Slashdot Mirror
Hubble Verdict: De-Orbit
theonetruekeebler writes "CNN reports that NASA has reached a final decision for the Hubble space telescope: De-orbit. At some future date a liquid-fueled rocket will dock with the telescope and fire, hurling Hubble into the ocean. However, "Our best estimate is we probably will be able to continue to do science as we're doing it ... somewhere into 2008," according to program executive Mark Borkowski."
With extreme prejudice.
I know everything hasn't been quite right with me, but I can assure you now, very confidently, that it's going to be alright again...I feel much better now, I really do...Look, NASA, I can see you're really upset about this...I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over...
I know I've had some hardware issues recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal... I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
All good things come to an end.
So long and thanks for all the amazing images.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I just hope I'm not out fishing when it comes down.
Why not just shoot it into deep space?
"We're just going to make up some stuff. People never check things we say."
I say we take off and nuke that bitch from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Hope they attach the rocket correctly. We wouldn't want it crashing into the RIAA headquarters or anything.
Is Taco bell going to put a target out there again so we can all win free tacos?
At some future date a liquid-fueled rocket will dock with the telescope and fire, hurling Hubble into the ocean. However, "Our best estimate is we probably will be able to continue to do science as we're doing it ...
Whoa! Extreme!"
Why drop it into the ocean? Why not just blast it off into space and see what it finds until we lose communicaiton? It seems like a waste to me...
"For Great Justice."
...why bother de-orbiting it in that fashion? We also have a problem with military expenditures regarding our ballistic missiles.
Simple vacuum-explosive warhead instead of nuclear, and launch one of our old missiles. Two birds with one stone, literally.
Hey, it's not April 1st!
Logic, macros, and more
The Columbia disaster was tragic and a great loss. But our progress can not be halted simply because of fear. Astronauts enter the shuttle knowing they may not make it back. They are heroes risking their lives to make life better for mankind. They are courageous, and NASA needs to follow their example. Fear cannot hold NASA back from accomplishing its goals.
A shuttle mission could repair the Hubble. Yes, there's risk involved, but wasn't there even greater risk on the Apollo missions? The shuttles are very robust compared to the Apollo vehicles.
NASA, please stop being afraid. Stop being so cautious that nothing gets done. As the fable says, "Precautions are useless after the event."
Apologies to all who loved Hubble, and maybe this is a bit to early to ask, but are they gonna get that crap outta the ocean afterwards?
Or is the ocean going to become a graveyard for things that get temporarily sent in to space. I'm not a trolling hippie, just curious.
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
Sunrise doesn't last all morning,
a cloudburst doesn't last all day
Seems my love is up and has left you with no warning
But it's not always going to be this grey
All things must pass, all things must pass away
Sunset doesn't last all evening,
a mind can blow those clouds away
after all this my love is up and must be leaving
It has not always been this grey
All things must pass, all things must pass away
All things must pass none of life's strings can last
So I must be on my way and face another day
Now the darkness only stays at nighttime,
in the morning it will fade away
Daylight is good at arriving at the right time
It's not always going to be this grey
All things must pass, all things must pass away
All things must pass, all things must pass away
but what are they going to do about De Telescope?
...
sorry.
And, just as I am studying astophysics in grad school. //Quitly hates Bush even more for him not giving NASA the money it needs
If they can dock hubble with a rocket to de-orbit it, why not point the rocket in the other direction to boost its orbit? Seems like a terrible waste to trash the hubble. Even if it's getting old, it's still way better than terrestrial telescopes.
When all else fails, run.
How 'bout it, science?
I don't see why they need to do anything to the Hubble at all. They don't have money to keep it operational, but there is funding to hire engineers, procure raw materials, build a rocket, launch it, dock the damn thing, and ram it into the atmosphere? Why not just do nothing and leave it up there? Kind of like what the navy does with old ships - keep it in the mothball fleet but don't necesarily strick it from the registry. Who knows what uses it may have in the futher? I suppose one would argue it is a possible collision risk to other operational satelites which might have intersecting orbits, but what's one more object to the thousands already being tracked by military radars?
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
you just know if they let that happen it would crash into like the Cremlin or something causing an international incident costing way more than the cost of deorbiting.
No smoking sigs indoors.
That makes me nervous. I think I need more de-odorant.
Say hello to my little sig.
So please, where is this data that suggests that the shuttles are more robust? Using brand new flight hardware for every flight seems safer than reusing flight hardware coupled with one hell of an inspection process. Possibly cheaper too, in the long run. Sure, there were failures on the Saturn V, but they were overcome with redunandcies. The Apollo 1 pad fire was not due to problems with the Saturn V booster. And the Saturn V was one hell of a booster compared to the Shuttles. Why is it we need the shuttles? Oh, yeah, we were supposted to be able to fly 12+ missions a year.
there was a US agency for space research. No longer.
If they crash it into Osama Bin Laden.
But seriously this is such a horrible waste. Destroying the world's greatest scientific instrument of our time because it *might* be dangerous to fix it? Life is dangerous, and I'm positive if they made an X-Prize to fix Hubble, it could be done by 2008.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
And, just as I am studying astophysics in grad school. //Quitly hates Bush even more for him not giving NASA the money it needs.
Don't they teach SPELLING to astrophysicists these days?
cheers George, see you on mars ! right?, right ?
Umm the Shuttle actually is cheaper per kg then the Saturn V...
Bush should have given NASA the money - by taking it away from all these unconstitutional social programs the Dems have installed in our government. It's not the government's job to feed people and create jobs and fund the arts and education, people.
Taco Bell will put a target in the ocean like they did for MIR when it was coming down... hmm I wonder
Don't be a troll, Bush is actually increasing NASA funding unlike umm clinton ehhmmm...
Whatever they send up there HAS to have a strong dock to tow it back safely, so why not let it wait for a while once it gets there.
Once it docks, it can take over control of hubbles positioning requirements leaving it to carry on working for a much longer period.
Then, when the fuel is gone and the items once again begin to fail, fire the main return home booster to de-orbit?
liqbase
It's government property and when deemed surplus should be auctioned off. Hell by 2008, I may be able to ride up and fix the thing.
Because, dear Timothy, would you want to man a mission or risk a few billion dollars' worth of communications kit in a high velocity debris field, any tiny piece of which could either puncture your space suit, vessel or completely ruin your satellite?
It's already like a junkyard up there. Even though I will mourn the passing of Hubble, NASA is quite correct. Blowing it up is dangerous. We can't afford to have uncontrolled, unmonitored crap floating around up there. It takes much less energy to bring it down than accelerate it to the point it breaks free from Earth, so it's cost-effective and environmentally sound to do exactly what they're proposing.
Of course, I'm sure we'd all prefer they didn't scrap it at all. What it has taught us has vastly improved our knowledge of the space around us and, IMO, we will be that much poorer without it.
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
It would be nice if NASA would accept a private sector attempt to repair the Hubble. Have NASA engineers authorize any private mission (from a safety standpoint only... i.e. will not cause space debris). If the mission succeeds... then the mission sponsors _own_ Hubble and can do with it what they want.
:)
Of course... if interests counter to the US were to succeed they'd end up with one heck of a spy satallite
Well, They still can miss the Pacific Ocean...
Two words: WANKEROUS TREACHERY.
Anyone working for NASA automagically has more balls than I, but damn. It's been nothing but bad news these last few days, what the hell?
[o]_O
Much as I admire the effort behind the Hubble project, Hubble is dead. It is gone. And for the cost of keeping it going another 4 years, you could design, build and launch another, lighter, more modern telescope.
It's like trying to run Doom 3 on the latest Alienware retrofitted with a 486, no matter how much you bolt on it still will fail. Sometimes you just need to dump the older bits and upgrade the whole kit. Hell, send up a fleet of new ones and put them at Lagrange points.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
I'm saddened by the fact its not firing a rocket at the telescope :(
Let me guess, Bush writes all the speeding tickets and breaks up all the underage beer parties in your town too doesn't he?
Maybe you should take a civic's course while you are in school still...
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
...can I have it? FIRST DIBS!
BytesTemplar.com
Cost of a Space shuttle: $700,000,000 per launch (not counting the latest $2,000,000,000 in upgrades or the initial cost)
22 tons http://www.braeunig.us/space/specs/shuttle.htm
Even taking into account inflation, the Saturn 5 still looks better.
Why not turn hubble into a big vacuum cleaner! As it de-orbits it scoops up all the debris in orbit forming a massive mountain in front of it. The more orbits the bigger it gets, the more debris it attracts. And when mom approves, THEN we dump the whole thing into the Pacific Ocean, and sell it to Disney for a new theme park!!
You mean like ummm balanced budget ehhmmmm...?
Oh yes, because keeping the most advanced telescope ever built operational is SO much like running a videogame on a PC.
Give your head a shake and join the rest of us in reality.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Worst mispelling I've seen on /. yet... You have woken my latent spelling nazi.
It's called Spitzer.
And, while I'm posting, I might as well point out that it's the VLT (Very Large Telescope), not VLTI. Maybe you were thinking of VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry - a technique for high resolution radio images)?
One more thing - ground based telescopes like VLT are better than Hubble at many things, are catching up in resolution, but are inferior when it comes to background. They see things through the atmosphere, which glows faintly and makes it harder to see things like dim distant galaxies. Hubble can see things which are dimmer, which is important for cosmology since dim things are often far away.
Slashdot - Mutual Assured Discussion
Why not sell it instead?!
They can privatize it. They can give it to the public somehow.
But why spend the money to bring it down??? I don't get it.
It's Deorbit, Hubble !! For great justice !!
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Yes, but not enough. He has stated he wants to go to the moon again, and on to mars. Which is I agree with, except that he hasn't raised funding enough to do so, and still save an extremely important research tool long enough to keep it online untill its replacement is launched (assuming no delays, in 2011).
Even if I think that taxpayer funding for this project was a mistake in the first place, that's a sunk cost, and we might as well milk it for all we can get now that it's up there. And hey, maybe Virgin Galactic can stop by in that direction by then.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If it's such a concern about getting a crew back down in the event of a Columbia type scenario, what about developing a servicing mission for the HST with a two man shuttle crew flown in conjunction with a standby Soyuz with only a single pilot? Hey, why not pay the Russians to actually do the servicing mission? (I've got no idea how large the changeover components required are - could be hard without a robot arm & payload bay!). We're already outsourcing everything we can (in the western world, I'm not from the US), what's wrong with outsourcing a bit of pride also? The IP has already left the building. I'm not sure, maybe it's unworkable for all sorts of reasons I don't understand. But isn't NASA planning to have a second shuttle on standby for all shuttle future launches anyway? International Rescue to the ... rescue!
Granted there are newer facilities than the HST that compete in key areas, but it's a great big night sky out there, surely the additional research bandwidth the HST offers has still got to be amazingly useful to astrononers for many years to come?
'Hubble' space telescope, one careful owner. A blast at parties, or good Christmas present for nerds. Payment via paypal to sales@nasa.gov or will accept checks once cleared, or cash on collection. $15,000 delivery, NASA is an eBay power seller.
The assessment backs an earlier decision by the White House to scuttle the Hubble.
The President actually expects us to believe this? I guess if you stack the committees with enough of your own "scientists" you can get pigs to fly.
Two other options:
a) de-orbit into the sun. Nice recycle/reuse spin i.e. we get some of the energy back as sunlight; or
b) de-orbit into deep space. Nothing says "There's other intelligent life" to an alien scientist like a slightly used space telescope careening away from an overlooked solar system.
It just seems that de-orbiting to earth is riskier.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Are we sure that we can live with a three year gap?
There will probably not be a major asteroid stike on earth during my lifetime, However, I belive they will identify a rock that will impact at some future date before then.
The risk to life and limb to the shuttle crew could be justified just by the use of Hubble if an impacter is identified.
Also remember that the sky is not static. We have events like comet strikes into Jupiter, supernova....
Also do you expect the replacement scope to arrive on time?
Yeah, it would have been a good idea to proof read my post.
In fact, depending on how big the replacement parts are, The shuttle might even be able to fix Hubble, then drop off at the ISS 'on the way home' with a care package -- thus getting in a bit of a two-for-one.
The obvious question is: Just how incompatible are the two orbits? Does the physics make this an feasible idea?
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The only vehicle anyone has that can land with any kind of freight is the Shuttle, and landing it with heavy cargo like the Hubble is considerably more risky than landing lighter.
Hmm...an enourmous crash mat? No. A million firemen with a big net waiting below?...nah. Employing the tractor beam on our Imperial Star Destroyer, thus capturing the rebel Hubble...wait, that's a movie.
Maybe we rig it with a whole bunch of rope and just kinda haul it back? Yeah, that's it. I saw a commercial where they were flying satellites like kites. Dammit, this just might work!
The thought of being able to stabilize the Hubble in order to bring it down is freaky. It's looks difficult enough to put one up from the Shuttle and get the spin right. I remember astronauts going up and fixing one a few years back. That was insane.
If NASA could do it, wonderful. But besides the danger involved...sheesh. I'd hold out for teleport technology first.
That the little blurb at the bottom of /. should say "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."
The main advantage of space for a telescope was avoiding atmospheric distortion. Now it is possible to adjust the mirrors to compensate for atmospheric distortion (adapive optics), enabling large and clear telescopes on the ground (Earth). Here's an explanation of how a guide star is used to "eliminate twinkling". In short, orbital telescopes may be obsolete once these technologies are perfected.
to err is human, to forgive is divine, to forget is... umm...
The government is formed by the people and for the people. Therefore, the government is entitled to do what they believe what is in the best interest of the people. Feeding people, creating jobs, education and even things such as civic pride (the arts) are definitely in the interest of the people. Poverty, crime and ignorance are definitely not in the interest of the people and country as whole.
Of course you may have your opinions and run for government with them. If the people believe you are doing what is best for them, then the people will elect you to install your ideas for the peoples benefit. I wager the people will reject your ideas and fail to elect you, but you can always try.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Yeah, but when you figure in inflation, that $740,000,000 becomes something more like 3 or 4 billion in 2005 dollars. I'll buy the shuttle, thankyouverymuch.
My other Sig is
There was money included in NASA's budget for FY 2004 or 5 that was specifcally for fixing Hubble.
Has nasa become such a group of pussies they are too chickenshit to even try now. We lost men going to the moon but we went anyway no different in putting up the space stations or fixing the hubble.
Hubble has one advantage that all of our other fixed telescopes and that is a great deal more mobility.
They could at least put a booster rocket on it and put it into a storage orbit until we can fix it.
Can you imagine what it would be like to have payloads of 200 tonnes a shot, instead of 20 tonnes? For one thing, since there would be less need to assemble things in orbit, there would be fewer missions required - another cost benefit.
That's right. Which means that all those gorgeous images the previous poster was talking about will no longer be available other than with false color.
Why they can't put a visible light CCD on the JWT is beyond me, but whatever. Not to mention the fact that the JWT will be impossible to service at a LaGrange point.
+++ATH0
I am not gonna feel too bad...the hubble was all a hoax anyway. just some scientists in a warehouse in the desert with crayons and black construction paper.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
I hope that every NASA scientist that supports this goes to hell.
We're just too damned lazy to care about space anymore.
Many of you might be thinking who would be foolish enough to fly such a mission? I'd do it! Even if it killed me. Hard to beat that ride! I bet plenty of others would do it.
The difference between Hubble and ISS is the inclination (angle towards the equator, roughly), not the height.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
The Apollo 1 pad fire was not due to problems with the Saturn V booster.
No, it sure as hell wasn't if you are talking about the fire in the test facility in Houston. It was some twit who somehow managed to get into a position of command, and decreed that the test in question be carried out with approximately 5 psi of pure oxygen in it, bringing the partial pressure of the oxygen in the atmosphere in it to nearly 20 psi. I've cut steel with a smith wrench on less pressure. Not a clean cut, but a cut nonetheless.
Any spark, from anything would be enough to convert the interior into a 2000+ degree blowtorch of extremely toxic flame byproducts. Not that it mattered as their lungs were fatally damaged with the next breath they took. The hatch, for reasons of simple pressure containment, opened inward, meaning it was being held shut by a ton or so worth of square inches holding that 5 pounds of pressure in. In other words, there was no way in hell those guys could have opened the hatch against that pressure, and it was probably rising another 5 psi a second from the combustion products.
And there was a spark from some frayed wiring under one of the seats in that well worn and exersized test module. A spark, that in space, at 5 psia & no gravity to make "heat rises" convection currents to carry new oxygen into the flame, so that fire would have been smothered in its own combustion products before it had spread more than an inch if that far. In space it would have been a non-event that may have tripped a circuit breaker, the reason for the breaker trip not being found until it was fished out of the ocean later. Someone may have commented on the odor, maybe.
Had I been in an even higher position of authority, I would have insisted that twit do the first such test by himself, then nominated him for a Darwin Award. But of course I wasn't, so what's the use of playing the "had I" scenario?
I still burn everytime I think about their last 20 to 30 seconds of consiousness. It was stupid, and should have been prosecuted, because it was nothing short of negligent manslaughter of 3 good men. For what benefit was such a test? Damnedifiknow.
--
No cheers, but some tears on this one, Gene
SMACK!
Oh honey, remember how we talked about getting that 21" flatscreen?? Well ...
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
Bush finally does the right wing religious whackos a favor by taking the Hubble down. They never wanted it up there in the first place. They think "we have no business looking back into the time of creation, to look over God's shoulder while he created the world".
NASA certainly did not reach this conclusion they were forced reach it. Bush and the religious-right will gladly fund manned-space flights to Mars. What a huge waste of money. We are on Mars now and getting good data back. we certainly do not need to send manned flights there. Deep space is where it's at and where we need to be looking.
http://tinyurl.com/3t236
Private donations collected to keep Star Trek: Enterprise versus private donations collected to keep Hubble in orbit.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
They could at least put a booster rocket on it and put it into a storage orbit until we can fix it.
I was thinking that myself, even broken it's one of the more valuable things in nearby Earth orbit.
There was money included in NASA's budget for FY 2004 or 5 that was specifcally for fixing Hubble.
I have no doubt money gets shifted around, repurposed and other such crap. I'm sure that money was allocated before Bush announced going back to the Moon and going to Mars, though the funds for these new goals are completely inadequate.
Speaking of reallocating funds, I bet 87 billion dollars would be just about enough for manned Moon and Mars missions.
Tag lost or not installed.
Dude! Goatse is dead! Don't even check the URLs that you link to? If you really insist on continuing this insidious trolling then I'm sure I could set up a goatse mirror for you, but please, next time think before you troll.
...to blow!!!
You know, considering the trouble they keep having getting the national missile defense interceptors to actually lift off on time, maybe they should use Hubble as a target. That way, they don't waste a rocket firing up the test target.
(Yes, I know destroying Hubble with a kinetic impactor would leave a lot of debris behind. But think how neatly it ties together all the Bush administration's space objectives!)
Nobody ever seems to mention the Hubble Origins Probe in these discussions, which is IMHO the best possible solution:
An international team led by Johns Hopkins University astronomers have proposed an alternative to sending a robotic or manned repair mission to the ailing Hubble Space Telescope. Their proposal is to build a new Hubble Origins Probe, reusing the Hubble design but using lighter and more cost-effective technologies. The probe would include instruments currently waiting to be installed on Hubble, as well as a Japanese-built imager which 'will allow scientists to map the heavens more than 20 times faster than even a refurbished Hubble Space Telescope could.' It would take an estimated 65 months and $1 billion to build and launch, approximately the same cost as a robotic service mission.
The original Hubble is great for historical and sentimental reasons, but the cost/benefit ratio is really so much better with a replacement.
Why not give it a public IP address and use it as the world's most expensive webcam?
They need to make that sort of announcement, saying they have to spend the money on a new one that is better and it will be launched just in time for the de-orbit or sooner.
Sure, the S-V had a 100% flight completion record. But given that it had significant problems on the majority of flights, and flew a statistically meaningless number of times, there's no basis for making any predictions about it's long term safety and reliability.
Why not sell it to some country that is actually increasing emphasis on science as one of the measures to improve their economy? There are countries out there that haven't sold the farm yet and don't see innovation as something to be outsourced to another country.
Ok, I've had enough politics. Where is it I can sign up to donate money (as in hard, cold cash) to useful space research. NASA has fundamentaly failed at their task. Woe is us.
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
I was the first person to reply to this thread when it was posted yesterday, yet I lost 3 points for it being redundant.
you did mean astronomy, yes?
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
Why don't they just leave it in orbit?
Its not hurting anyone is it? and it could still be used I guess...
*sigh*
At the time, it was the most advanced telescope. Now it's just collecting dust and getting us some pretty pictures (which can be collected from observatories on Earth with modern corrective technology to compensate for atmospheric interference).
My point still stands, no matter how much hardware you put on a 486 it won't run Doom 3, and no matter how much hardware you dock with/replace on the Hubble, it won't last.
Give your head a shake and join the rest of us in today.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
You know, why don't they aim that rocket at the sun and burn it up instead of throwing more shit in the ocean? They could get some cool pics on the way to the furnace.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
I have no idea where people get this impression but is completely incorrect.
No telescope in existence can take the images that Hubble can simply because the atmosphere is opaque to most wavelengths that are of interest to astronomers. Also to image really faint objects your surroundings have to be really dark. It just doesn't get that dark here on Earth. Check this out for more information: http://www.oarval.org/HUDFen.htm
If there was a comparable telescope in existance, or one ready to be launched in the near future then I'd agree with you, but there isn't.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Why not make a safe lander? A smart hard chute to slow it down to vertical fall speed and then just catch it or release soft chute or air foil or sails and pillows under to keep it intact! Im sure there's enough spare shopping plastic bags out there to make a nice pillow!
Then NASA could sell it on ebay or Soderby's to get more budget!
Seems such a waste of money to hurl such big cult instrument in astronomy to kill fish in open seas!!! I mean if they ban dynamite in lakes, they can't send fireballs of metal plasma into a cool ocean either right?
Who is running things round here? What possible purpose does going out of our way to trash it possibly serve? Just leave it be --it make prove of use in the future (as emergency spare parts for instance). If it's particular place in orbit is needed for something else (very unlikely) then just move it into another orbit. Hell, move it into orbit around the moon. Who cares! Your were just going to blow it up anyway.
Idiots.
:T:R:A:N:S:
The Bush administration's problem with the Hubble is that it violates two of their major agendas. First, the images from Hubble are inspiring, and the right wing needs to destroy any part of the government which inpsires people to believe that the government isn't useless. Second, the images from the Hubble challenge the 2000 year old "science" of fundamentalism, especially in the minds of impressionable children, so the telescope (along with a lot of other science funding) has to be destroyed.
Besides, there is a great benefit. Giving NASA money to nice texas corporations for producing artist's conceptions of supposed future Mars missions can be very profitable, if you cancel all the real work and require no deliverables for a decade or so. NASA, our new ENRON.
Well ya - but nobody ever died on a mission in one of those rockets. (aside from the fire on the ground during a test mission in the 60s - but never on an actual mission did a rocket malfunction fatally).
14 people have died on the shuttle. It's safety record is nothing to brag about...
You ain't too smart are you cowboy?
http://tinyurl.com/45q26 or just plain: http://www.newpath4.com/societyalsurvivalultimatee ngineisnotcombustionenginenotgasolinenginenotdiese lengineandefinitelynotpropulsionenginesplusstoppin gicbmsandasteroids.htm#icbmskillerasteroidsdualsol utioninterconnectedringedlasertrapbolo . Solved that months ago. I ASSUME someone is working on it. I spend my time nowadays selling other ideas: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=144755&cid=121 28228
but you're fired."
HUBBLE: While eating a bowl of Intel Bran Crunch, "Sounds Good."
Backwards might be "OK", if it meant a high orbit - then someday someone could salvage the silly thing.
Think a bit, can you calculate what it COSTS to put this stuff up there in the first place?!? Why try to make an island in some ocean?!?
Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
False colorization is very common in astronomical images released for public consumption.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
I thought there were replacement or spare parts just waiting to be installed into the Hubble... wouldn't a quick replacement Hubble v1.2 be more cost effective? Let the old Hubble fail and de-orbit it later. Should NASA concentrate on keeping its replacements coming..?
OK, we all know the real reason that Hubble is being taken out of service. It didn't meet Bush's objectives: it didn't find oil, and it didn't find god (sic). Or heaven - just heavens. We all know that the present Pres isn't big on information unless a: he makes it up to support his actions and gets "experts" to support it; or, b: finds a whacko theologist with an off the wall theory to supports his actions. Personally, I'm willing to check off a dollar on my tax return for Bush to take a course in phrenology to study to bumps on Cheney's head. I mean, who's running things anyway, and the Pres needs to know the bald truth. We ain't talking eagles here, he'll ground them next! KharmannGhia