I personally like Federick Kantor's (see Information Mechanics, 1977) attempted derivation of the laws of physics from the mathematical requirements of information theory. I think this may be the seed from which everything else sprouts, but so far the full mathematics involved has proven intractable.
I remember the story of when the US Navy wanted to decommission and get rid of an old wooden ship, and one Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a poem bemoaning the ship's fate: "Aye, tear her tattered ensign down, Long has it waved on high,..." and lots of children got very interested and sent in lots of pennies, and the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) is still a commissioned ship in the United States Navy in Boston Harbor.
An appropriately structured campaign, via schools, teachers, et al, to sell the Hubble to the school children of the world, and give each of them, in response, an opportunity to put their name on a CD type item which would be mounted to the Hubble (and a copy sent on the next interstellar mission?) and give them access to a web site where printable copies of the most photogenic Hubble pictures would be available for free download.
The families of the kids who sent pennies for the USS Constitution talked about it for generations. (I knew of some who were still proud of their families contribution, however small, when the subject came up in conversations in the 1950's, over 100 years later.) The development of this kind of pride is possible here also.
This kind of personal involvement might also stimulate a great deal of interest in astronomy and space on the part of the kids involved too.
A little imagination could take this idea a long way and benefit not only the professional astronomers, by saving Hubble, but also the children and other contributors, and the space enterprise in general. And eventually a saved Hubble Telescope could become a central exhibit in an international (interplanetary?) museum dedicated to the history of the exploration of space.
Slashdot Mirror
I personally like Federick Kantor's (see Information Mechanics, 1977) attempted derivation of the laws of physics from the mathematical requirements of information theory. I think this may be the seed from which everything else sprouts, but so far the full mathematics involved has proven intractable.
I remember the story of when the US Navy wanted to decommission and get rid of an old wooden ship, and one Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a poem bemoaning the ship's fate: "Aye, tear her tattered ensign down, Long has it waved on high, ..." and lots of children got very interested and sent in lots of pennies, and the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) is still a commissioned ship in the United States Navy in Boston Harbor.
An appropriately structured campaign, via schools, teachers, et al, to sell the Hubble to the school children of the world, and give each of them, in response, an opportunity to put their name on a CD type item which would be mounted to the Hubble (and a copy sent on the next interstellar mission?) and give them access to a web site where printable copies of the most photogenic Hubble pictures would be available for free download.
The families of the kids who sent pennies for the USS Constitution talked about it for generations. (I knew of some who were still proud of their families contribution, however small, when the subject came up in conversations in the 1950's, over 100 years later.) The development of this kind of pride is possible here also.
This kind of personal involvement might also stimulate a great deal of interest in astronomy and space on the part of the kids involved too. A little imagination could take this idea a long way and benefit not only the professional astronomers, by saving Hubble, but also the children and other contributors, and the space enterprise in general. And eventually a saved Hubble Telescope could become a central exhibit in an international (interplanetary?) museum dedicated to the history of the exploration of space.