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Hope for Hubble
yulek writes "It may not be over yet. space today reports that Bush's NASA administrator nominee, Michael Griffin, wants to revisit the Hubble decision. Space.com has some more details.
The big question is: do we really want to save Hubble for the right reasons or is it more of a symbolic thing? Considering NASA's fiscal woes, is this a waste of funds?
I have loved the Hubble images for the last decade, and the research that stemmed from them, but I think that the most incredible camera we've ever made may need more than just an upgrade. Perhaps it is obsolete."
It has been a very useful piece of equipment for the scientific community and would continue to be so. True the cost looks big, but compared to the many other expenditures NASA Makes its a small price for the gain you get from it. Unless you can put up a new telescope with at least it's capabilities for the repair cost its worth the investment.
I generally consider things to be obsolete when they have been replaced by something better. How does this apply to Hubble?
samrolken
For what it costs to determine if Hubble can/should be "saved" we can fund Voyager until it runs out of power. We have never had a man made object communicate with us from outside the solar system.
Saving Hubble will cost at least $500 million. That money could be used to keep all of the other spacecraft that are being considered for termination operating for a few years. There is a more capable replacement, the JWST, on the way in 2011. The only reason they are revisiting the Hubble decision is to appease Senator Mikulski of MD. Oh yeah, Griffin came from APL which is also in MD. You connect the dots.
-- Instant Karma's gonna get you! [320848 = 2*2*2*2*11*1823]
Considering how low it takes to get a probe beyond Pluto and the strange pull on the spacecraft (it is off where it should be) and the low cost of continuing to monitor the probes, the voyeger missions should be continued too. Cutting them saves very little money but the budget is so tight that to save one or two mil, we are cutting these very important programs.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
In general, use of the word "we" around here refers to be people who don't, as a group, have the slightest idea what they're talking about, let alone any intention of making any contribution themselves.
This is a perfect example. Given the inability "we" have to understand why false color images are used, I find it hard to imagine that "we" have an informed opinion on the utility of the Hubble.
My impression is that the posters here who do know what they're talking about run about 80-20 against hanging on to the Hubble.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Would someone mind telling me what exactly has made the hubble obsolete? What batch of super powerful telescopes has made the hubble unnecessary?
Maybe the hubble is broken down, maybe it's too difficult to maintain, I'll even entertain the very unscientific assessment that the benefits of the hubble are outweighed by the costs now. However, you can't call something obsolete until something else comes along that's simply better and that can replace it fully.
With repairs the hubble can still do tremendous things. The submitter calling it "obsolete" is an irresponsible use of words and that bothers me because it implies it has no further worth. That's simply wrong.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
If you don't have $400M to fix a space telescope, you're not going to get $4B+ to build a new one.
Consider, further, that if a hypothetical new telescope has a $400M sticker on it today, it'll cost at least $4B by the time Congress is done splitting up the contracts so as to maximize the amount of pork (and therefore votes) allocated.
Consider, still further, the probability that this (or any other) administration is ever going to agree to spending one thin time on science. People into science tend to think. People who think tend not to vote as predictably. It's therefore in every Congressman's long-term interest to reduce the proportion of such people among the population.
This isn't an R-vs-D flame. Space telescopes harm Republican politicians by draining money away from faith-based initiatives that would otherwise be used to indoctrinate the next generation of Republican voters, but they also harm Democrat politicians by draining money away from social programmes that foster the kind of nanny-state dependency that produces the next generation of Democrat voters.
I support keeping the Hubble - even if obsolescent, it's better than nothing. And "nothing" is what we'll end up with if we let it crash and burn.
As prior art, I cite the X-33 and other Shuttle replacements, all of which were canned years ago.
I think your question, is Hubble obsolete, is the wrong question to ask.
Hubble IS obsolete. And will be replaced by the http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/JWST. But the JWST won't launch until August, 2011.
Hubble will die soon. So what are scientists to do from 2006 until August 2011? Although we have many world class telescopes on earth, all of them have to contend with the atmosphere, plus earth's orbit - its rotation around the sun affect which part of our sky is visible at night, and because of this annoying thing called "day", those telescopes can only be used at night, which further restrict which part of the universe can be viewed at any given moment.
I'm not insulting earth-based telescopes, but I do believe we need to keep Hubble functioning until the JWST is ready. For safety, Hubble should operate a few months after the JWST is launched, just in case the JWST has flaws that are only discovered after launch... remember Hubble's mirror flaw which required an additional flight to fix?
Tepp
The Hubble Space Telescope stands for everything NASA has done right in the last 12 years. At the completion of STS-61, the mission to replace the warped mirror, NASA's approval rating was at it's highest since the launch of Columbia. Possibly since the Apollo missions. Besides saving a $1.5 billion dollar investment. The mission proved that servicing missions could be done. It opened the door to the idea that in orbit manufacutring and repairs weren't just science fiction.
Since then Hubble has increased our understanding of the universe 10 fold. Its more than just a space telescope, it's a national monument. I think every effort should be made to keep it in working order until the technology exists to safely return it to Earth intact so it can be displayed at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum
Free MacMini
Even though 90 percent of the public is way more interested in pictures from Hubble than they are in the International Space Station (ISS) or any moon base, the scaredy-cats in DC don't want to risk fixing it with the military space shuttle, so they can send more spy satellites up instead.
Sigh. It will soon be replaced with something better from the EU or Japan anyway.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You're ignoring the aspects of time and matter.
A better telescope could be placed in to orbit, sure.
But time on the telescope is a finite resource. If you want to look at something, you have to create a proposal, and get time scheduled on the device, get it pointed, etc.
If the Hubble still has some significant utility, and the cost to repair it is worth that additional utility, than it should be repaired.
But just being "obsolete" doesn't make it worthless, and I don't see this as a "sentimental" argument.
-- John.
You'd have to gring a new primary lens, which would take a long time to do (though it could be done the right way this time) and cost a small fortune. We have a known-good unit in place now, with upgrades to boost its primary capabilities by an order of magnitude. Better to go that route instead of adding in a bunch of new variables.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Bad analogy, actually. Many studies have shown that it is, in fact, cheaper to maintain a used car (per year) than the cost of making car payments for that same year.
;) have supported this.
My experiences (save for the time I threw a head bolt through the hood
Note that my (current) car is old enough to drink legally; this is not hypothetical.
If you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space!
Right but that "final" came out of the mouth of a clueless blow-dried MBA idiot.
The current maybe comes from a card-carrying geek who's now heading up NASA.
I'm willing to be flexible in this case.
And if I could ask a follow up to that question, Will ground based telescopes be able to adjust to increasing level of contaminants in the air, and changes in the atmosphere ?
How is it obsolete? Is the 200 inch Hale(?) telescope at Palomar obsolete? It was put in service about the same time as my mother,who is also still in service due to large government expenditures. Obsolete, hardly. How can you put a value on sentiment? People place great value on sentiment, not so much on the Hubble per se, but pictures taken from a fancy camera in orbit, which takes picture like no other. If work was already commencing on a new space telescope, a launch date set eith minimal downtime of the ability to take these pictures, then, ok. However, think of the true value of what the Hubble has done for all of us who are touched by its images, and how they have brought us all a little closer to grasping the immensity of what is out there and marvel of its beauty. The USA can afford this for both its scientific and spiritual benefits (like Dao and Buddist spiritual, not intending to imply or annoy Right Wing Religious Christian Fundamentalist zealots).
We SHOULD be doing both. Or, at the least, (as you so eloquently put ;) we should be preserving the old one, which is still doing useful science, until we have a real replacement, and meanwhile, FUND a replacement.
I hope Mr. Griffin realizes that, and has the moxie to browbeat the money out of the Administration. It's just a few drops out of the bucket after all compared to what everything else gets.
Sigh. I'll just wait and see how serious he is about this.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
And it would be a better Hubble too because they would use a mirror ground correctly. That alone would make it better than Hubble can ever be.
I take that back. It would be just like bureaucrats to grind a new mirror to the wrong specs just so everything is the same as Hubble is now. (or is it for political reasons? Makes no difference)
As much as I'm a Hubble fan, this isn't true. There are a number of other successful and productive NASA missions like Chandra, and a couple of dozen others, that NASA performs. And NASA also supports astronomers like myself and our space-based research programs (they've given my group over $200k this year). Hubble is the crown jewel, but far from the only one, coming out of NASA.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
But let's look at what he didn't tell you:
- I bet he didn't tell you that Hubble is more sensitive than any earthbound scope - even the giant at Palomar. All earthbound scopes have to deal with skyglow, the Hubble doesn't.
- I bet he didn't tell you the Hubble can see into the UV, which no earthbound scope can, or ever will... because the atmosphere filters it out.
- I bet he didn't tell you Hubble can look at targets that would be in the daylight sky for any telescope on Earth. (This means that any given target in the sky is visible to Hubble for 8-9 months out of the year, as opposed to 3-4 for an earthbound scope.
Not really. Owners of big and expensive research instruments are loath to allow them to be out of service for weeks or months in order for modifications to be made. So in the end, you prove your stuff on smaller scopes and lesser instruments, and after years you move up to big boys. (Or, if you need a new instrument like the Keck, designing and funding and building takes years or decades.)That's true. If you ignore and handwave away the things a ground based scope can't do that a space based on can.If your professor told you this, he was quite frankly smoking crack. You can still do useful science with a telescope built in 1990 and utterly unmodified since then. (You can useful science with older instruments too, just less of it.)And you wouldn't look silly after spending the same amount of money groundside only to have it be obsolete in that time?If NASA is serious about the James Webb Space Telescope, then I say yes, put the money allocated for Hubble into JW. But if JW is too far out, then keep Hubble alive until JW is ready.
That's my opinion.
Now the president can be blamed for the safety of shuttle missions?
I know; maybe we could cut back welfare payments to cover the cost.