do a robotic mission for fixing?

[Whatsmynickname]

Quoting from an online article: "NASA had considered a robotic servicing mission, but now doubts the technology would be mature enough before Hubble suffers a fatal equipment breakdown."

Well, let me get this straight. They don't want to repair the Hubble with a manned mission. Well, OK. Assuming no planned repair, the Hubble is guaranteed to fail anyways. So, what's the risk of trying a robotic repair mission? They are spending the money to make a robot to bring down the Hubble, so why not at least try a robot that will attempt to repair the Hubble? If it doesn't work, oh well, it was coming down anyways, right?

My God, it's quite evident that NASA has SO lost any initiative to take any risk at all now.

Re:Pure nonsense

[Rei]

There are quite a few types of robot designs that can easily outclass humans. One that was mentioned on slashdot a while ago was the "tumbleweed" design - a giant hollow frame which can essentially maneuver around anything. Some proposals being looked into involve "multi-hop" robots which can land, take off, land, take off, etc - in effect, covering the whole planet, and reaching places that would take humans weeks to climb/descend.

Your "ATV" wasn't designed to explore mars autonomously, or otherwise it would have had a self-righting mechanism if they planned to drive it on rough terrain.

If we were to send a spider bot to mars, there's no need for a human. A spider bot can deploy itself quite fine unless it's designed specifically not to be able to. And what on earth were you talking about when you said "specialized devices like ground penetrating". Did you mean core samples? If so, Beagle was supposed to do that, while MSL is going to be able to do that. If you meant ground penetrating radar, that's even easier - have you ever seen anyone use ground penetrating radar? You merely have to drag it behind you.

"but could not check them out" - this statement is incorrect. They did a risk-benefit analysis and decided that the data they could gather wouldn't be worth the risk; they've studied dunes elsewhere on Meridiani Planum already. Besides, if you want a fair comparison, you'd need to compare humans with a robot that cost 50 times what Opportunity costs; a single robot with that kind of budget that could not only study dunes and fly around the planet, but juggle Opportunity and Spirit at the same time ;)

Once again, the point people like you cnotinually ignore: One manned mission vs. 50 robotic missions, when you factor in the cost. The one mission goes to a single part of the planet, while the robotic missions go to 50 different parts, or revisit the parts that they find to be interesting (the manned mission may end up in a completely uninteresting part of the planet). Etc. The economics just simply don't work out, as far as science goes.

A long, sad night...

[mbrother]

I really thought we could keep Hubble going until the James Webb Telescope goes up. Guess not. The proposal I just put in last month might be my last chance to do a new Hubble project (failure is expected for 2007, but could be sooner, or a little later). I've got some grant money to hire a postdoc, and one of my friends who currently works at Space Telescope is going to call me about it tomorrow. He says morale there is awful, and many are looking for outs. They'll be running James Webb, too, so there will be things to do, but still...