No Formal Risk Analysis of Hubble Rescue by NASA

Somegeek writes " SpaceDaily.com is running a story that NASA never performed a formal risk analysis of a shuttle mission to rescue the Hubble Space Telescope before they decided to cancel the mission on grounds of risk. The story quotes Fred Gregory, the current acting NASA administrator, as stating that previous NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe made the decision "based on what he perceived was the risk". This perceived risk is in performing a manned shuttle mission that is out of range of using the International Space Station as an emergency refuge. The Hubble's current batteries and gyroscopes will probably fail in a few years, leaving the dead telescope to crash back to earth around year 2020."

Comments

Enterprise money?

[hashts]

Kinda OT but wouldn't the people who are paying millions of dollars to save the show Enterprise be better spent for the HST?

But life is cheap in the USA

[mbrett]

The current administration is more than willing casually to pour treasure and blood into the sands of Iraq and Afghanistan. The equivalent of how many shuttles and crews so far? Dozens? Hundreds?

So why be so precious about one more dangerous mission? If it fails, there won't even be television cameras allowed into Dover AFB to witness the coffins coming home.

Of the fourteen points that Dr. Lawrence Britt uses to define fascism, this is pretty well summed up by numbers 4 and 11.

Militarisation of Space

[gelfling]

Clearly the entire scienctific aspect of NASA has been cut to the bone in preference to militarisation. Hubble just doesn't fit within the parameters of the new NASA, the NASA of space based weapons, spysats and orbiting nuclear platforms. Let's not forget that the orginal mission parameters of the Space Shuttle were from the military. Whatever scientific mission NASA still has will be funded on a garage-lab best effort basis. The ISS will be allowed to die on its own as well.