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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."
"To be honest, we really don't know what the impact will be," said Preston M. Burch, Hubble program manager at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, which oversees Hubble's day-to-day operations.
In other news:
Effects of Katrina on children with learning disabilities in Australia still unknown!
I'm down on NASA a lot. I think they are an unfocused government agency that is spread too thin and doing things out of the realm of their league. In that criticism, I am very unsatisfied with the shuttle program. I think that sending people into space is a complete waste of time and money for NASA. They have ceased to learn anything except that they are more and more afraid of flying every time they go up. Space travel should be a private enterprise, possibly assisted by government funds, but essentially researched and implemented by private companies.
But NASA should be around doing research. They should be at the forefront of space science. Part of this is the establishment of space telescopes. And so Hubble falls right in line with this mission. The more information NASA can gather about the universe, the more all of us benefit. The more they spend on pure research, the faster everyone (including private enterprise) can benefit and that pushes space travel forward.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
That the current administration is flat out against any technology that cannot be used for warfare or expansion of their personal corporate empires they will use any excuse to avoid repairing or upgrading the Hubble at all. Faith based government is directly inverse to scientific process unless some politically well connected buisiness needs the money.
NASA has long been considered a waste of money by the conservatives, HST is just another scientific boondoggle as far as these guys are concerned.
Count on them finding some fancy excuse to de-orbit HST within the next 6 months.
Stupid Humans.....
I agree completly. Our nation has a problem when half of all discretionary spending is spent on the Military. As opposed to things like education, or scientific research, or disease prevention, or relief efforts (remember the embarrassingly little we gave to the tsunami victims?), or a thousand little other things.
And don't get me wrong, this isn't just liberalspeak. Our lovely 'liberals' in congress want to continue the war too.
On a lighter note, IIRC the James Webb Space Telescope was going to replace Hubble anyways.
Hubble is about discovering how the universe is created and changing the way we view science and astronomy. Its pretty cost effect for what it has delivered and its one of the things that has had people looking at Space and going "WOW".
Unfortunately this clearly doesn't sit well with the US leadership as it doesn't give them people to shake hands with. Its so much better to build a $231m bridge in Alaska named after a senator than fund something that is considered a success by the global scientific community.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
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.
This is probably true, but we shouldn't be lured into believing that all human life must be preserved at all costs.
It's an ugly, uncomfortable truth, but if all resources went simply to preserving all human life there would be no progress. Instead there would be a race to reproduce until the entire world was full of people all living on the edge of survival - all "surplus" seed corn having been eaten before being planted for the next harvest.