Senator Calls on NASA to Service Hubble

Avantare writes "Senator Calls on NASA to Service Hubble In a sternly worded letter to acting NASA Administrator Frederick D. Gregory, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) said she expects the U.S. space agency to heed the will of the Congress and keep preparations for a Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission on track. Congress, in passing an omnibus spending bill late last year, directed NASA to set aside $291 million of its 2005 budget to spend planning and preparing for a servicing mission to Hubble by 2008. When NASA informed Congress just weeks later that it intended to spend only $175 million of that amount on the Hubble repair effort, some saw the move as an indication that the agency was preparing to abandon plans to service Hubble robotically and rely instead on a space shuttle crew to fix the telescope."

Comments

Re:There is a better option

[ThomasFlip]

yeah but what you're talking about is fiscal sensibility. I don't think that the United States government (Congress, Senate, Whatever) in all of it's infinite wisdom is prepared to partake in such a common sense approach.

Re:He can pay for it himself!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Senator is a woman.

Yup, they allow that these days.

Worst of all, they're paying her with YOUR MONEY.

Which they took it "at gun point", I'm sure.

Re:Wanna know something even more ominous?

[PsiPsiStar]

We should stick a laser on the things and tell congress that it can shoot down nukes.

Heck, I do wonder if, before this thing runs out of gyroscopes, we could turn it around the other way and have it take pictures of Earth, permanently.

Maryland represent!

[Ignorant Aardvark]

Hell yeah! I know I voted for Barbara Mikulski for a reason.

Re:Worth Remembering Mikulski's Motives

[UWC]

And what exactly do you think these "people" we "put there" are going to do, sit around and play pinochle?

I propose an ongoing ISS experiment testing the effects of freefall on pinochle games.

Let US decide where to spend the money

[sfjoe]

Wouldn't it be great if on your annual tax returns you could fill out a form to indicate what percentage of your taxes go to which area of government (defense, education, environment, health care) ?

If that happened, I bet the schools would have enough boooks for all the students and the Pentagon would have to hold bake sales to fund their wars.