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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."
http://www.airsafe.com/events/space/astrofat.htm/M anagement/shuttleContractorsUnderScrutiny.html/
i a.htm/
For starters but with regard to the 27 January 1967 entry. That accident was due to poor work on that unit.
http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/Safety_Issues/Risk
http://www.floridatoday.com/columbia/113003columb
That was within 2 mins of googling. My bad for thinking it was common knowledge
Jonathanjk.com
My work requires both high spatial resolution and spectral resolution from the UV through NIR (esp. in UV and blue wavelengths); the HST was undoubtedly most suitable for achieving my objectives. However, it no longer carries the working spectroscopic instrument and hence the HST is no longer a viable asset for my need.
Today, it is probably more cost-effective to go back to expendable space missions. It's not at all hard to build a 2-m class space telescope. It's not servicable, but for the cost of servicing, we can build another telescope with a similar specification. So if one breaks, we can launch another.
The only retarded thinking I have is that I don't want to feed the STScI to create the monopoly in the space-based astronomy. The HST is costing a lot more than other missions (x2 FTE is what I heard, compared to other major missions) for little return in terms of the telescope operation and calibration. This is the institution that produces very crappy software to handle the HST data (I've written my own code to process and done my own calibration to improve its science return...why was the STScI not doing that?). They allocate their budgest lucratively toward the support for scientists (not operator or calibration staffs) while other missions suffer from severe budget cuts and RIF'ing their science staffs.