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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."
Good for Senator Mikulski! As far as I'm concerned, NASA has been putzing around on this issue for no reason WHAT-SO-EVER. The shuttles are no more dangerous now then they were for the earlier two decades they've been in service. If people were allowed to do their jobs, then NASA would have known about the shuttle damage *before* Columbia's reentry.
These mumblings about robotic repair sound like a whiny way of getting out of doing the job. If you'll pardon my French, "Just launch the damn space shuttle and fix the bloody thing!" It's not that hard, and I'm sure there's no shortage of qualified volunteers. Do I hear an Amen?!?
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From an article in Discover Magazine
Also see the John Hopkins Newsletter.
Senator's don't usually care this much about what is essentially a technology budgeting decision. Who's got her ear, and why?
The problems is not that they are more dangrerous now. They have always been this dangerous. It is just that now the danger is better understood. Ignoring risk does not make it go away.
That said, I am not against using a manned (sorry, crewed) mission to repair the Hubble if that is the best option. In any case, the risks needed to be understood, reduced as much as possible and accepted or rejected; not just ignored.
It's worth remembering the Mikulski's motives aren't driven by pure science. Goddard and other Hubble-related facilities are in Maryland. This is a pork barrel and jobs issue for her.
And for those who argue that repairing Hubble now is no riskier than in the past, you're missing the point. Every Shuttle flight is risky and Hubble repair missions are even riskier because rendevousing with Hubble means no chance of taking reguge at the ISS and slim to zero chance of rescue by a second Shuttle.
Loss of a Shuttle during a Hubble repair mission would have political repercussions that woujld likely kill the Shuttle program and, possibly, kill any further crewed spaceflight of any kind. The Hubble is a nice tool, but the purpose of space travel is to put people there, not to do science. Fixing it isn't worth the risk.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I really like having Ms. Mikulski as senator, and I've voted for her each time she's been elected, but I should point out that the reason that she's pushing this isn't that she cares about getting hi-res pictures of aliens. The Space Telescope Science Institute is in Baltimore, MD, her home state, as well as NASA's Goddard facility.
That's what representatives of any sort do: they fight for their local interests. If they didn't do that, the voters would elect somebody who did. Unfortunately, without a fixed budget cap, that generally means deals of the form "You vote for my thing, so I'll vote for your thing, and the only one who loses is the guy who eventually has to pay off the debt."
So while I like Ms. Mikulski, and I support the "measly" few dozens of millions of dollars it would take to keep getting great science from Hubble, I thought a bit of disclosure would be appropriate.
i might get modded down for this but it needs to be said.
/. all the time!
it's not about whether robots or humans are used. it's about the hubble being a piece of crap that needs to be replaced in order for us to move forward. the hubble is obsolete because of the fact that there are cheaper and better telescope projects out there that should be initiated. some of those programs are mentioned here on
it's a wonder that we haven't listened to the independant experts and just thrownit out to lagrange point to work as long as it can.
i really feel like NASA needs to let this one die so we can move forward.
Keep the faith, share the code
Sen Mikulski is the senator from Maryland, where the Hubble is HQ'd. IIRC, it was HQ'd in her old district when she was in the House.
I support the Hubble and think that we should fix it, but remember to follow the money as well. She has a lot of her voters that depend on Hubble for their paycheck.
I'd rather NASA spend the money on maintaining
contact with the Pioneer spavce probes. It has taken
30 years for them to get there, and now, when
they are at the edge of the solar system is where
the scientifically interesting data can be found.
Don't drop the ball!
Or join one already started and make a contribution.
Good argument!! Unfortunately for your argument, most scientists involved are in favor of repairing the Hubble, and it was a political decision by a non-scientist political appointee to NOT repair it.
Dumbshit.
(No, I don't think you're a dumbshit. It just fit the fecal theme of this post.)
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
There's one in the works, but there will be a few years between Hubbble going dark and the new guy going up. The cost of delaying all work in an entire field for a few years is higher than servicing the Hubble.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Probably been mentioned already, but a work-around for one of the major limiting factors for the Hubble's lifetime has already been found, that being the number of working gyroscopes available.
After repair, the telescope has six gyroscopes (used for pointing and stabilising the device, without any messy reaction mass involved), and it needed at least three to point accurately. There are currently only four working ones left - they're somewhat unreliable.
However, a way of pointing the telescope with just two working gyroscopes has been tested recently, which should extend the lifespan a little - possibly until 2008. I still doubt that a full-scale repair mission will be launched, but this might help in filling the gap until a replacement is finalised...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
It's costing the U.S. taxpayers $175 million for NASA to determine it won't do anything to save the Hubble? Why does it take so much money to decide go/nogo? (Don't answer that. I already know: It's the government bureaucracy, stoopid.)
If they've already decided, what were they planning on spending that $175m on?
Here's a wild-and-crazy idea, and it only boils down to two steps:
1) Build a new Hubble telescope with current technology.
2) Launch it on an expendable booster.
This is already done for military imaging satellites every few years.
Everyone's focus is on 'fixing Hubble' when it should be on 'ensuring the availability of a high-quality astronomical observatory in orbit'.
Quick dickin' around and do the job right!
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.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Wasn't there a Slashdot story a while back saying that we could send up a NEW space telescope for less? What's the sense in fixing Hubble if we can get a better, brand new, space telescope for less money.
It's great that they were able to extend its life and get it to do things that it wasn't really designed to do originally.
But there is a replacement being designed/built. Let's go with that.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
Hell yeah! I know I voted for Barbara Mikulski for a reason.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
First of all, NASA almost never builds straight replacement instruments. They are always focused on something new. JWST will not replace Hubble by any means. In fact, if both were up at the same time (sustained, not about-to-be-junk), the amount of additional science able to come from their complementary instrumentation should be reason alone to keep Hubble strong until it launches.
Astronomy in the ultraviolet is all but mothballed for a decade if one of the instruments (Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, COS) slated for installation in Hubble does not make it to orbit somehow. The only functioning instrument right now is GALEX, an imaging experiment.
However, when we obtain spectra, the ultraviolet, more than any other waveband, gives us tremendous direct information about the atomic composition of many astronomical objects. (Molecules are best studied in the radio part of the spectrum. Solid particles [e.g. dust] in the infrared).
JWST will not fill this gap. It will be a great loss and put a halt to a wealth of knowledge gained from ultraviolet spectroscopy that began about three decades ago.
Where the Japanese and Chinese and Europeans have their acts together while we stop spending on Science.
Sigh.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
it's about the hubble being a piece of crap that needs to be replaced in order for us to move forward.
Well, maybe I'm biased being an astronomer and all, but with Hubble data being used in about 1 out of 2-3 papers I read, mentioned in about a similar number of talks, and proposed to by about 1/2 the astronomers I know at least every other year, I think (well, really I know) a lot of us "non-experts" would be happy to have the money spent to continue the "piece of crap".
But what do I know. I don't work for NASA. It's good to have opinions from independent sources like yourself to let us know when the field has become stagnant.
Where are the astronauts going to put the parts and tools that they need, not to mention the manipulator arm? Hide them in Cartman's butt?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
They already have the robots built to do the mission. They have tested them and CNN has filmed them. To cancel everything would be a huge waste of money. They are proceding with testing like the mission will actually happen. If it's truly canned - a lot of people will at least have work through this year. I'm torn in my feelings though. If they know the mission will be cancelled, it seems a waste to continue burning through the tax dollars allocated for FY05. Keeping people employed on the other hand is a good thing. Mikulski has been an avid supporter of the HST for years. She's on committees directly related to projects such as this.