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NASA Revives Main Hubble Telescope Camera
antikarma writes "NASA engineers successfully activated the Advanced Camera for Surveys at 9:12 a.m. EDT Friday aboard the agency's Hubble Space Telescope. Checkout was completed at 10:20 a.m. EDT with science observations scheduled to resume Sunday, July 2. 'This is the best possible news,' said Ed Ruitberg, deputy associate director for the Astrophysics Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. 'We were confident we could work through the camera issue, and now we can get back to doing more incredible science with the camera.'"
Due to Iraq and George Bush , most people in Western Europe have a little distain for the American Government. In fact, where I live, people often break in to an American accent when they do something stupid. I imagine this is because everyone sees Channel 4 news where we see the "Answers from Genesis museum" and thinks: "Only the stupid could indulge such nonsense."
With that necessary rant taken well and truly aside, I want to thank American for doing what no-one else can afford to do: put real science equipment in to space. It's your taxes that pay for the Hubble Space Telescope. This is a project that has furthered science in a very unique way. It is project that Galileo would have dreamed of. It is a marvel, a temple ,even, to science.....
With all the gratitude in my heart, I still feel America confuses me. To paraphrase the film Contact: "It is capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares." It is a land of contradiction; of promise and of despair. It is of science,and religion, of the smart and the idiot. It's is so huge that it contradicts and astounds. It is the country where opposites can be equally true.
As a British man, I love America and I hope the feeling is mutual. I raise this glass to the future of Science and hope you will raise your glass too! To Science!
Simon.
Because all they could see without that telescope camera was this:
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
You can't handle the truth.
Whenever I think of the galaxies, outer space or human observation to these I cannot help the feeling of awe and admiration. I checked out the pictures on the web-site and I felt like I was watching Kubrick`s Oddysey. I imagine and see ( thanks to 10 times more powerful Hubble`s objectives ) the vast galaxies, millions of stars and the light reflected from them and converted to miliwatts of electrical energy in the human brain. I see the real physics out there, intersecting its ways with philosphy. That is really something different from what they do in solid state, or applied physics.
Hubble and its even more powerful descendants will enlighten the secrets of universe,
There's plenty of room at the bottom! Richard P. Feynmann
"Today at 10:20 the Hubble main telescope found a planet of supermodels who want to give us a clean power source and worship us like gods."
That's the best possible news.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Look at the vast geography and the disparity between different groups of people here. You're more likely to understand the USA if you don't consider it in the same light as a single European country -- most of which are the size of one of our states.
In a day, I can travel by car across most of western Europe, through vastly different populations and beliefs. Here, it can take me that long to traverse Texas. Driving 24 hours on, 8 hours off, it took me 3 and half days to drive from Phoenix to Boston. Where would that take you in Europe?
Where I live in Maine, I find great similarities to the Bavarian countryside. You surely couldn't say that about the desert southwest in the USA.
A certain Austrian, having been elected leader of Germany some years back assumed that our differences would prevent us ever even agreeing with each other enough to be a serious player on the world scene -- let alone threaten his plans for world domination. That was as big a mistake as his election in the first place.
Our states and our divergent people are like a big Italian family. There are always some who don't speak to others, big traumatic fights, and long held grudges -- but when faced with a threat from outside, nearly instant, unified, reactionary, over response is close at hand to deal with that threat.
--31
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
It was actually 1.5 billion, and 100 million is a low ball figure for the cost of a shuttle launch.
Being a purely politically funded venture, nailing down the cost is difficult, but varies.
$300 million
$600 million
$500 million
$55 million incremental, $1.3 billion when you include facilities, research, engineering, etc...
If you take a rough midpoint and say $500 million per maintenance, the break even point would be three missions. Now, a huge portion of a satellite's cost is the R&D just to design the thing. If you produce multiple ones, the cost drops substantially. Produce multiple hubbles and soon they'd cost under a billion each. Meanwhile you can still do a great deal of updating on the ground.
I'll admit that I'd prefer to scrap the shuttle entirely, replacing it with boosters, dedicated personal carriers, and source maintenance missions from a space station. This would hopefully drastically reduce the cost of maintaining it, and might change the equations again.
I don't read AC A human right
What you say rings true. However, my own interpretation of American history suggests that things will get worse before they get better. The concerned among us are still far too small a percentage of the population to draw the attention of the complacent masses. I mean, look at the issues that incumbents are banking on to get re-elected: Terrorism, Gay Marriage, and Flag Burning. Real issues, such as climate change, health care, and corruption go undiscussed because powerful interests pay an awful lot of money to keep it that way.
No, things will have to get pretty bad before we realize that Jesus isn't coming to fix it for us.