NASA To Determine Hubble's Fate

clickclickdrone writes "According to the BBC NASA is debating whether or not to send astronauts in to space to service the Hubble telescope. Without intervention it is thought to be good for another 24-36months. Given the quality of images and data it has produced since it's launch, it sounds like a no brainer to me but the people who hold the purse strings are rarely predictable when it comes to spending money."

Comments

Auction Hubble

[Colin Smith]

Sell it off to the highest bidder. Some other space agency may well want to take over the maintenance and running of the telescope. Or maybe Google to grab it turn it round and use it to map the earth down to the smallest pebble.

Re:Auction Hubble

[Orange Crush]

What other nation or organization has a spacecraft capable of servicing Hubble within 24-36 months? Bear in mind, Hubble was designed to be serviced by the shuttle. Everyone else is pretty much using capsules exclusively, which aren't nearly as EVA-friendly nor do they have the necessary robotic arm.

Re:Auction Hubble

[Chosen Reject]

Because of how the Hubble Telescope works, it would do a very crummy job of imaging Earth.

Re:Auction Hubble

[wanerious]

Perhaps we're pushing this so hard is makework for all of people who have degrees (in this field)?

Surprisingly not. Most astronomers I rub elbows with are not too supportive of the Hubble program. Sure, the pictures and deep field stuff is nice, but with recent advances in adaptive optics, we can build enormous ground-based scopes for much less money that outperform Hubble. And Hubble has diverted hundreds of millions of dollars away from other projects. I'm not a zealot for either side, but the professional astronomical community is certainly not of one mind on this.

Get their attention...

[Otter Escaping North]

Tell them Hubble might have found oil on a distant planet, and that we need to take another look.

Re:Get their attention...

[roystgnr]

Of course the presence of oil on another body would show that life once existed there. What book have you read that said that oil can be created in any manner other than through decomposing biological material?

How about "Dissociation of Methane into Hydrocarbons at. Extreme (Planetary) Pressure and Temperature.", by F. Ancilotto, G. L. Chiarotti, S. Scandolo, and E. Tosatti, in the February 28, 1997 issue of Science? Their molecular dynamics simulations show that methane is likely to breakdown into a mixture including ethane, butane, and even alkanes (i.e. oil) at the high pressures and temperatures found deep within the interiors of Neptune and Uranus. No living organisms involved.

Let me guess, you probably think that oil is an infinite resource that magically renews itself.

Even when you feel certain that you're right, you should try to be more polite about it just in case you're wrong. Otherwise people may end up giving your opinions the same disdain you've shown to others.

It sounds like you saw the topic, immediately thought "abiotic oil nutjob", and hurried to wail on him. However, just because you recognize the biological history of oil on Earth doesn't mean you have to jump to the conclusion that no other processes operate elsewhere. Take that attitude too far and you'll end up trying to find the alien messages in pulsars.

Not Only Money

[crymeph0]

it sounds like a no brainer to me but the people who hold the purse strings are rarely predictable when it comes to spending money.

There's way more than money at stake here. Maybe Hubble is worth the risk to the astronaut's lives, but you can't just ignore that issue.

Re:Not Only Money

[dslbrian]

There's way more than money at stake here. Maybe Hubble is worth the risk to the astronaut's lives, but you can't just ignore that issue.

Thats the core of the debate I'm sure, but its a ridiculous point. Space travel is always a risk to an astronaut. If astronauts have a problem with the risks involved then they should get a different job. I'm sure there is a whole line of would be astronauts ready to take their place. Its was a risk when they first put the Hubble in place, and when they serviced it the first time. The risk is unchanged since then, in fact it should be lower since they now have ideas of what problems they may encounter.

Re:Not Only Money

[Ctrl-Z]

Since the US government just signed off on a 700-mile-long fence along the Mexican border with a down payment of $1.2 billion [1], I think it's worth spending that much for a few more years of Hubble. But that's just me.

Re:Not Only Money

[mrchaotica]

Maybe Hubble is worth the risk to the astronaut's lives, but you can't just ignore that issue.

You're kidding, right? Anyone who manages to become an astronaut knows full well about the risks, and chose it anyway. If we were having to conscript people to go fix Hubble it would be one thing, but since the line of people who would volunteer to do it would stretch all the way from the launchpad to the vehicle assembly building, I say we let them do it!

<flamebait>Besides, it's not any riskier than being a soldier in Iraq...</flamebait>

Re:Not Only Money

[Xzzy]

But what if that 1 billion were to end up spent on Hubble's replacement, which would permit a new level of research?

A lot of the "save Hubble" defense seems to be more sentimental than practical. I'm not saying it should be tossed in the bin just because it's old, but it IS old, and technology has advanced tremendously since it was put into orbit. I'm not against being sentimental either, but if the money doesn't exist to maintain two space observatories, I know I'd choose to get an all new one.

Not so one-dimensional

[Zarniwoop]

It's not just money. It's risk of a shuttle launch. You may remember we've had a few... issues... recently with that.

That's no moon!

[Red Flayer]

I can see it now, the GoldenPalace.com Space Telescope!

Sure beats the GoldenShower.com Space Telescope.

Unfortunately for us, the current administration..

[mmell]

wants to relive the heady days of the space race and the Apollo program - President Dubya is tired of this "Science for the sake of knowledge" stuff and wants to put men on the Moon and Mars.

Besides, our current president is (seemingly) not quite sharp enought to get most of what science discovers using the HST. He'd rather have "feet on the ground" as it were, telling him things like "We've landed and claimed Mars in the name of the USA" rather than "We've made a startling discovery regarding the dynamics of planetary formation within stellar nurseries".

That said, maybe it is time we went back to the true promise of space exploration - getting mankind out into the Galaxy. There is a certain attraction to the notion of manned space exploration versus robotic/remote methods. Certainly a kind of heroic appeal to the act itself; and all of our robotic/remote exploration was and is intended to ultimately pave the way for manned exploration anyhow. Perhaps we know enough now to take those first tenative steps into space.

Like most coins, this one appears to have two sides.

The debate

[styryx]

Is the cost of building and launching a new and better satellite going to much more expensive than training astronauts, sending them to hubble to fix it and bringing them back down again?

Perhaps they could take the space elevator...:b

Replace it...

[ironicsky]

If its going to cost millions/billions to fix hubble we could just replace it with modern technology. Better yet, we could have a H Prize to replace hubble. Let the private sector try to launch their own. I mean, if they can launch a shuttle to space let them do other things. NASA Cant seem to do it for under a billion.

Hubble may simply not be good enough

[lokedhs]

There are ground-based telescopes that produces much better pictures than what Hubble can produce these days. I believe that the choice to abandon it may very well simply be a result of some simple maths. The same scientific results can be had cheaper by using the VLT. Here's an interesting quote from the Wikipedia article:

The VLTs are equipped with a large set of instruments permitting observations to be performed from the near-UV to the mid-IR (ie a large fraction of the light wavelengths accessible from the surface of the Earth), with the full range of techniques including high-resolution spectroscopy, multi-object spectroscopy, imaging, and high-resolution imaging. In particular, the VLT has several Adaptive optics systems, which at infrared wavelengths correct for the effects of the atmospheric turbulence, providing images almost as sharp as if the telescope was in space. In the near-IR, the Adaptive Optics images of the VLT are up to 3 times sharper than those of the HST, and the spectroscopic resolution is many times better than Hubble. The VLTs are noted for their high level of observing efficiency and automation.

Re:Hubble may simply not be good enough

[gerardrj]

Exactly. In the 16 years since it's launch our technology has improved dramatically. We have learned to make super large mirrors, flexible mirrors, and other such improvements to the optical systems. We can now use a laser and either flexible mirrors or computers to remove the distortion of the atmosphere. We've gained the compute power to build arrays of smaller scopes to build a "virtual" telescope orders of magnitude larger than any single reflector in the array.
On top of that we've also sent up other spacecraft, or are building them, that dwarf Hubble's capabilities.

Hubble does have the rather unique ability to stay parked on a single target, continuously, for very long periods of time. No Earth based scope can do that. But again, there are smaller, faster, cheaper craft in service or coming on line soon that will have better imaging and better processing power.

I don't know that Hubble should be repaired and kept operating, but I do think it should be brought back to Earth for placement in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

Many astronauts have spoken

[wass]

Actually, several astronauts have spoken out in the past few years saying they were willing to go service Hubble again, despite the risks. Ie, they understand the huge scientific output that are at stake should Hubble be shut down. Additionally, the risks aren't greater than previous Hubble servicing missions, it's just that there are problems of which we were blissfully unaware previously.

The real problem

[SnarfQuest]

As I understand it, the real problem is that a service mission would cost more than a replacement for the Hubble; which would have better optics, improved insturments, better reliability, etc.