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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."
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
just takes way too much fuel... it's easier to spurt it into falling back downward than trying to push it "up" and out...
--- no sig to see here... move along.
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."
Blowing up old satellites is a very bad idea. Orbital debris is already dangerous for rockets and (especially) manned missions into space. Collision with a piece of debris in orbit is usually a very high-speed impact and can severely damage or even destroy a launch vehicle. For the future safety of space exploration, it really is safest to send satellites into the atmosphere to burn up cleanly.
Shooting a derelict satellite into deep space is much more costly (in terms of fuel) and is not as easy as it sounds. If it isn't done right, it might end up in an eccentric orbit around the Earth (or moon) and cause problems much later on.
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.
er, well you are a trolling hippie, because the few tons of material that deorbit every year (and the few parts that actually hit the botton and not evaporate) are SOOOOOO important against all that crap thats thrown into the sea otherwise (trash, sinking of boards, sewage, crashing airplanes, ect).
Or not.
I guess it will take a few decades until even the equivalent of a single sunk ship from WW2 will have deorbited. So it really doesnt matter.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
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.
If it's for pure aesthetics, wouldn't a replica do? After all, as you said, its value is symbolic - commemorating it with a symbol doesn't seem inappropriate.
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
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.
There is a reason NASA wants to trash Hubble. With Hubble gone, it'll be easier to justify the next scope. Right now, it's easy to say, "What's wrong with what we've got?" Yes, compare|contrast images have been shown - comparing "regular" tv to HDTV - and there is a difference. But when you see the pricetag, it's still easy to say, we have one right now turning out pretty nice pictures. Get rid of the status quo, then say, "oooooh. look at the pretty pictures." and people will go along with it - new posters for office walls, Timmy's bedroom ceiling (to stair at whilst he's falling asleep - until he gets to be ten or eleven, then something else will be up there).
It's just like a kid wanting a new computer, bike, skateboard, baseball glove, or anything else. "Well, son. Doesn't the one you have right now work?" "Well, yeah, but...."
NASA's just trying to eliminate the the status quo works and is cheaper argument.
Heh! You had me going there for a while. Then you said "space station ... or otherwise doing real science" and it all kind of fell apart.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is not a new story. They could refit Hubble with new gyros, faster computer hardware and better cameras, but they would rather throw billions of dollars more than what would repair Hubble, at the next-gen space telescope (NGST). They have this brilliant idea that they can locate this thing at Lagrangian point L2, or about 4 times the distance to the moon from earth. This way when it breaks or just doesn't work, there is no easy way anyone can get to it for repairs. What they should do, instead of chasing fanciful dreams, is concentrate on repairing and upgrading the shuttle fleet so they don't blow up on lift off or landing. And keep the Hubble in service which is a reliable and working technology, and can be repaired and upgraded when necessary.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
NASA as a commercial enterprise would be just a shadow of what it is now. A huge part of what it does is research, and that is a cost, not an asset.
Research doesn't pay off now, it pays off years from now. When we see our laboratories attached to companies becoming gutted shells, like Bell Labs became, it's because bean counters in industry did that.
When you criticise NASA for not looking ahead and blame it on being non-commercial, it ignores the basic science that NASA does for possible future benefit, and it ignores the short-sighted behavior that we have seen too often on business.
Planned obsolescense is an entirely different thing. It's not about making a better product, it's about making crappy products that break so they can sell you a replacement that doesn't do anything better than the old one.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Hopefully you're just trolling. But as an entrepreneur and businessperson, in addition to being educated as a scientist, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that understanding our universe is one of the highest motivations we can have as a species. So should taxpayers fund cosmology and astrology research? God damn right they should. It's a tiny fucking fraction of a percent of our country's budget, and it goes to benefitting all humanity.
Furthermore, you think that there aren't lots of American companies that manfactured, serviced, and maintained the Hubble and related systems? You don't realize that NASA spending benefits lots of businesses? What is wrong with having government dollars back a mission that we collectively as a people believe is important but that otherwise has no direct free market incentive to pursue it? If that wasn't what taxpayer dollars were *meant* to be spent on, then I must misunderstand the entire purpose of organizing people into social units and governments.
Guess I've been thoroughly trolled.
No one gives a crap about the base materials...
But is there scientific / historic / nostalgic value to THIS material?
Its been exposed to a LOT of spatial radiation / It is big in scientific history / We all love it and would love a piece of it
Even if I think that taxpayer funding for this project was a mistake in the first place, that's a sunk cost
Continued funding is, by definition, not a sunk cost.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
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.
I don't think Bush was the one who decided to bring down the hubble, it was NASA, and not because of the budget, but because it is too dangerous to repair. It's just a telescope... I'm sure there will be a Hubble II.
Are we sure that we can live with a three year gap?
Gee, how did we live all these many, many thousands of years without a space telescope?
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.
Suppose we do... what exactly do you think we can do about it? Half the population will have wiped itself out in mass panic before they could even get a shuttle launched with little hope of success at changing things (with modern technology).
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Well you already have the cost of designing a deorbit module and the associated launch costs. If you want a controlled Hubble deorbit then you have to do this. It would likely cost about $400 to $600 million.
Now if you wanted to add servicing, and delay the deorbit as long as possible, you need a robot and a servicing module. The robot to do this costs only $150 million. If you used the electronics (communications , navigation) capabilities of the deorbit module you are building anyway, then the remaining structure is relatively simple and would add maybe $100 million more. The replacement parts for Hubble, a wide field camera, gyroscopes, batteries, already exist and are paid for since they were supposed to go up on an earlier shuttle flight.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
I don't think Bush was the one who decided to bring down the hubble, it was NASA, and not because of the budget, but because it is too dangerous to repair.
I have read that there was no formal risk assessment done when NASA decided that using the Shuttle to do the routine maintenance on Hubble was too dangerous. Instead this was apparently the gut level feeling of top NASA bureaucrats (and as such probably had a lot to do with their concerns with the risk to their career possibilities). I believe an article about this was recently posted on /.-- maybe someone will chime in with a reference to it?
I would very much like to see NASA produce a formal risk assessment of the planned Shuttle missions to Hubble. The cost of this kind of study is miniscule compared to the value of Hubble's work. My sense is that while NASA employs lots of good scientists and engineers, the denizens of its highest levels have the kind of bureaucratic mind set where decisions are made based on how they think their bosses will react, and what the long term impact on their own petty little careers might be.
It's just a telescope..
The Hubble is a cutting-edge scientific instrument that has been expanding our knowledge about the universe. The Bush administration has consistently worked to constrict this kind of scientific advancement. Maybe this is for ideological reasons (for instance, it is probably easier to live a "faith-based" life when you aren't presented with new facts about the world every day), or maybe its for more pragmatic reasons (it is best to avoid anything that might contribute to the global warming theory when your power base is Big Oil).