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Hubble Repair Mission At Risk
MollyB writes "According to Wired, the recent collision of satellites may put the Atlantis shuttle mission to repair Hubble in the 'unacceptable risk' status:
'The spectacular collision between two satellites on Feb. 10 could make the shuttle mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope too risky to attempt. Before the collision, space junk problems had already upped the Hubble mission's risk of a "catastrophic impact" beyond NASA's usual limits, Nature's Geoff Brumfiel reported today, and now the problem will be worse. Mark Matney, an orbital debris specialist at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas told the publication that even before the collision, the risk of an impact was 1 in 185, which was "uncomfortably close to unacceptable levels" and the satellite collision "is only going to add on to that."'"
They'll send tens of thousands of young men (and women) overseas to be shot at and kill others, but not risk seven lives to fucking further humanity and human knowledge?
I don't get it.
Be relentless!
putting a impact shield around spacecraft - but the kind of impact speeds we are talking about probably makes this uneconomical as the shield would need to be massive.
The spacecraft would have trouble getting off the ground. That's even worse than uneconomical.
some kind of automated space cleaner that went around removing debris - but we had no idea how that could possibly work or be designed
The problem with this is - if that "cleaner" gets hit by debris, you've just added to the problem instead of reducing it.
pre-emptive removal of dead satalites (no, not shooting them down from earth - attaching small moters to send them into the atmosphere) - maybe steering them into a declining orbit as the last thing they do before swithing them off
That would have been a way to keep the problem in check, and it's being done with some satellites. But usually whoever puts satellites up there is too cheap to worry about disposal, since by the time it becomes a problem, they're most likely not around anymore and don't have to worry. Yay, just let the following generations clean up the crap, just like with everything else.
1) - there is moderately workable impact shielding developed for satellites/space craft which consists of plates separated by gaps which spread out the kinetic energy of debris and has been proven effective against small impacts.
2) "space cleaning" could easily be done by deploying some large engineered dragnet style objects into the path of the debris. Obviously careful engineering would have to be used to assure collisions dont cause pieces to splash from the dragnet, but I think its quite doable.
3) we already track space debris down to very small levels. Currently nasa have maps of these pieces, down to the size of a screw if I remember correctly.
4) this is often done already, at least by government agencies. Private companies are another matter, but i've never heard of a private satellite going completely out of use.
5) we may as well just nuke it all now if we don't establish extra-terrestrial colonies. Colonization of space is the next logical step for a species which develops intelligence, and if we don't continue down that path we are a dead-end branch waiting to be pruned from the tree of life.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
If we learn to live in our existing environment without making it unusable, and adapt to its changes, we've succeeded.
The current environment is transitory. And eventually over geological time, it will change in a way that cannot be adapted to. Plus, it's worth noting that most species (including humans) that exist now do so precisely because they have repeatedly expanded their range.
Living in better balance with our environment and within our resources will not save us from a space rock or plague, off-world colonies will, and that's my point.
The main evolutionary trait of human beings is technology, and we are in a unique position to do this, which would set us on the road to the eventually disentanglement of our survival with that of one small planet.
If we fail to do this, then a global catastrophe will eventually happen which outstrips our technology and render us extinct.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
An earth devastated by an asteroid is still a much more friendly place to live on then either Moon or Mars. Self sustaining off-world colonies won't happen for many many years to come.
(5) just abandoning the whole outer space game anyhow and using a vast fiber optic ring on the surface for communication needs
The real problem here is that we're wasting *vast* amounts of orbital space with competing projects that don't share information with each other. There's more than plenty of room for *one* satellite network. But every little war-happy industrialized nation and every communications company and mapping company, etc., needs their own personal network clogging the sky.
Until we, as a species, get a little better at this "cooperation" thing and stop with the in-fighting, the debris field is just going to get worse and make space exploration difficult. (That might even be a good thing for any neighbors we might have.)
Sadly, I don't foresee this happening any time soon.
Knowledge != Intelligence
1. NASA has a limited number of astronauts.
2. NASA has a limited number of shuttles.
3. The public has very little stomach for "yet another NASA accident"
4. There are far too many in Congress who see the NASA manned program as a waste of money (in other words that money could buy pools and libraries named after Congressmen!)
5. Comparing any item to Iraq expenditures does not bolster your argument, if anything a parrot would suffice.
Why not compare it to the fact we are willing to lose nearly FORTY THOUSAND people to vehicle deaths. The number of soldiers we lose in Iraq while deplorable by any count is minuscule compared to any other war of that scale let alone the deaths at home from stuff that should not happen in the first place.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The idea that we must colonise space to validate our existence is a religion, not science.
The way I look at it, we are the reproductive system for the entire biosphere. If we don't colonize other planets around different stars (let alone other rocks around this one) then all of Gaia* has failed, not just one little species.
* Please note I do not actually personify "Gaia", I just use it as a convenient and poetic label for the entire interconnected biosphere.
Knowledge != Intelligence
The visible & UV channels of the Advanced Camera for Surveys have been out of operation since january 07, when its backup electronics died.
Hubble was originally intended to operate with 3 functional gyros at all times, but since 2005 has been operating on 2-gyro mode, to extend its useful lifetime in the face of continuing gyro failure. This limits the area of the sky it can view, and makes precise measurements more difficult. Only 3 of its 6 gyros remain functional, and 2 of these are in continual use just maintaining sub-par orientation.
And of course, we all know that the primary command & data handling unit died last year.
All of this information is readily available wikipedia.
So its main camera is broke, it can't point itself properly, the data handling hardware is broke, the batteries are failing, and there's half a dozen less important things that haev also either failed completely (eg the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph) or partially.
That doesn't come under my definition of 'fine'