Why Hubble Broke and How It Was Fixed

angry tapir writes "I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Charles (Charlie) Pellerin, who was NASA's director of astrophysics when the Hubble Space Telescope launched with its seemingly fatally flawed optical system. Pellerin went on to head up the servicing mission that finally fixed the telescope and for that was awarded NASA's highest honor, a Distinguished Service Medal. Since Hubble he has done a lot of thinking about the problems that led up to the error and how organizations can best avoid making similar mistakes."

Comments

Re:The real story...

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for NASA at the time of the repair. Sadly, because of the ridiculous cost of the shuttle the cost of repair could have built 3 Hubbles, launched two using Atlas boosters to a higher, clearing and more useful orbit and kept one in reserve. Just. for. the. rescue. mission. STS was a horrendous waste of talent and opportunity.

Re:Wonderful article.

[Overzeetop]

This is the core of real engineering work, and it's one of the reasons I loved working at NASA under great management. I mostly squandered the opportunities I had there, and yet I still learned more from that time than anything else in my career. I actually started there working for a brilliant optics guy who was at Perkin Elmer during the Hubble years. Later, my direct supervisor went on to play a key role in the servicing mission, and (last I heard) was part of the JWST team.

Later, worked in private industry for the team the (essentially) discovered the hole in the ozone layer. We got into it verbally from time to time, but I really respected his knowledge of the physics we were involved in. I once joked about getting fired if the part I was working on failed. He looked me right in the eye and said, "Oh, I won't fire you. I'll make you stay here and fix it." I smile a bit every time I think about that meeting.