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Hubble Future Is Cloudier After Katrina
XorNand writes "The AP is reporting that Katrina has further jeopardized the already tenuous future of the Hubble space telescope. The hurricane damaged the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where the shuttle's fuel tanks are built, and the Mississippi-based Stennis Space Center, where shuttle engines are tested, NASA officials said."
Who really needs to see in space when we have to fund a meaningless war
It's sad that this may have to happen. Some of the most beautiful pictures ever taken were taken by Hubble. But, higher priorities have come up and Hubble must take a back seat to human life.
Yeah, war is usually a very bad thing.
Yeah, the military-industrial complex profits, in essence, from death.
Yeah, the US propaganda machine is working pretty well (but beginning to falter a bit).
But the line about having no enemies? That's just wrong. We do have enemies, very real and very capable ones that will exploit any chink in our armor.
We may have brought ourselves to this point through an imperialistic world attitude, but whatever the case, it is unrealistic to assume that we do not need a strong armed force at this juncture.
Iraq, I agree (as in IMHO), was a bad idea, but I really don't know all the inside reasons for it, do you? (although Michael Moore seems to think he does...)
And in the US' defense, we generally use our overwhelming military might pretty damned carefully and with a pretty good deal of reservation compared to the historical military powers that have existed. We seem, for the most part, to want to do the right global thing as a world power, but we are certainly not perfect and the world is a very, very complex place these days.
Riiiiiiight. Look, there are some very unrealistic ideas about what private enterprise will and will not do. While private individuals are motivated by more than money (thrill of exploration, I did it first, I'm doing it better than my rival over there, etc.), the reality is most private individuals who HAVE the money to burn on something this expensive probably have focused on ACQUIRING money for a large portion of their lives. To expect a large subset of money-minded entrepreneurs to suddenly give up their business-like ways and focus on something with little or no fiscal return (like the Hubble) is unrealistic.
In addition, if there is so much potential to private space exploration, why hasn't it been done before? Rocket technology really hasn't changed much since the 60's, and sufficent cheap computing power to figure trajectories has been around since the 80's. The answer? It's hard and expensive, with a very high failure cost, and a small to nonexistent return potential. This is not the kind of thing that draws in money.
I dearly wish that we would focus on basic science (i.e. does not need to be driven by a possible marketable product in 5 years) in the U.S.A. again - the era of Big Science was inaugurated with the Manhattan Project (when those funny talking European immigrants with thier scribbles on a blackboard built the most powerful bomb in the world), has been strong for many years as the link between U.S. world supremacy and science leadership was not questioned, but perhaps is beginning to close. The tone set by the present leadership (sneering at "reality-based" media, desiring "equal-time" for creation research, bragging about how a "C" student can become the president, etc.) does not bode well for the long term future of scientifc research here.
I guess when you know how the Universe was created according to the Bible, you don't need a Hubble to figure it out.
Sigh.