No, that's not it! Brin's point is that if everyone is watching everyone else, and that information (reports, video, whatever) is only available to the government, you have Orwell's 1984, or the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, etc. His point is more like, "Basically, have everyone be able to access public video feeds, not just the government.
If the technology is so widely available and in use in public places (already true in many cities), the only way to avoid becoming a 1984 state is to have that technology available to everyone. Then the state has to play fair like everyone else and can't lie about police brutality and other things they might like to lie about. Also on the plus side you get a safer, freer environment for yourself and your kids.
He likes privacy, advocates privacy in homes, but believes privacy is on the way out thanks to technology and is advocating that we ought to get some additional freedom for the price.
I imagine in practice generations growing up under watching eyes would feel differently about it than we would. Also in practice, as we can see on the internet, there are billions of web pages but the vast majority are not watched by any one. But if there is something of special interest, everyone can go check it out, not just the government.
I was going to post about David Brin's book, and stopped to search to see if someone else had first. I'll add a few comments.
Brin's a smart guy. He starts with the premise that these technological tools are going to exist, are going to be cheap, and will be easy to use. It's hard to say he's wrong on these points. His thesis then, is it healthier in a society to restrict their use to government only, or to let everyone use them. Again, he's a smart guy and if your gut tells you that their use should be restricted, you should check out his arguments at least and see that they don't make some sense.
Every space-exploration article draws this kind of post that says, "but we have more important problems here on Earth we should spend the money on."
And would spending the money spent on space actually fix these problems? No. There's enough food in the world, to take one problem, but other issues (politics) interfere with distribution.
This criticism can be reduced to the absurd very easily. In the most extreme case, should we identify the "top priority problem" and spend 100% of our resources to fix it? And then move down some list?
Of course not. That notion is absurd.
The case for space expoloration is exactly the case as for basic research of any kind. You never know what you will discover or its importance until you do it, and supporting basic capability in science and technology is always a good idea for a society. It pays off economically in lots of ways, so it doesn't even cost what it looks like on paper.
Personally, I find it gratifying to live in a culture that values studying the universe and understanding our place within it. That says something noble about humans in a world that is too often filled with the mundane and the tragic.
For AO you can also use "natural" guide stars. You need a bright enough star within the field of view. With smaller telescopes (like NASA's 3 meter Infrared Telescope Facility) you need pretty bright stars, and can't look very many places in the sky. With the LBT, you can do a lot better because the stars needn't be so bright.
It's important to keep in mind that the LBT won't just being doing AO like some other telescopes, but actually doing interferometry -- using it's binocular vision -- to reap large benefits in spatial resolution. It isn't all that easy to do in the optical (the Keck observatories have it working, sort of, but I haven't seen many science results yet).
Spitzer is great, and I'll be proposing to use it come February.
Almost no telescopes in space do quite the same thing, and moreover, no telescopes on the ground, including the LBT, can do some of the things that space-based telescopes can do. It's way too simple to say x is better than y, and cheaper than y, so why do x? "Better" is a very slippery word. Are apples "better" than organges?
It's misleading to say that it's against the "wills of the Apache people." There are many native Americans who were quite happy with the arrangement. As I understand the story, and this will be white-washed in some ways, the University was pretty heavy handed about developing Mt. Graham, and pissed off some strident environmentalists. They made a stink about an endangered species of red squirrel that lives there and held things up a few years (perhaps rightly -- more careful environmental impact statements were done). After that failed to stop the astronomy projects, some native Americans were found to be litigants in additional law suits. I'm a little fuzzy on these details, but the story I heard was that it was individual native Americans filing suit/protesting, not any official tribe.
I want to add some other comments. The LBT is not the only telescope on Mt. Graham. The Vatican Observatory and the Hienrich Hertz telescopes have been there for years already (I once observed at the Heinrich Hertz).
The squirrel population has been doing very well with the telescopes there. They suffered a setback a couple of years ago from a tree disease that hurt their habitat, but that wasn't telescope related in any way. Moreover, last summer the forest fires came close to destroying the observatories...and the squirrels. I have little doubt that the squirrels would have been wiped out if the telescopes weren't there. Firefighters battled the blaze like crazy to save the $200 million dollar facility. Would they have fought so hard, in so many numbers, at that location, if not for the LBT?
The Hubble sensitivity is not that enhanced from being in orbit (the atmosphere doesn't absorb all that much optical light at most wavelengths). Hubble also suffers from not being that big -- it's never going to be able to detect faint surface brightness objects (e.g., diffuse nebulosity, extended galaxies, etc., if it's too faint). You need BIG telescopes like LBT for that work.
There is, however, an area of faint astronomy where Hubble is unbeatable. And that is working on concentrated or point sources. Because Hubble can point, with high stability, for extended periods, you can detect objects that are currently impossible to observe from the ground. Check out www.stsci.edu and their press releases and look for the Hubble Deep Field images. They're spectacular, and LBT won't be able to touch them.
This stuff is even more complicated that you think. Hubble schedulers (and I have an old office mate who is one of these people) have all sorts of restrictions to obey. They can't look too close to the Earth, or sun, and can't look with some instruments during some phases of the orbit (e.g., flying over the South Atlantic Anomoly or SAA). On the other hand, there exist "Continuous Viewing Zones" near the poles for which Hubble can pretty much look at constantly throughout it's entire orbit, so their especially efficient.
Overall, Hubble is less restricted than any ground-based telescopes because it can look closer to the sun than any of them. We used to have all sorts of problems making quasi-simultaneous ground-based observations, because they would schedule Hubble observations a month later/earlier than we'd be able to see a target from our telescope in Texas. That atmospheric scattering hurts in more ways than one.
One point about AO that's rarely appreciated is that the point source function (PSF) changes. The spatial resolution doesn't just improve by "factor x." A lot of the light becomes spatially concentrated, but a lot of the light remains in the "wings" of the PSF. One application I'm fond of for high spatial resolution is imaging quasar host galaxies. In quasars, the host galaxy is usually lost in the glare of the central quasar. AO helps, but not so much -- the wings of the PSF still swamp out the faint surrounding galaxy. There are tricks to play, to push the technology to do this kind of science, but cutting edge work is usually complex.
As another astronomer, I'll chime in that it's still apples and oranges. We couldn't build the LBT 15-20 years ago, and Hubble would be cheaper and better if we built it now. The points about the UV coverage of Hubble are especially good ones -- LBT will never work in the UV, and some science requires the UV. Furthermore, the results from the LBT will not be simply "10x" better resolution -- there is atmospheric effects to worry about and compensate for, and there is only a single baseline (to get 360 degree interferometry will require quite extended observations to get what astronomers call "coverage in the u-v plane).
Will the LBT kick astronomical ass? Almost certainly.
Will Hubble still be able to do things LBT can't? Yes, indeed.
Will the LBT be able to do things Hubble can't? Of course.
The Hubble cost-analysis is way more complex than these simple comparisons on slashdot always seem to apply. At this point, the appropriate questions are things like, is Hubble worth the cost of maintaining? Does it still provide a unique capability? What is the value of that unique capability? When can a bigger, better replacement fly? Etc.
To turn your comments around, there's certainly a risk that some engaging in the contest will have unreasonable expectations that leads to failure. It will help some writers, and hurt others, and not all of them may know which camp they fall into before they try.
My personal preference is to encourage writers to develop professional work habits, and give advice about the various pitfalls along the way.
Re:When did mediocrity become something to shoot f
on
Kamikaze Novel Writing
·
· Score: 1
You say writing essays or exercises can help learn the necessary skills. Well, just consider short stories a kind of writing exercise. Personally, I found the idea of writing a novel without the skills to do it well psychologically daunting. I didn't want to invest a lot of effort into it until I thought I was writing well enough to sell one. It doesn't matter how you learn to do it, as long as you do. I agree, different writers learn in different ways. I just see a lot of beginners tackling novels before they have the skills to do it, and getting so wrapped up in their baby that it's devestating when they can't sell it. You have a few litters of short stories on the other hand, and it usually isn't so bad to forge ahead.
Re:When did mediocrity become something to shoot f
on
Kamikaze Novel Writing
·
· Score: 1
There's some truth in what you say, but learning how to write scenes, dialogue, setting, characters...you need those skills for short stories and novels both. I was talking about those particular writing skills by using the word "craft." Short stories in particular let you experiment, quickly, by trying different approaches to story telling. For instance, you can learn some things from writing in the second-person. You'd be foolish to do that in your first novel, but a short story is the perfect vehicle for trying it out. That's what I meant.
Short stories and novels are different, yes, but they're built from the same foundations. I doubt many composers other than perhaps Mozart started out writing full-fledged symphonies.
Good fiction does teach you something, if it is good. You learn about being human and human relationships. You learn about things that can't be expressed with equations or numbers. Again, if it's good.
Having said that, I work hard to have accurate science in my science fiction novels. I think there are a lot of advanced concepts that can be effectively conveyed through fiction. For some people, non-fiction, textbooks, are simply not engaging. But have them read Larry Niven's story "Neutron Star" and suddenly they really get what tidal forces are all about.
It hardly seems like a difficult task to me, provided you've got the motivation to sink your soul into such a work.
What makes you think sinking your soul into something is easy? And why do you think writing is easy? Writing fiction is not the same thing as writing a slashdot post. If it is, you're probably not doing one of them right.
A lot of people think that writing is easy. After all, everyone can write down words and sentences. It's a highly skilled art form and it takes years to get good at it, the same way it takes years to get good at any highly skilled activity. I wrote hundreds of thousands of fiction before I tackled novels. I wrote many short stories, even sold a few. I collected at least a couple of hundred rejection slips. It isn't easy, and the competition is fierce.
Please, feel free to prove me wrong and write a decent to good novelette next month. There are rare writers who are good right away, and while there are already too many writers vying for the available publishing slots, there's always room for good writers.
I think a three-month deal would be a lot better and realistic. I can do 1000 words a day and not kill myself, with a good end product of a pretty marketable length. 2000 words a day for a month is really hard and a novel of 50-60k words is too short for most modern adult markets.
Besides, who has time to socialize writing 2000 words a day?! Who needs a network to get through one tough month?
I'm planning my next novel now, which will be drafted next year from May through August when I don't have to teach. I'll be researching it, plotting it, and pitching/selling it this winter.
As an astronomer, I have to propose for grant funding and telescope time pretty much constantly. There are always page limits to obey, and it's always a struggle to make the strongest case within the limits. You're competing for limited resources with other smart, motivated people. It's a real art to do this effectively. It's hard to teach to many science students, too.
I can write fast when I have to (and I've had to as a novelist under contract with Tor). What I want is to learn how to REVISE a novel in a month! That's harder, for me anyway.
I'm getting comments from my editor on my second book any day now, and will have until the end of the year to revise it into shape. Since I'm also a full-time professor with a life, I am somewhat concerned about getting better and faster at this.
Because this is not a contest for cheaters. You don't win anything for this. In writing, the only things that could are how you feel about a piece, and what others feel about it (which could lead to sales, money, a career even). If this sort of thing worries you, you're missing the point.
Re:When did mediocrity become something to shoot f
on
Kamikaze Novel Writing
·
· Score: 1
I do appreciate this point.
There is a large group of would-be writers who spend so much time fiddling with chapter 1 they never finish a book. For those sorts of writers, this may be a good exercise.
Re:When did mediocrity become something to shoot f
on
Kamikaze Novel Writing
·
· Score: 1
Well, I don't think people should be trying to write a novel for the first time with the "all in one month approach." That's kind of dumb.
What they should be doing is practicing their craft on short stories, failing and learning there, before tackling an entire novel with any hope for success.
Trying to do something like a novel fast for the first time might create some bad habits and missed learning opportunities. On the other hand it might indeed be educational, and some people can write well and still write fast. But I wouldn't bet that this is good way of doing it for most.
But hey, what do I know? I sold the first novel I wrote.
Re:When did mediocrity become something to shoot f
on
Kamikaze Novel Writing
·
· Score: 1
It's done right if the final story works. I was going to say it would be done right if it satisfied the author, but a lot of us writers are never entirely happy, even with books that have won awards.
I guess the only ones who judge this professionally are editors. By that standard, it's right if you can sell it, or at least be told it's good even if they can't buy it for some reason (and marketing departments do veto editors).
I'm a published novelist (Star Dragon, Tor, and my second one will be out in early 2006). I sold the second one, Spider Star, under contract and had a deadline to meet. I spent several months working on background and other research, started writing the draft last February, and finished in July. Because of teaching, I'd only hit about 50k words by the end of May and wrote about 50k words in the following six weeks.
It's a harsh effort. Burnout is possible. Revisions will be super necessary, and extensive. If you haven't spent a lot of time doing research in advance, you're likely to make big mistakes somewhere.
There are some fast-writing professionals out there. You've heard the stories, many true, about cranking out a book in a week. They don't put their own names on those. Those writers still say they need a few months, WORKING FULL TIME, to write a good book.
I'm just a little worried that people will write bad books, get burned out, and fail at their dreams by this approach. The sense of community can help, but this smacks more of a stunt than a serious professional effort. If you need stunts to write, maybe you're not a writer. If it's just a fun thing to try, fine, but think hard about your goals and the relationship with your writing before attempting this.
Um...it was AWFUL on 9/11. If you had to choose between burning to death or jumping a 100 stories to your death, I don't think you cared who was or was not president on that dark day.
A couple of people have mentioned that you can't work in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum without going to space. True, and critically important to some science. Also, from Antarctica, you can only see the southern sky, not the north, so this is another limitation.
These are not good reasons not to build this proposed telescope, just ways in which Hubble is still uniquely qualified.
Slashdot Mirror
"Basically, have everyone watch everyone else."
No, that's not it! Brin's point is that if everyone is watching everyone else, and that information (reports, video, whatever) is only available to the government, you have Orwell's 1984, or the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, etc. His point is more like, "Basically, have everyone be able to access public video feeds, not just the government.
If the technology is so widely available and in use in public places (already true in many cities), the only way to avoid becoming a 1984 state is to have that technology available to everyone. Then the state has to play fair like everyone else and can't lie about police brutality and other things they might like to lie about. Also on the plus side you get a safer, freer environment for yourself and your kids.
He likes privacy, advocates privacy in homes, but believes privacy is on the way out thanks to technology and is advocating that we ought to get some additional freedom for the price.
I imagine in practice generations growing up under watching eyes would feel differently about it than we would. Also in practice, as we can see on the internet, there are billions of web pages but the vast majority are not watched by any one. But if there is something of special interest, everyone can go check it out, not just the government.
I was going to post about David Brin's book, and stopped to search to see if someone else had first. I'll add a few comments.
Brin's a smart guy. He starts with the premise that these technological tools are going to exist, are going to be cheap, and will be easy to use. It's hard to say he's wrong on these points. His thesis then, is it healthier in a society to restrict their use to government only, or to let everyone use them. Again, he's a smart guy and if your gut tells you that their use should be restricted, you should check out his arguments at least and see that they don't make some sense.
Every space-exploration article draws this kind of post that says, "but we have more important problems here on Earth we should spend the money on."
And would spending the money spent on space actually fix these problems? No. There's enough food in the world, to take one problem, but other issues (politics) interfere with distribution.
This criticism can be reduced to the absurd very easily. In the most extreme case, should we identify the "top priority problem" and spend 100% of our resources to fix it? And then move down some list?
Of course not. That notion is absurd.
The case for space expoloration is exactly the case as for basic research of any kind. You never know what you will discover or its importance until you do it, and supporting basic capability in science and technology is always a good idea for a society. It pays off economically in lots of ways, so it doesn't even cost what it looks like on paper.
Personally, I find it gratifying to live in a culture that values studying the universe and understanding our place within it. That says something noble about humans in a world that is too often filled with the mundane and the tragic.
For AO you can also use "natural" guide stars. You need a bright enough star within the field of view. With smaller telescopes (like NASA's 3 meter Infrared Telescope Facility) you need pretty bright stars, and can't look very many places in the sky. With the LBT, you can do a lot better because the stars needn't be so bright.
It's important to keep in mind that the LBT won't just being doing AO like some other telescopes, but actually doing interferometry -- using it's binocular vision -- to reap large benefits in spatial resolution. It isn't all that easy to do in the optical (the Keck observatories have it working, sort of, but I haven't seen many science results yet).
Spitzer is great, and I'll be proposing to use it come February.
Almost no telescopes in space do quite the same thing, and moreover, no telescopes on the ground, including the LBT, can do some of the things that space-based telescopes can do. It's way too simple to say x is better than y, and cheaper than y, so why do x? "Better" is a very slippery word. Are apples "better" than organges?
It's misleading to say that it's against the "wills of the Apache people." There are many native Americans who were quite happy with the arrangement. As I understand the story, and this will be white-washed in some ways, the University was pretty heavy handed about developing Mt. Graham, and pissed off some strident environmentalists. They made a stink about an endangered species of red squirrel that lives there and held things up a few years (perhaps rightly -- more careful environmental impact statements were done). After that failed to stop the astronomy projects, some native Americans were found to be litigants in additional law suits. I'm a little fuzzy on these details, but the story I heard was that it was individual native Americans filing suit/protesting, not any official tribe.
I want to add some other comments. The LBT is not the only telescope on Mt. Graham. The Vatican Observatory and the Hienrich Hertz telescopes have been there for years already (I once observed at the Heinrich Hertz).
The squirrel population has been doing very well with the telescopes there. They suffered a setback a couple of years ago from a tree disease that hurt their habitat, but that wasn't telescope related in any way. Moreover, last summer the forest fires came close to destroying the observatories...and the squirrels. I have little doubt that the squirrels would have been wiped out if the telescopes weren't there. Firefighters battled the blaze like crazy to save the $200 million dollar facility. Would they have fought so hard, in so many numbers, at that location, if not for the LBT?
The Hubble sensitivity is not that enhanced from being in orbit (the atmosphere doesn't absorb all that much optical light at most wavelengths). Hubble also suffers from not being that big -- it's never going to be able to detect faint surface brightness objects (e.g., diffuse nebulosity, extended galaxies, etc., if it's too faint). You need BIG telescopes like LBT for that work.
There is, however, an area of faint astronomy where Hubble is unbeatable. And that is working on concentrated or point sources. Because Hubble can point, with high stability, for extended periods, you can detect objects that are currently impossible to observe from the ground. Check out www.stsci.edu and their press releases and look for the Hubble Deep Field images. They're spectacular, and LBT won't be able to touch them.
This stuff is even more complicated that you think. Hubble schedulers (and I have an old office mate who is one of these people) have all sorts of restrictions to obey. They can't look too close to the Earth, or sun, and can't look with some instruments during some phases of the orbit (e.g., flying over the South Atlantic Anomoly or SAA). On the other hand, there exist "Continuous Viewing Zones" near the poles for which Hubble can pretty much look at constantly throughout it's entire orbit, so their especially efficient.
Overall, Hubble is less restricted than any ground-based telescopes because it can look closer to the sun than any of them. We used to have all sorts of problems making quasi-simultaneous ground-based observations, because they would schedule Hubble observations a month later/earlier than we'd be able to see a target from our telescope in Texas. That atmospheric scattering hurts in more ways than one.
One point about AO that's rarely appreciated is that the point source function (PSF) changes. The spatial resolution doesn't just improve by "factor x." A lot of the light becomes spatially concentrated, but a lot of the light remains in the "wings" of the PSF. One application I'm fond of for high spatial resolution is imaging quasar host galaxies. In quasars, the host galaxy is usually lost in the glare of the central quasar. AO helps, but not so much -- the wings of the PSF still swamp out the faint surrounding galaxy. There are tricks to play, to push the technology to do this kind of science, but cutting edge work is usually complex.
As another astronomer, I'll chime in that it's still apples and oranges. We couldn't build the LBT 15-20 years ago, and Hubble would be cheaper and better if we built it now. The points about the UV coverage of Hubble are especially good ones -- LBT will never work in the UV, and some science requires the UV. Furthermore, the results from the LBT will not be simply "10x" better resolution -- there is atmospheric effects to worry about and compensate for, and there is only a single baseline (to get 360 degree interferometry will require quite extended observations to get what astronomers call "coverage in the u-v plane).
Will the LBT kick astronomical ass? Almost certainly.
Will Hubble still be able to do things LBT can't? Yes, indeed.
Will the LBT be able to do things Hubble can't? Of course.
The Hubble cost-analysis is way more complex than these simple comparisons on slashdot always seem to apply. At this point, the appropriate questions are things like, is Hubble worth the cost of maintaining? Does it still provide a unique capability? What is the value of that unique capability? When can a bigger, better replacement fly? Etc.
To turn your comments around, there's certainly a risk that some engaging in the contest will have unreasonable expectations that leads to failure. It will help some writers, and hurt others, and not all of them may know which camp they fall into before they try.
My personal preference is to encourage writers to develop professional work habits, and give advice about the various pitfalls along the way.
You say writing essays or exercises can help learn the necessary skills. Well, just consider short stories a kind of writing exercise. Personally, I found the idea of writing a novel without the skills to do it well psychologically daunting. I didn't want to invest a lot of effort into it until I thought I was writing well enough to sell one. It doesn't matter how you learn to do it, as long as you do. I agree, different writers learn in different ways. I just see a lot of beginners tackling novels before they have the skills to do it, and getting so wrapped up in their baby that it's devestating when they can't sell it. You have a few litters of short stories on the other hand, and it usually isn't so bad to forge ahead.
There's some truth in what you say, but learning how to write scenes, dialogue, setting, characters...you need those skills for short stories and novels both. I was talking about those particular writing skills by using the word "craft." Short stories in particular let you experiment, quickly, by trying different approaches to story telling. For instance, you can learn some things from writing in the second-person. You'd be foolish to do that in your first novel, but a short story is the perfect vehicle for trying it out. That's what I meant.
Short stories and novels are different, yes, but they're built from the same foundations. I doubt many composers other than perhaps Mozart started out writing full-fledged symphonies.
Good fiction does teach you something, if it is good. You learn about being human and human relationships. You learn about things that can't be expressed with equations or numbers. Again, if it's good.
Having said that, I work hard to have accurate science in my science fiction novels. I think there are a lot of advanced concepts that can be effectively conveyed through fiction. For some people, non-fiction, textbooks, are simply not engaging. But have them read Larry Niven's story "Neutron Star" and suddenly they really get what tidal forces are all about.
It hardly seems like a difficult task to me, provided you've got the motivation to sink your soul into such a work.
What makes you think sinking your soul into something is easy? And why do you think writing is easy? Writing fiction is not the same thing as writing a slashdot post. If it is, you're probably not doing one of them right.
A lot of people think that writing is easy. After all, everyone can write down words and sentences. It's a highly skilled art form and it takes years to get good at it, the same way it takes years to get good at any highly skilled activity. I wrote hundreds of thousands of fiction before I tackled novels. I wrote many short stories, even sold a few. I collected at least a couple of hundred rejection slips. It isn't easy, and the competition is fierce.
Please, feel free to prove me wrong and write a decent to good novelette next month. There are rare writers who are good right away, and while there are already too many writers vying for the available publishing slots, there's always room for good writers.
I think a three-month deal would be a lot better and realistic. I can do 1000 words a day and not kill myself, with a good end product of a pretty marketable length. 2000 words a day for a month is really hard and a novel of 50-60k words is too short for most modern adult markets.
Besides, who has time to socialize writing 2000 words a day?! Who needs a network to get through one tough month?
I'm planning my next novel now, which will be drafted next year from May through August when I don't have to teach. I'll be researching it, plotting it, and pitching/selling it this winter.
As an astronomer, I have to propose for grant funding and telescope time pretty much constantly. There are always page limits to obey, and it's always a struggle to make the strongest case within the limits. You're competing for limited resources with other smart, motivated people. It's a real art to do this effectively. It's hard to teach to many science students, too.
I can write fast when I have to (and I've had to as a novelist under contract with Tor). What I want is to learn how to REVISE a novel in a month! That's harder, for me anyway.
I'm getting comments from my editor on my second book any day now, and will have until the end of the year to revise it into shape. Since I'm also a full-time professor with a life, I am somewhat concerned about getting better and faster at this.
Because this is not a contest for cheaters. You don't win anything for this. In writing, the only things that could are how you feel about a piece, and what others feel about it (which could lead to sales, money, a career even). If this sort of thing worries you, you're missing the point.
I do appreciate this point.
There is a large group of would-be writers who spend so much time fiddling with chapter 1 they never finish a book. For those sorts of writers, this may be a good exercise.
Well, I don't think people should be trying to write a novel for the first time with the "all in one month approach." That's kind of dumb.
What they should be doing is practicing their craft on short stories, failing and learning there, before tackling an entire novel with any hope for success.
Trying to do something like a novel fast for the first time might create some bad habits and missed learning opportunities. On the other hand it might indeed be educational, and some people can write well and still write fast. But I wouldn't bet that this is good way of doing it for most.
But hey, what do I know? I sold the first novel I wrote.
It's done right if the final story works. I was going to say it would be done right if it satisfied the author, but a lot of us writers are never entirely happy, even with books that have won awards. I guess the only ones who judge this professionally are editors. By that standard, it's right if you can sell it, or at least be told it's good even if they can't buy it for some reason (and marketing departments do veto editors).
I'm a published novelist (Star Dragon, Tor, and my second one will be out in early 2006). I sold the second one, Spider Star, under contract and had a deadline to meet. I spent several months working on background and other research, started writing the draft last February, and finished in July. Because of teaching, I'd only hit about 50k words by the end of May and wrote about 50k words in the following six weeks. It's a harsh effort. Burnout is possible. Revisions will be super necessary, and extensive. If you haven't spent a lot of time doing research in advance, you're likely to make big mistakes somewhere. There are some fast-writing professionals out there. You've heard the stories, many true, about cranking out a book in a week. They don't put their own names on those. Those writers still say they need a few months, WORKING FULL TIME, to write a good book. I'm just a little worried that people will write bad books, get burned out, and fail at their dreams by this approach. The sense of community can help, but this smacks more of a stunt than a serious professional effort. If you need stunts to write, maybe you're not a writer. If it's just a fun thing to try, fine, but think hard about your goals and the relationship with your writing before attempting this.
Um...it was AWFUL on 9/11. If you had to choose between burning to death or jumping a 100 stories to your death, I don't think you cared who was or was not president on that dark day.
A couple of people have mentioned that you can't work in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum without going to space. True, and critically important to some science. Also, from Antarctica, you can only see the southern sky, not the north, so this is another limitation.
These are not good reasons not to build this proposed telescope, just ways in which Hubble is still uniquely qualified.