I don't know if the two Spirit/Opportunity landers were part of a NASA Discovery program or not.
Basically, some NASA missions (Discovery class missions, for example, of which Mars Pathfinder was) cannot use RTG's (Radioisotope Thermonuclear Generator) because they cost too much and are considered 'out of scope' of the problem.
I submitted an intent to propose a mission for the 5th NASA Discovery Class Announcement of Opportunity. My proposal was for a ship to go out of the ecliptic, aiming for long-distance travel which would get the first distant shots of the solar system from that viewpoint, as well as test out new telemetry and long-range physics experiments. It was immediately denied as being 'out of scope of the Discovery Class' because it would be too far for solar panels to work, hence requiring RTG's which would greatly exceed the cost of the mission.
And my main point is Don't kill Hubble, but build the cheap replacement anyway.
The down time w/o an observatory (building a replacement from scratch will be at least 6+ years) would be best offset by paying for one more servicing mission.
I would guess this could be done for less than 1B$ within 3 years to close the gap till NGST is built.
Uggh, this fact doesn't seem to be sinking in here on/.
NGST is infrared, just like SIRTF. After Hubble's demise, there will be a serious gap in the spectrum available to space-based observatories (SIRTF/JWST for IR, FUSE for far-UV, Chandra for X-Ray). But no optical wavelengths.
At this point someone usually mentions that ground-based adaptive optics can produce image resolution comparable to Hubble. This ignores two factors.
ground-based adaptive optic systems cannot take the stable long-term imaging integration data that Hubble can.
ground-based adaptive optic systems do not produce good spectral data due to emission/absorption spectra interference in the atmosphere.
Summary - cancelling Hubble will leave a serious gap in astronomical science for at least 1-2 decades.
One shouldn't consider killing Hubble in favor of JWST, but look at the whole picture and see if this scientific gap of killing Hubble is worth the price savings and added safety of not servicing it. IMHO, the answer is no.
Exactly! Senator Mikulski (D, MD) just spoke at Space Telescope Science Institute today, and was pointing out these items.
Hubble is the most successful of NASA's programs since the Apollo missions. And it's not just being used in USA, but the data is being used/analyzed by people all around the world. It's freely available (after a 1 year period that the PI has exclusive access to it) and astronomers from Pakistan to Brazil have been using it.
The factor O'Keefe keeps mentioning is safety. But the ironic thing is that he keeps promoting a Mars program where risk, and hence safety issues, is far far greater. Also, there are many astronauts that have already volunteered to service Hubble (eg Grunsfeld, who was the lead in servicing mission 3B and did another Hubble servicing mission prior). In fact, Grunsfeld said he'd go in the shuttle to Hubble but not to ISS!
It seems to be more politics than science/funding issues. O'Keefe was selected by Bush, and now is actively pushing Bush's "Mars" agenda, which is starting to look more and more like a carefully disguised space-based militaristic program.
Most NASA and other scientists, as well as amateur astronomers around the globe, are against the decision to cancel Hubble. Even people actively interested in Mars exploration have praised the decision to fund Mars programs but adamanatly advocate not cancelling Hubble to do so.
Hopefully this decision will be overturned. Senator Mikulski addressed STScI this morning saying she was able to convince O'Keefe to set up a committee to review the feasability to service Hubble. Hopefully the committee will be unbiased and actively consider science instead of politics.
O'Keefe has then been pushing Bush's Mars incentive, which may be a guise for a stronger aerospace military.
O'Keefe said the decision to cancel Hubble was made by him alone, and from what I gather, most of the rest of NASA doesn't want to cancel Hubble. Even the pro-Mars people. Hubble is currently way too important to cancel for the 'small' price of a few hundred million compared to the large expense of the Mars program.
If we do establish a presence on the Moon, we'll be able to build a telescope that will make Hubble look like a 25-cent plastic magnifying glass.
True, but what time frame do you really expect this to happen within? The decision to service Hubble one more time will not affect the future Mars and Lunar programs, but WILL keep the best eye-in-the-sky returning worthwhile data for another decade.
It's ultimately a question of economics. Is the scientific payoff by paying a few hundred million to service Hubble again worthwhile? Or would the benefits of redistributing this price to other programs be more productive?
Considering Hubble is up there now, works now, has instruments for the servicing mission already built, and there are a slew of astronaut volunteers (including Grunsfeld, who serviced Hubble 2x already), it's very much worth the price (and risk) of a launch.
It looks like it's boiling down to a (deceptively) simple question: will you risk your life for your dreams? More importantly: will your country allow you to take that risk?
The ironic thing is that O'Keefe (appointed by Bush, keep in mind) said he won't risk another Hubble servicing mission, and will instead focus on the Mars mission.
The ironic thing, though, is that the manned Mars mission is way way more risky than servicing Hubble.
Luckily Senator Mikulski (Maryland, Democrat) has been pushing O'Keefe bigtime to reconsider his decision. At first he flatly said "No" but then after she kept pushing he said he'd reconsider! She just spoke at the Space Telescope Science Institute today about her efforts to swing O'Keefe.
The biggest for me is that I really didn't like the way they portrayed Lothlorien at all in the movie.
When the fellowship was there, they were amazed at the beauty and grandeur. It was noted in the books that while Rivendell had a feel for a place where incredible things once were, Lothlorien was a place where incredible things were still around. Of course due to Galadriel's ring.
In the movie, Lothlorien was freaky and cold, especially the scene w/ Galadriel's mirror.
In the books the travel through Lorien is one of my favorite parts, and I really don't like how they portrayed and twisted it for the movie.
If you're not superstitious or spooked by that sort of stuff, it's a great way to get a cheap house. This girl I know just bought a rowhouse at about half the market value because the previous owner hung himself. The fact wasn't announced, but she happened to ask the listing agent why the price was so low, so they were required to answer.
The awkward thing is that one one of her friends, while helping her move in, took a swig from the 7-Up bottle in the fridge. Turns out that bottle of 7-Up was part of the dead former owner's last meal.
At least with a left bias, the arguments are intelligible. With a right bias, reason is thrown out the window, facts are ignored, and science is tossed in the fire.
totally offtopic, but my synagogue (ie, the one that I went to w/ my family when I was growing up) just hired a new rabbi, who is female. It's a reform synagogue, if anyone's curious.
Also, the old rabbi who just retired has a wife who's also a rabbi.
I replied to your original post, but I should have said this to begin with. The mass of He3 was deposited by the solar wind anyway, so the lunar mass is increasing anyway. Add to that effects of meteorites from comets and other space dust, and you've got an ever-insteasing lunar mass.
so planetary masses vary anyways. The question is how significant would the harvesting of helium be.
Chomp some numbers. Figure out the mass of helium that must be removed to power Earth for a year. Compare to the moon's total mass, determine by how much the moon's orbit will change in radius (really semimajor axis) or how much the velocity will change.
Then consider the force of the rockets for the ship taking off (do this for the Apollo missions, for example). See how much impulse was applied to the moon, and how it's orbit will change.
And remember there have been flybys of the moon, which transfer kinetic energy of spacecraft to moon and vice versa. See how much energy has been removed from the moon and applied to craft, and what effect this has on moon's orbits.
In other words, all these things have already been happening. And if you want to cry 'moon is falling', at least back them up with some back-of-the-envelope calculations. I'm too lazy to do it for you.
meanwhile cryogenics folks will rejoice because currently He3 is very expensive. And He3 cryostats are the basic workhorse for getting below temperatures of 1K.
Evaporative pumping of He3 can get you to about 250 mK, and using a He3/He4 dilution refrigerator can get one to about 10 mK.
A cheaper source of He3 would be good news, currently it's several hundred bucks for (I think) a liter of He3 gas at STP.
very dollar that is spent on HST is a dollar taken away from some other project. From a scientific point of view, you have to ask whether it makes more sense to terminate HST and spend the money on new spacecraft and missions.
Exactly. And IMHO, that perfectly justifies keeping Hubble aloft, at least for now.
Given estimates, it will take about $41 million to finish SM4 instruments, and $500 million for the launch. And there are astronaut volunteers (Grunsfeld, for example) to go there without the 'safety' of the ISS.
So, that's another decade or so of astronomical research with the HST, for about $540 million.
Compare that price for building other observatories from scratch, launching them, working out the bugs, calibrating them, etc. Do you have any numbers favoring building new scopes from scratch?
Hubble is currently working. And, despite what people claim here on/., it's not antiquated, and it does provide data that will NOT be provided by other current and future planned missions (ie, Webb, Chandra, FUSE, etc). Namely, orbital-based near-IR/optical/near-UV imaging and spectroscopy.
People here on/. often claim that adaptive optics gives better data than Hubble, and this is true sometimes for imaging. But definitely not so for spectroscopy, and definitely not so for IR and UV ranges. And that's where most of the hard science comes from.
So anyway, IMHO, it's worth $540 million to keep Hubble operating for many more years. Especially considering it only has 3 working gyros right now, and if one fails it becomes severely crippled.
I'm not an astronomer, but there are several around me consistently using Hubble's data. So I have a pretty good feel for how much worthy data is still being produced and utilized from Hubble.
Actually, there are several astronauts that have already volunteered to go up for SM4 Hubble Servicing Mission.
John Grunsfeld (guy who did SM3B and another Hubble servicing mission, I don't know which one) among others. And Grunsfeld said he'd go into space for Hubble, but won't go back for ISS.
So that gives some perspective on how some astronauts are thinking. They'd risk their lives for Hubble's science and choose that mission over the safer mission of another ISS launch.
The $41 million number I gave was an estimate from O'Keefe to develop SM4 to completion. But it must be missing the launch costs, because those run $500 million additionally. NASA folks aren't certain where he got this number from, and this might even indicate he didn't fully think through his decision to terminate the Hubble program.
Anyway, though, I still believe this is a small cost to maintain and greatly improve upon the Hubble, as compared to the rest of NASA's budget. Especially since $200 million was already spent developing the thing.
And to another poster that responded saying James Webb will replace Hubble soon, that's not entirely true. Webb will detect near-IR wavelengths, and Hubble does near-IR/optical/UV. So while Webb will have a larger and better aperature and updated electronics, it's missing many segments of the spectrum that Hubble has.
These various telescopes are not meant to be replacements for each other, but designed to complement each other instead. Scientists were planning to point Webb and Hubble (along with perhaps FUSE and Chandra) simultaneously at certain targets, to get wide-ranging spectrum abilities. A good chunk of the spectrum will be missing if Hubble is deserviced.
I've heard estimates that it would have have been possible to build two or even three telescopes not designed for servicing and send them on expendable launchers for less than half the cost of the HST plus the stupendous cost of 5 shuttle missions? (1 launch + 4 service).
Any numbers to support your claim? Ie, how much is expected to build and launch James Webb Space Telescope? This project will be a higher-altitude non-serviceable telescope.
Hindsight is always 20/20. You could claim that assuming a truly cheap and reusable space shuttle it did make sense at the time to build a serviceable space telescope.
And remember the original Hubble before COSTAR optical corrections would be almost useless if it wasn't serviceable. What was the cost to develop Hubble up to that point?
Did it really make sense to make it bigger, heavier and more expensive and with huge parts than can be serviced while wearing oven mitts?
Make it bigger?
And yes, given that increases in technology in the last 20 years have consistently and greatly improved Hubble with each servicing mission.
Please, I'd really like to see your numbers that designing several different telescopes from scratch and launching them independently would be cheaper and make more sense.
But not to mention the risk is much greater that something will be broke and then cannot be fixed. Did you ever hear the story about a small communications satellite where the engineers instinctively put a fuse in the power supply? The fuse blew at some point. Whoops!
through the use of modern adaptive and active optics technology, the latest ground based telescopes can resolve to around what hubble can.
No they cannot. Hubble can get near-UV, ground based cannot.
Hubble can aim at targets for LONG durations, being much more stsable, unlike ground-based telescopes.
And astronomy is much more than photographs, namely spectroscopy.
Ground-based spectroscopy, even with adaptive optics, is still limited by atmospheric absorption and emission spectra. Hubble is not.
Keeping it around is really just an exercise in nostalgia for all the great things it has done for us.
As well as fruitful exercises in astrophysical research for the slews of scientists that currently use it, and those that have planned to use it in the coming years.
AAS (American Astrophysical Society), for example, has even had discussions about a future SM5, so the lifetime of Hubble beyond SM4 was being considered by many "real" astrophysicists.
I agree. My girlfriend works at Space Telescope Science Institute, and was at the townhall meeting with Dr. Beckwith this afternoon. The staff is devastated with O'keefe's decision, even the diehard republicans.
John Grunsfeld, who has previously twice been to Hubble to service it, had already volunteered to service Hubble again for SM4. This was after the Columbia tragedy. And he said he'd choose to service Hubble over going to ISS.
And a number of other astronauts also volunteered to service Hubble with the shuttle as it currently is, if Congress approved a mission.
So there are sufficient astronauts for a servicing mission.
Plus, SM4 was supposed to happen this year, but it was delayed because of the Columbia. So the argument some have said that SM4 would be launched beyond the lifetime of the Shuttle doesn't make any sense.
Ground based telescopes have also improved and can take up more of the slack than many expect
For imaging, adaptive optics can sometimes approach space-based acquisitions. But for spectroscopy out of optical (IR and UV) ground-based scopes are very limited.
Plus, Hubble does UV, and James Webb Space Telescope will do near-IR. So UV astronomy will be severly hit. The FUSE telescope will still provide far-UV observations, but near-UV observations will be missing.
The decision to deorbit Hubble has already been made.
Do you mean 'was' made? The decision was to originally deorbit Hubble sometime after SM4, which would most likely be a decade or so after the expected failure of the next 1 or 2 gyros without SM4.
Plus, prior plans were made to bring Hubble down to Earth (only the Columbia shuttle was big enough to fit Hubble). Now, instead, a $300 million rocket will bring Hubble back. Plus, $200 million has already been spent developing new instruments for SM4, which needs somewheres between $500 - $700 million for launch. That's alot of lost science just to put a telescope in the Smithsonian.
Yes, this is not related to the manned mars mission.
NO, the new Manned Mars Mission not only included a $1 billion extra funding, but $11 billion reallocation away from other NASA projects. So YES, the Manned Mars Mission did contribute greatly to the current Hubble funding shortage.
Nothing is being lost here to the new programs
No programs being lost, you mean, except for the programs developing instruments for SM4, the scientists expecting to use these instruments. Plus all the observing that would have continued after the 1 or 2 gyros break, which wouldn't have broken if SM4 went through. Those programs?
I was wrong, it is between $500 and $700 million for a shuttle launch. Please see my other post for an explanation.
Anyway, it's still a relatively low cost to pay to keep Hubble operating for another decade or so. Especially since NASA will fund $300 million for a special rocket to bring Hubble safely into the ocean.
However, just the shuttle mission alone is a $500m price tag, so I don't think it's fair to say that we're "only $40m away" from anything.
Crap, you beat me to it. As you hit the [Submit] button I was writing up a correction to my own post.
Yeah, I can only guess that the $41 million estimate by O'Keefe was for the development of the actual hardware of SM4 itself, neglecting the cost of the launch.
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yes, but that was within the plane of the ecliptic, as have nearly all other interplanetary spacecraft.
Basically, some NASA missions (Discovery class missions, for example, of which Mars Pathfinder was) cannot use RTG's (Radioisotope Thermonuclear Generator) because they cost too much and are considered 'out of scope' of the problem.
I submitted an intent to propose a mission for the 5th NASA Discovery Class Announcement of Opportunity. My proposal was for a ship to go out of the ecliptic, aiming for long-distance travel which would get the first distant shots of the solar system from that viewpoint, as well as test out new telemetry and long-range physics experiments. It was immediately denied as being 'out of scope of the Discovery Class' because it would be too far for solar panels to work, hence requiring RTG's which would greatly exceed the cost of the mission.
And my main point is Don't kill Hubble, but build the cheap replacement anyway.
The down time w/o an observatory (building a replacement from scratch will be at least 6+ years) would be best offset by paying for one more servicing mission.
Uggh, this fact doesn't seem to be sinking in here on /.
NGST is infrared, just like SIRTF. After Hubble's demise, there will be a serious gap in the spectrum available to space-based observatories (SIRTF/JWST for IR, FUSE for far-UV, Chandra for X-Ray). But no optical wavelengths.
At this point someone usually mentions that ground-based adaptive optics can produce image resolution comparable to Hubble. This ignores two factors.
-
ground-based adaptive optic systems cannot take the stable long-term imaging integration data that Hubble can.
- ground-based adaptive optic systems do not produce good spectral data due to emission/absorption spectra interference in the atmosphere.
Summary - cancelling Hubble will leave a serious gap in astronomical science for at least 1-2 decades.One shouldn't consider killing Hubble in favor of JWST, but look at the whole picture and see if this scientific gap of killing Hubble is worth the price savings and added safety of not servicing it. IMHO, the answer is no.
Hubble is the most successful of NASA's programs since the Apollo missions. And it's not just being used in USA, but the data is being used/analyzed by people all around the world. It's freely available (after a 1 year period that the PI has exclusive access to it) and astronomers from Pakistan to Brazil have been using it.
The factor O'Keefe keeps mentioning is safety. But the ironic thing is that he keeps promoting a Mars program where risk, and hence safety issues, is far far greater. Also, there are many astronauts that have already volunteered to service Hubble (eg Grunsfeld, who was the lead in servicing mission 3B and did another Hubble servicing mission prior). In fact, Grunsfeld said he'd go in the shuttle to Hubble but not to ISS!
It seems to be more politics than science/funding issues. O'Keefe was selected by Bush, and now is actively pushing Bush's "Mars" agenda, which is starting to look more and more like a carefully disguised space-based militaristic program.
Most NASA and other scientists, as well as amateur astronomers around the globe, are against the decision to cancel Hubble. Even people actively interested in Mars exploration have praised the decision to fund Mars programs but adamanatly advocate not cancelling Hubble to do so.
Hopefully this decision will be overturned. Senator Mikulski addressed STScI this morning saying she was able to convince O'Keefe to set up a committee to review the feasability to service Hubble. Hopefully the committee will be unbiased and actively consider science instead of politics.
O'Keefe has then been pushing Bush's Mars incentive, which may be a guise for a stronger aerospace military.
O'Keefe said the decision to cancel Hubble was made by him alone, and from what I gather, most of the rest of NASA doesn't want to cancel Hubble. Even the pro-Mars people. Hubble is currently way too important to cancel for the 'small' price of a few hundred million compared to the large expense of the Mars program.
If we do establish a presence on the Moon, we'll be able to build a telescope that will make Hubble look like a 25-cent plastic magnifying glass.
True, but what time frame do you really expect this to happen within? The decision to service Hubble one more time will not affect the future Mars and Lunar programs, but WILL keep the best eye-in-the-sky returning worthwhile data for another decade.
It's ultimately a question of economics. Is the scientific payoff by paying a few hundred million to service Hubble again worthwhile? Or would the benefits of redistributing this price to other programs be more productive?
Considering Hubble is up there now, works now, has instruments for the servicing mission already built, and there are a slew of astronaut volunteers (including Grunsfeld, who serviced Hubble 2x already), it's very much worth the price (and risk) of a launch.
The ironic thing is that O'Keefe (appointed by Bush, keep in mind) said he won't risk another Hubble servicing mission, and will instead focus on the Mars mission.
The ironic thing, though, is that the manned Mars mission is way way more risky than servicing Hubble.
Luckily Senator Mikulski (Maryland, Democrat) has been pushing O'Keefe bigtime to reconsider his decision. At first he flatly said "No" but then after she kept pushing he said he'd reconsider! She just spoke at the Space Telescope Science Institute today about her efforts to swing O'Keefe.
When the fellowship was there, they were amazed at the beauty and grandeur. It was noted in the books that while Rivendell had a feel for a place where incredible things once were, Lothlorien was a place where incredible things were still around. Of course due to Galadriel's ring.
In the movie, Lothlorien was freaky and cold, especially the scene w/ Galadriel's mirror.
In the books the travel through Lorien is one of my favorite parts, and I really don't like how they portrayed and twisted it for the movie.
The awkward thing is that one one of her friends, while helping her move in, took a swig from the 7-Up bottle in the fridge. Turns out that bottle of 7-Up was part of the dead former owner's last meal.
You've never read Indymedia, have you?
Also, the old rabbi who just retired has a wife who's also a rabbi.
I replied to your original post, but I should have said this to begin with. The mass of He3 was deposited by the solar wind anyway, so the lunar mass is increasing anyway. Add to that effects of meteorites from comets and other space dust, and you've got an ever-insteasing lunar mass.
so planetary masses vary anyways. The question is how significant would the harvesting of helium be.
Then consider the force of the rockets for the ship taking off (do this for the Apollo missions, for example). See how much impulse was applied to the moon, and how it's orbit will change.
And remember there have been flybys of the moon, which transfer kinetic energy of spacecraft to moon and vice versa. See how much energy has been removed from the moon and applied to craft, and what effect this has on moon's orbits.
In other words, all these things have already been happening. And if you want to cry 'moon is falling', at least back them up with some back-of-the-envelope calculations. I'm too lazy to do it for you.
Evaporative pumping of He3 can get you to about 250 mK, and using a He3/He4 dilution refrigerator can get one to about 10 mK.
A cheaper source of He3 would be good news, currently it's several hundred bucks for (I think) a liter of He3 gas at STP.
Exactly. And IMHO, that perfectly justifies keeping Hubble aloft, at least for now.
Given estimates, it will take about $41 million to finish SM4 instruments, and $500 million for the launch. And there are astronaut volunteers (Grunsfeld, for example) to go there without the 'safety' of the ISS.
So, that's another decade or so of astronomical research with the HST, for about $540 million.
Compare that price for building other observatories from scratch, launching them, working out the bugs, calibrating them, etc. Do you have any numbers favoring building new scopes from scratch?
Hubble is currently working. And, despite what people claim here on /., it's not antiquated, and it does provide data that will NOT be provided by other current and future planned missions (ie, Webb, Chandra, FUSE, etc). Namely, orbital-based near-IR/optical/near-UV imaging and spectroscopy.
People here on /. often claim that adaptive optics gives better data than Hubble, and this is true sometimes for imaging. But definitely not so for spectroscopy, and definitely not so for IR and UV ranges. And that's where most of the hard science comes from.
So anyway, IMHO, it's worth $540 million to keep Hubble operating for many more years. Especially considering it only has 3 working gyros right now, and if one fails it becomes severely crippled.
I'm not an astronomer, but there are several around me consistently using Hubble's data. So I have a pretty good feel for how much worthy data is still being produced and utilized from Hubble.
Actually, there are several astronauts that have already volunteered to go up for SM4 Hubble Servicing Mission.
John Grunsfeld (guy who did SM3B and another Hubble servicing mission, I don't know which one) among others. And Grunsfeld said he'd go into space for Hubble, but won't go back for ISS.
So that gives some perspective on how some astronauts are thinking. They'd risk their lives for Hubble's science and choose that mission over the safer mission of another ISS launch.
The $41 million number I gave was an estimate from O'Keefe to develop SM4 to completion. But it must be missing the launch costs, because those run $500 million additionally. NASA folks aren't certain where he got this number from, and this might even indicate he didn't fully think through his decision to terminate the Hubble program.
Anyway, though, I still believe this is a small cost to maintain and greatly improve upon the Hubble, as compared to the rest of NASA's budget. Especially since $200 million was already spent developing the thing.
And to another poster that responded saying James Webb will replace Hubble soon, that's not entirely true. Webb will detect near-IR wavelengths, and Hubble does near-IR/optical/UV. So while Webb will have a larger and better aperature and updated electronics, it's missing many segments of the spectrum that Hubble has.
These various telescopes are not meant to be replacements for each other, but designed to complement each other instead. Scientists were planning to point Webb and Hubble (along with perhaps FUSE and Chandra) simultaneously at certain targets, to get wide-ranging spectrum abilities. A good chunk of the spectrum will be missing if Hubble is deserviced.
Any numbers to support your claim? Ie, how much is expected to build and launch James Webb Space Telescope? This project will be a higher-altitude non-serviceable telescope.
Hindsight is always 20/20. You could claim that assuming a truly cheap and reusable space shuttle it did make sense at the time to build a serviceable space telescope.
And remember the original Hubble before COSTAR optical corrections would be almost useless if it wasn't serviceable. What was the cost to develop Hubble up to that point?
Did it really make sense to make it bigger, heavier and more expensive and with huge parts than can be serviced while wearing oven mitts?
Make it bigger?
And yes, given that increases in technology in the last 20 years have consistently and greatly improved Hubble with each servicing mission.
Please, I'd really like to see your numbers that designing several different telescopes from scratch and launching them independently would be cheaper and make more sense.
But not to mention the risk is much greater that something will be broke and then cannot be fixed. Did you ever hear the story about a small communications satellite where the engineers instinctively put a fuse in the power supply? The fuse blew at some point. Whoops!
No they cannot. Hubble can get near-UV, ground based cannot.
Hubble can aim at targets for LONG durations, being much more stsable, unlike ground-based telescopes.
And astronomy is much more than photographs, namely spectroscopy. Ground-based spectroscopy, even with adaptive optics, is still limited by atmospheric absorption and emission spectra. Hubble is not.
Keeping it around is really just an exercise in nostalgia for all the great things it has done for us.
As well as fruitful exercises in astrophysical research for the slews of scientists that currently use it, and those that have planned to use it in the coming years.
AAS (American Astrophysical Society), for example, has even had discussions about a future SM5, so the lifetime of Hubble beyond SM4 was being considered by many "real" astrophysicists.
I agree. My girlfriend works at Space Telescope Science Institute, and was at the townhall meeting with Dr. Beckwith this afternoon. The staff is devastated with O'keefe's decision, even the diehard republicans.
John Grunsfeld, who has previously twice been to Hubble to service it, had already volunteered to service Hubble again for SM4. This was after the Columbia tragedy. And he said he'd choose to service Hubble over going to ISS.
And a number of other astronauts also volunteered to service Hubble with the shuttle as it currently is, if Congress approved a mission.
So there are sufficient astronauts for a servicing mission.
Plus, SM4 was supposed to happen this year, but it was delayed because of the Columbia. So the argument some have said that SM4 would be launched beyond the lifetime of the Shuttle doesn't make any sense.
Ground based telescopes have also improved and can take up more of the slack than many expect
For imaging, adaptive optics can sometimes approach space-based acquisitions. But for spectroscopy out of optical (IR and UV) ground-based scopes are very limited.
Plus, Hubble does UV, and James Webb Space Telescope will do near-IR. So UV astronomy will be severly hit. The FUSE telescope will still provide far-UV observations, but near-UV observations will be missing.
The decision to deorbit Hubble has already been made.
Do you mean 'was' made? The decision was to originally deorbit Hubble sometime after SM4, which would most likely be a decade or so after the expected failure of the next 1 or 2 gyros without SM4.
Plus, prior plans were made to bring Hubble down to Earth (only the Columbia shuttle was big enough to fit Hubble). Now, instead, a $300 million rocket will bring Hubble back. Plus, $200 million has already been spent developing new instruments for SM4, which needs somewheres between $500 - $700 million for launch. That's alot of lost science just to put a telescope in the Smithsonian.
Yes, this is not related to the manned mars mission.
NO, the new Manned Mars Mission not only included a $1 billion extra funding, but $11 billion reallocation away from other NASA projects. So YES, the Manned Mars Mission did contribute greatly to the current Hubble funding shortage.
Nothing is being lost here to the new programs
No programs being lost, you mean, except for the programs developing instruments for SM4, the scientists expecting to use these instruments. Plus all the observing that would have continued after the 1 or 2 gyros break, which wouldn't have broken if SM4 went through. Those programs?
Anyway, it's still a relatively low cost to pay to keep Hubble operating for another decade or so. Especially since NASA will fund $300 million for a special rocket to bring Hubble safely into the ocean.
The estimate of $41 million isn't fully correct, please read my followup post .
Crap, you beat me to it. As you hit the [Submit] button I was writing up a correction to my own post.
Yeah, I can only guess that the $41 million estimate by O'Keefe was for the development of the actual hardware of SM4 itself, neglecting the cost of the launch.