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NASA Wants Private Company To Take Over Spitzer Space Telescope (spacenews.com)
schwit1 writes: NASA has issued a request for proposals from private companies or organizations to take over the operation of the Spitzer Space Telescope after 2019. SpaceNews reports: "NASA's current plans call for operating Spitzer through March of 2019 to perform preparatory observations for the James Webb Space Telescope. That schedule was based on plans for a fall 2018 launch of JWST, which has since been delayed to the spring of 2019. Under that plan, NASA would close out the Spitzer mission by fiscal year 2020. That plan was intended to save NASA the cost of running Spitzer, which is currently $14 million a year. The spacecraft itself, though, remains in good condition and could operating well beyond NASA's current plan. 'The observatory and the IRAC instrument are in excellent health. We don't have really any issues with the hardware,' said Lisa Storrie-Lombardi, Spitzer project manager, in a presentation to the committee Oct. 18. IRAC is the Infrared Array Camera, an instrument that continues operations at its two shortest wavelengths long after the spacecraft exhausted the supply of liquid helium coolant. The spacecraft's only consumable is nitrogen gas used for the spacecraft's thrusters, and Storrie-Lombardi said the spacecraft still had half its supply of nitrogen 14 years after launch." The way a private organization could make money on this is to charge astronomers and research projects for observation time. This could work, since there is usually a greater demand for research time than available observatories.
Goddamnit. These things are the family jewels not just of the country but of our species. And fucking useless slime ball politicians(R) can't fall over them selves fast enough to sell us all out to their nearest buddy willing to give them a campaign contribution kickback for pennies on the dollar. All for less than they spend on a fucking hour's worth of pork all the while converting public assets into private profits. It is theft. Assholes.
</rant>
BS.
I'm extremely happy with the Trump administration policies. We will have a wall that will keep illegal alien Mexicans OUT OF THIS COUNTRY.
Ha ha. Don't hold your breath ... the man can't do squat
Yes, you're a moron. We agree.
Since NASA does not have the money to maintain the Spitzer Space Telescope after 2019, why don't NASA deed it to the Indians?
They do things on the cheap
If NASA needs 14 millions to run the space telescope, I bet the Indians can run them on a budget of $1,400, with spare change to boot
The Indians are interested in science and they are prepared to kick the Chinese anywhere they find them
...then the alleged Administration should put more money into research. China and most of the rest of the Asian countries understand research is the gateway to a better future. Hell, even the Arab countries get it. Africa gets it. Would someone please send a memo to la Presidenta Tweetie that research matters, but you do not get to dictate the results.
Thomas Friedman had a great op-ed in the NYT about the U.S. military in Niger. The entire Sahel is under threat from climate change. With their economic prospects dimming, the young men are easy targets for Daesh recruiters. The Knob's response is to send in the U.S. military. Even Mattis recognizes the futility of that policy and once commented that without a functioning State Dept and programs designed for economic development, the U.S. will have to spend much more on bullets. Too bad he's another eunuch in the court of someone who, in Friedman's article, is too dim to connect the dots.
I understand your sentiments, but NASA has a limited budget for such things. We are lucky that the Voyagers are still monitored.
Dr. Hayes, the dude fielding this request, is a Good Guy, and has been with NASA pretty much forever. He is not one of those revolving-door types seen at the DOD.
This will come up again; at some point funding for Hubble will run out; it is funded currently only through 2021, even though it would still be capable of solid research. Is it better just to let it go Dark and fry up in reentry, or find some way to hand it over to others?
The Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory is still working, and it's been around since 1948. Still largely funded by the NSF, the Operational Program is managed and funded by a Consortium, which is pretty much the Model for such things. In all likelihood it wouldn't be just one Institution taking over Spitzer.
Otherwise you are quite right about "fucking useless slime ball politicians(R)", but this issue preceded Twitler, and will continue long after his perp-walk.
The way a private organization could make money on this is to charge astronomers and research projects for observation time. This could work, since there is usually a greater demand for research time than available observatories.
How many of those astronomers and researchers are receiving funding from the US Govt? Paying the $14 million/year will likely be cheaper than privatizing it then paying for access. Of course, NASA might save money themselves and not care that the govt. is spending 2 dollars to save 1.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Just wondering, now that it's run out of its cryogenic coolant, are its infrared sensors in the optimal wavelength to "see" Dyson spheres? (I guess that means it's looking for objects at about 300K).
If so, that would be a really long-shot project to try using it on but if it has nothing else to do maybe some billionaire could fund it on a whim.
On the other hand, just how much nitrogen propellant is left? If the orbit could be adjusted so that it could focus just on the dark side of the earth (wasn't blinded by daylight), perhaps it could be used as the ultimate "night vision" device. The DOD or CIA might be very interested in having something that could see, with extreme sensitivity, stuff in the dark. Of course this might mean a BIG orbit change, going from L2(?) to some sort of sun-synchronous halo orbit around the earth. Still, if they're willing to go slow, maybe they could use the "interplanetary express" or whatever it's called to use the bare minimum of propellant by exploiting chaotic hills and valleys in gravitational fields.
Or maybe it could be used for brown dwarfs or wandering interstellar planets (big ones that would still be glowing in the infrared).
Or maybe it could be used, like the Hubble, for an extreme deep field survey to see the furthest objects in the universe. Since it has nothing else to do, it could be left to train on a single "spot" for thousands(?) of hours collecting one photon at a time. The extreme red-shifts it would collect would be from the very furthest objects at the dawn of cosmic time.
Maybe it could be used for making a "heat map" of the moons of Jupiter or Enceladeus and look for cracks in the ice. Or, for that matter, if it could be repositioned (again needs fuel) it could look for ice on our moon.
I wonder what a long period comet looks like in the deep infrared as it approaches the sun from a great distance. Might see some interesting plumes/ejecta.
sorry had a lot of coffee so just rambling. Probably a lot of these have already been tried
hindu terrorists in America? riding Caltrain?
Why is it taking $14 million per year to operate? I'm sure that could be dramatically reduced. I've seen some attempts at cheap SDRs acting as ground stations beyond that its just data download, storage and dissemination.
https://www.ettus.com/application/detail/dynamic-ionosphere-cubesat-experiment-high-speed-satellite-ground-station
But then again, maybe not enough government money in it for him to bother with.
Maybe the can have a garage sale.
How about we take it over? We can crowd source the initial operating cost until we get up and running to charge for its use. How many slashdoters are in for this?
Lets be real here. Private industry is the best place for science developments. Government shouldn't be in this business, wasting taxpayer dollars on boondogles. This is exactly why socialist countries always wind up failing, and why Randian values always end up being continually proven correct over and over again, be it when the Soviet Union collapsed, to now, with the US's stock market the highest in history.
Science really needs a litmus test. If it is marketable, continue. If not, stop wasting limited resources on it. At least the US has libertarian values now, with the majority of Congress and the Executive branch, so we can leave the goofing around to people who are willing to pay for it, and not the average taxpayer.
Oh, and it isn't theft. Theft is when the government takes from the people to do worthless projects.
Trump has accomplished the impossible and made the left and right unite... against him!
God you people are dumber than bricks.
Lets be real here. Private industry is the best place for science developments. Government shouldn't be in this business, wasting taxpayer dollars on boondogles.
That's really only true if you posit that the only point of research is to maximize shareholder value. If instead, you believe research is there to maximize benefit to humanity, then handing all research off to private industry is a horrible choice, because this goal is often ad odds with profit.
A trivial thought experiment is the comparison between research and distribution of a vaccine which can eliminate a crippling and/or fatal disease entirely (similiar to the Polio vaccine) and research for a treatment that allows people to live with said disease. In the hypothetical case where both were known to be possible, private industry would quite obviously pick the latter, as it would have the best projected profit margin.
I wonder if your position isn't largely based on ignorance regarding inventions coming from the public sector. While government research isn't always focused on providing financial value, there is no shortage of technologies we use that have come from publicly-funded research. A great example of this is NASA itself. You may want to peruse NASA's Spinoff site to get a glimpse of how useful public research can be.
>. A trivial thought experiment is the comparison between research and distribution of a vaccine which can eliminate a crippling and/or fatal disease entirely (similiar to the Polio vaccine) and research for a treatment that allows people to live with said disease. In the hypothetical case where both were known to be possible, private industry would quite obviously pick the latter, as it would have the best projected profit margin.
That's an interesting thought, but factually FAR more money has been made selling billions of doses of the vaccine, including boosters, than could ever be made selling treatment. The fact is, because vaccines sell $55 billion every year, Merck did invest over a billion dollars in vaccine R&D before bringing the meningitis and HPV vaccine to market.
You're simply wrong on the facts.
Have gnu, will travel.
I am in depending on the cost!
The most likely candidate is JHU-APL.
BS.
I'm extremely happy with the Trump administration policies. We will have a wall that will keep illegal alien Mexicans OUT OF THIS COUNTRY.
I'm extremely happy with the Trump administration policies. We will finally have a wall that will keep the bigass American bigots caged within their country. The rest of the world can breath easier. Thanks Trump for making the world safe again from the American savages.
It will reduce open public access to the observations and data. This is something we don't want. We have to create an open society. Secrecy is evil.
If I had mod points, I'd give them all to you.
A non-profit could work, but a consortium of universities would be most effective at managing merit based access to the observatory.
Mayyyybe this would be OK if, and only if, the private company has to buy the telescope at full price and pay for any US government resources it uses to communicate with it. Otherwise it's another case of taxpayer-funded infrastructure being given/sold for pennies on the dollar to companies who then turn around and charge more for it that what it was costing taxpayers to maintain in the first place.
And if the $14 million/year that NASA is saving is less than what government-funded scientists (and NASA themselves) would have to pay the company for time on the telescope then it should most certainly not be handed over.
You already proved you're a fucking idiot. Twice though?