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Upgraded Hubble To Be 90 Times As Powerful
The feed brings us a New Scientist review of the repairs and new instruments that astronauts will bring to the Hubble Space Telescope next August (unless the launch is delayed). The resulting instrument will be 90 times as powerful as Hubble was designed to be when launched, and 60% more capable than it was after its flawed optics were repaired in 1993. If the astronauts pull it off — and the mission is no slam-dunk — the space telescope should be able to image galaxies back to 400 million years after the Big Bang.
ACS is partially functional and still able to conduct science observations, a circuit board repair will make it fully functional. Also the mirror was never fixed, the science instruments correct for the defect. Other then that the article appears correct.
The fundamental problem with your statement is that you assume that the $$$ would otherwise have been used to change lives in a big positive way.
Put very simply, through science, we gain an understanding of the world, and universe around us, how it operates and how we can interact more effectively with it.
Barbara Felden claims prior art on the flip phone, sues Motorola, Nokia.
The images have to be artificially colored because more often than not the images are put together from images outside the visible wavelength. None of those images would be interesting to humans in the original wavelengths.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
It's not bloody pictures! It's seeing proof that we have our maths right.
Sure, I agree that defense needs to be well funded (I'm looking into attending the naval academy in '09), but since the cold war ended it seems that we didn't decrease spending sufficiently to reflect that. Currently we are the source of over half the world's military spending. We spend almost ten times the next biggest spender (Britain, coming in at 70B versus our 623B), and double the EU as a whole, despite their slightly larger GDP. While this ensures military supremacy, it also makes us look bad, and leaves less money for other stuff.
The coloration of such images is thought of as being as much the artistic expression of the astronomer in question as it is clarification of the image.
The thing is, without coloration, we wouldn't be able to see the various structures. Astronomers probably would, being trained, but not us normal folk. Besides, who wants to look at dull greyscale when you can spice it up with some color? The aim of making the image easier to interpret is achieved, and it looks pretty too.
So actually it's going to be only 1.6 times better than before, because before the first big repair to improve the optics the thing was mostly unusable. Am I right?
-- Cheers!
Or, to put it the other way, is this improvement actually 60% (still a lot!) over current situation, and the "90 times as powerful" is basically just bullshit hype?
And if that money had been spent in the private sector, mamograms would be patented by Pfizer, and cost 5 times as much as the old method.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
More likely, the money would have been spent by NIH to develop the technology, and then have it patented by Pfizer, and cost 5 times as much as the old method.
You could argue the same thing about all fundamental research... But how much of todays practical applications would have been discovered if we hadn't sponsored research in quantum physics?
Now of course the direct link between Hubble telescope and daily applications is less obvious, but it did determine the Hubble constant (well a more accurate estimate) and determined that the expansion of the universe was accelerating... Now you can challenge the usefulness of these discoveries all you can, but I somehow believe that in the long run, understanding the physics that rule this universe will generate vastly more practical applications (and revenues) then the current (and already beaten) missile defense system...
In the long run we're all dead, but that doesn't mean we should focus solely on short term objectives (and I'm very very glad our ancestors didn't)/
My favorite part of all of this is that your argument basically consists of an unsupported claim that hubble accomplishes nothing more than taking pretty pictures, followed by what is essentially an exploration of the opportunity cost of funding hubble's repairs. Exactly what kind of argument is that? Of course $350 million could be well spent on other areas of research, that's not an argument against the repairs, that's the inherent nature of the decision. By choosing A, you necessarily lose out on options B, C, D, etc. ...and?
What you have not done, at all, in either of your posts here is offer a single reason that hubble is undeserving of these funds. Clearly, you think hubble is a wast of money. Clearly its a lot of money and other areas of research could benefit from getting it instead.
Come read my stupid blagablog. Rants and Giggles
The telescope DID improve American and non-American lives in a big positive way by getting us closer to understanding the universe we live in - something that most people would like to understand.
"big positive way" doesn't necessarily equate to giving people handouts or curing diabetes. If all we ever spent our money on was egalitarianism, our lives would be so boring we wouldn't see the point. I'm very happy that money has been spent on hubble, and its findings never cease to excite me.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
I'm sure Max Planck would be quite amazed at what we've gotten done using the concept of quantum, even though it seemed to be little more than a mathematical trick when he first thought of it.
Even if you look at NASA as a pork barrel tool that feed the aerospace industry, it's a lot better to feed them thru NASA than it is to feed them through the military.
In the end, less people get hurt, less people get really pissed of and we end up with better pictures.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Now THAT is a colossal waste of money. Why would anyone give money to a bunch of teenagers when they are stupid enough to develop and release software for free? Besides. who gets to decide what is useful to develop and what isn't? What's useful for one may be a complete waste of time to someone else.
Software development shouldn't be a government welfare project - it has to be driven commercially.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
About $4.5 Billion. It's much cheaper to repair and upgrade than to replace.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Without them, Hubble would have failed to capture public interest and consequently would have been lobbed into the atmosphere the first time they considered its fate. So, frankly, it is all about the "bloody pictures" because the math only interests a small minority.
Most people don't care how or why a roses exist, it is enough that they are beautiful and fragrant and inspiring.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Yeah, totally. Oh wait, the DOD funded the development of the Internet, advanced wireless communications, GPS, tons of medical advances, and numerous other projects that you probably benefit from. It's not all death and destruction you know. Personally, I'm happier to see the advancements in medical treatment than I am the pretty pictures.