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Space Science

No Formal Risk Analysis of Hubble Rescue by NASA 186

Posted by Zonk from the they-didn't-even-try dept.
Somegeek writes " SpaceDaily.com is running a story that NASA never performed a formal risk analysis of a shuttle mission to rescue the Hubble Space Telescope before they decided to cancel the mission on grounds of risk. The story quotes Fred Gregory, the current acting NASA administrator, as stating that previous NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe made the decision "based on what he perceived was the risk". This perceived risk is in performing a manned shuttle mission that is out of range of using the International Space Station as an emergency refuge. The Hubble's current batteries and gyroscopes will probably fail in a few years, leaving the dead telescope to crash back to earth around year 2020."
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No Formal Risk Analysis of Hubble Rescue by NASA More

No Formal Risk Analysis of Hubble Rescue by NASA

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  • Well, then (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 05, 2005 @07:19PM (#11855419)
    I guess it would be poetic justice if it fell down to Earth and landed on Fred Gregory.

    • Re:Well, then (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Doh. I meant Sean O'Keefe.

      • Re:Well, then (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Dashing Leech ( 688077 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @08:15PM (#11855771)
        I don't think it's fair to put all this on him. A lot of this comes directly from the CAIB report [www.caib.us]. Recommendation R6.4-1 states:
        "For missions to the International Space Station, develop a practicable capability to inspect and effect emergency repairs to the widest possible range of damage to the Thermal Protection System, including both tile and Reinforced Carbon-Carbon, taking advantage of the additional capabilities available when near to or docked at the International Space Station.

        For non-Station missions, develop a comprehensive autonomous (independent of Station) inspection and repair capability to cover the widest possible range of damage scenarios."

        Now they've just spent 2 years and hundreds of millions just developing the capabilities for inspecting and repairing based on the ISS option. The autonomous option is many years and probably billions of dollars away, and they only have a few years to repair Hubble before it goes down. Add to this that they're not supposed to be schedule-driven anymore by Recommendation R6.2-1:

        "Adopt and maintain a Shuttle flight schedule that is consistent with available resources. Although schedule deadlines are an important management tool, those deadlines must be regularly evaluated to ensure that any additional risk incurred to meet the schedule is recognized, understood, and acceptable."

        So NASA's in a tight spot here. Don't be schedule driven yet develop all of these capabilities that take years and huge budgets to develop but do it in time to save Hubble. And then they're retiring the shuttle fleet a few years later anyway so all of this effort and cost for the "non-ISS" flights is really just for Hubble. I'm not saying O'Keefe made the right decision, but I hardly think he deserves the trashing he's been getting on this decision, which isn't even final yet. It seems like a very sound decision given the circumstances, but we'll see how the political will finally responds.

        • Re:Well, then (Score:3, Insightful)

          by JCallery ( 87411 )
          "they're not supposed to be schedule-driven anymore"

          False.
          In fact, R6.2-1 says that "schedule deadlines are an important management tool." It simply says that meeting a schedule is not more important than recognizing and understanding risks that come during the schedule, and adjusting the schedule accordingly. This is true, whether you're scheduled to pick your child up at school (don't drive at extremely reckless speeds in a residential area just because you're running late), or if you're planning a m

          • Re:Well, then (Score:2, Interesting)

            by InvalidError ( 771317 )
            One "problem" with saving Hubble is that now, image processing techniques have made it possible to merge observations from multiple ground-based telescope and achieve better-than-Hubble resolution.

            With Hubble rendered nearly obsolete by ground-based computing and sensing advances, repairing Hubble is most likely not worth it unless it is also upgraded. Assembling Hubble on ground took months, upgrading would require significant (possibly delicate) disassembly and subsequent re-assembly which probably are

          • Re:Well, then (Score:3, Insightful)

            by virtual_mps ( 62997 )

            This is all we ask. Do a risk analysis for the Hubble mission. Identify and assess the risks and benefits of carrying out the mission. If the goal of continuing Hubble's mission (which is a very complex and dynamic issue to define in the first place) does not outweight the risks, then that's fine. But have the data to back it up. We are (supposed to be) scientists at NASA. We make up our minds based on analyzing as many of the associated facts as possible.

            No, a formal risk analysis for this is just a way t

          • "It simply says that meeting a schedule is not more important than recognizing and understanding risks that come during the schedule, and adjusting the schedule accordingly."

            That is what I meant by "schedule-driven". In the past NASA has been driven to take risks to meet an artificial (or real) deadline rather than waiting until the technical work and assessments can be properly completed. Nobody wants to be the one to delay a shuttle flight or expensive operations that's taken years of preparation, and

  • If it is up long enough... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spywarearcata.com ( 841806 ) * on Saturday March 05, 2005 @07:21PM (#11855442)
    ...then as NASAs competence ramps down, may be private space entrepreneurs' ramp up.

    Perhaps like an abandoned sailing ship the Hubble will be salvaged--and rescued--by private a private space craft.
    • Also, like an abandoned sailing ship, the Hubble would be claimed as government property [navy.mil].
      • Fair enough. But then maybe like HavenCo at Sealand--a property claimed by the UK--squatters will turn it into a vastly more powerful data have / forwarding center.
        Will the US send up space marines to evict them? Not likely! Arrrrh.
      • The distinction being that Navy ships, by definition, are armed. Being armed they are soverign terriroty. The Hubble is not, and too use the analogy, thus free for anyone to salvage.
      • NASA's 2006 budget request includes money for deorbiting Hubble [cnn.com]. The plan would be to connect a propulsion module for a controlled crash landing. I would guess they would put into the Pacific Ocean.

        Just letting Hubble crash into some random spot on the Earth in a decade or two would be a bit risky.

        • sure seems like... (Score:2, Interesting)

          by zogger ( 617870 )
          ...if they can send a robot mission to attach some rockets to it, to make it *come down*, seems like they could just re-aim it for a higher orbit and park the thing so it stays up longer, and eventually space flight will be cheaper/easier and etc and it can be rebuilt and reused. I mean what's the diff? so they got to use a scosh more powerful rocket propulsion dealie, again, so what? still cheap enough to do most likely. It's not like there are thousands of advanced space telescopes to go around for all th

    • I would just like to note. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Saturday March 05, 2005 @07:52PM (#11855630) Homepage
      I don't know if this is what you are trying to say-- I can't quite tell. So please don't take this as an attack.

      But just because public space development is good does not mean that NASA is bad, or that bad things happening to NASA are good.

      I see a lot of people on slashdot, seemingly mostly libertarians, who seem to be cheering anything bad that happens to NASA on the theory this is somehow a victory for private space development. It isn't. This is not a zero sum game. NASA's loss is not private space development's gain. A gain for private space development is a gain for humanity's involvement in space; a loss for public space development is a loss for humanity's involvement in space, but nothing else.

      The things NASA does in space don't supplant what private enterprise would be doing, they supplement it. NASA's goals in space are-- or should be-- to do the things that benefit humanity but which no clear profit model exists from. Meanwhile the advancements NASA creates in space can-- or should be-- models for private enterprise. NASA could and should do more to explicitly encourage private space development and explicitly see themselves as to some extent partners with private space enterprise (I don't know who owns the technology NASA uses in space, I assume the aerospace contractors who built everything do, but I think that technology should be publicly documented and the patents available to the public for use by private operators, since after all the public paid for it) but even as it is private space development can and will benefit from NASA and its presence, and vice versa. Private space development and NASA aren't enemies, this isn't football.

      Meanwhile even in the areas where the actions of NASA and private space operators overlap, private space operators simply aren't ready to replace NASA even if they should. Private space development shows great promise but it is truly at an infant stage.

      Aside from the above, I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying; you may well be right about salvaging or reclaiming Hubble. looks like Hubble will be entering the atmosphere sometime between 2010 and 2032. [wikipedia.org] They're not there now, but it seems likely private space enterprise may get to the point where they can rescue it before it is lost forever even if NASA isn't interested...
      • But just because public space development is good does not mean that NASA is bad, or that bad things happening to NASA are good.

        Should have been

        But just because private space development is good does not mean that NASA is bad, or that bad things happening to NASA are good.

        I hope it was still clear what I meant there.

      • Re:I would just like to note. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @10:05PM (#11856376) Journal
        Most libertarians I know don't think NASA is somehow inherently bad -- there are far worse examples of federal money being wastefully expended. As for myself, I really like a lot of the things NASA has done, especially with the Mars Rovers and Cassini.

        The problem many libertarians have with NASA is that they've completely destroyed the spaceflight market, so it isn't like anything remotely resembling a thriving free market. When NASA needs to get a person into space, they don't do it by simply buying a ticket from a rocket launch company which offers the best combination of reliability, quality, and cost. Such a solution would be highly favored by libertarians, as it would operate within the market and would help ensure a steady decrease in launch costs and an increase in reliability.

        Rather, what NASA does is give a cost-plus contract to one of the aerospace giants (Boeing, Lockheed, etc.) to develop a launch vehicle. With a cost-plus contract the aerospace giant has absolutely no incentive to decrease launch costs or exercise any sort of fiscal restraint; it's actually quite the opposite, as the more money the contractor uses up the more money pads their pockets. The fact that the launch market has been so distorted by contracts like this prevents private spaceflight companies from effectively competing and keeps launch costs absurdly high.

        The only reason a private space market is starting to emerge nowadays is because NASA has pretty much no interest or influence on the suborbital tourism market. This will allow market forces to actually come into effect.

        Personally, what I'd like to see is for NASA to stop with cost-plus contracts and act as more of a customer within the market. Things like the Centennial Challenges [nasa.gov] are great, where companies are paid a flat amount based on results, rather than however much they say they need to develop a solution.

        • Re:I would just like to note. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by DerekLyons ( 302214 ) <fairwater@@@gmail...com> on Saturday March 05, 2005 @11:28PM (#11856752) Homepage
          The problem many libertarians have with NASA is that they've completely destroyed the spaceflight market, so it isn't like anything remotely resembling a thriving free market.
          Since NASA launches account for less than 10% of all launches - that's an astonishing accomplishment. (Most space launches are commercial launches, commsats and the like.) The DoD (Which is also non-NASA) accounts for another 8% or so.
          When NASA needs to get a person into space, they don't do it by simply buying a ticket from a rocket launch company which offers the best combination of reliability, quality, and cost.
          If such a rocket launch company existed, NASA would undoubtedly buy a ticket from them. But no such company exists. (Many have tried to get into business, but they've invariably found it to be very expensive - and with little return. NASA doesn't fly often enough to make it viable, and there is no destination for non-NASA flights.)
          Rather, what NASA does is give a cost-plus contract to one of the aerospace giants (Boeing, Lockheed, etc.) to develop a launch vehicle. With a cost-plus contract the aerospace giant has absolutely no incentive to decrease launch costs or exercise any sort of fiscal restraint;
          ROTFL. The last launch vehicle NASA paid to develop was the Space Shuttle.

          The Atlas and Delta that are the prime candidates to launch the CEV? Developed by commercial enterprises, for commercial enterprises, with their own money. The problem however is that launch rates aren't really price sensitive. Boeing or Lockmart could spend millions cutting launch costs by 25%, and only get a 5-10% (if any) increase in launch rates. That's a net loss for them. And commercial enterprises don't generally lose money on that scale on purpose.

          The fact that the launch market has been so distorted by contracts like this prevents private spaceflight companies from effectively competing and keeps launch costs absurdly high.
          Boeing, Lockmart, and others (all private companies) have been competing in a free and open market for thirty years. It looks to many as if it's not effective competition as they don't understand how a limited demand, price insensitive market works - it's not like hamburgers or cars.
          Personally, what I'd like to see is for NASA to stop with cost-plus contracts and act as more of a customer within the market.
          You mean the way they've bought the majority of their launches (I.E. expendables) for thirty years? You mean the way they are planning to for the CEV?

          All I can conclude is Libertarians don't understand economics.

      • what _are_ the rules of salvage in space?

        When does hubble become legal to grab by first-commers?
    • few years for privates to make a manned spacecraft able to get to the point where hubble is in 'few years'? unlikely.

      maybe they've realised that the shuttle sucks and doing anything with it is a too big risk to take unless the payoff is hefty or the risk can be reduced(like using the iss as a rescue point).

      though, what would be more intresting would be if they could fix it with an unmanned probe or contract it out to russians.

  • What does that say about the safety of the shuttle (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 05, 2005 @07:25PM (#11855468)
    Got to make you wonder just how safe the shuttles are when the primary risk isn't repairing the Hubble telescope but being on a shuttle in the first place. Two blow up and now they hesitate to take them up unless it's in an orbit that crosses with the space station. After the Challenger I said I'd go up the next day on one because I trusted NASA. Now I'm not so sure. Sad because they used to have one of the best safety records in history given the massive risks involved in any space mission.

  • a long time ago... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eobanb ( 823187 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @07:25PM (#11855470) Homepage
    NASA really knew what they were doing. they spent quite a bit of money, but we did Apollo, we did Skylab, we did Hubble, and they managed to maintain public support. Then they just somehow fucked it up. I get the feeling it had something to do with the ISS, because that's around when the problems really began. The ISS is not a sustainable or viable presence in space. What we really need to look toward is 1) commercial development in space, which will lead to 2) a continued stay there for humanity. I usually don't like privatisation of government programs, but in this case, I think there may be companies that can construct and launch, for example, inflatable habitats as mentioned in previous slashdot articles, at a low cost. NASA hasn't even really seriously considered something like this, and now look at what we have. A space station that is important for scientific research, yes, but the actual value we're getting out of it for the money we spent is HIGHLY questionable.
    • Actually let me add on a little to what I said. I clicked Submit before thinking it all through. Strangely that's pretty much what NASA has done, too, except NASA isn't posting to slashdot, they're responsible for the most formidable space program in our history. Yet it's starting to become less and less formidable all the time. It's mostly a series of bad management decisions that's leading to the fate of the shuttle and Hubble. I wonder where we'll be in ten years' time? I hope we aren't just going t
    • With regard to the last slashdot story. I think allowing private corps access to any sort of space venture is bad news. But we all know it is going to happen anyway.

    • I get the feeling it had something to do with the ISS, because that's around when the problems really began.

      Yet you cite Skylab as a NASA success? I would argue the Internaitonal Space Station has been exponentially more useful than Skylab was.

      Anyway, these "problems" you speak of didn't necessarily begin at any certain time; they've always been inherent with having a large, publicly-owned, government-run space agency. Things get done faster and more efficiently with a private company because they're

      • Skylab was never intended to be permanent. It was supposed to be in service only for a few months. The ISS is a very long-term station, which is why cost of maintenance is much more important. You can barely compare Skylab and the ISS because Skylab was designed for a time when we didn't really have any experience with space stations, so it was a sort of trial run, designed mostly for running some then-pioneering experiments in space. These days, something like Skylab wouldn't be so interesting or impor

    • NASA really knew what they were doing. they spent quite a bit of money, but we did Apollo, we did Skylab, we did Hubble, and they managed to maintain public support. Then they just somehow fucked it up. I get the feeling it had something to do with the ISS ...

      NASA screwed the pooch long before even Skylab. With the early Apollo landings a done deal, NASA submitted thier plans for the future. Obvious follow ups were a space station, lunar base, and Mars mission. The Battlestar Galactica (i.e., BIG)

    • I can't agree more. ISS is a major disaster. I tell you why the ISS will fail to achieve its goal:

      (1) it will not be able to have no more than three crews on board (limited to the availability of the escape vehicle, e.g., Soyuz capsule at this point),
      (2) the three-person crew cannot run a laboratory,
      (3) there exists no viable design for a return vehicle to carry more than 5 or 6 (considering a space shuttle, if we are to park it),
      (4) each modules are more or less designed to do specific experiment, not ver
    • Could just be a problem of how government-run institutions work (often, very poorly). It seems to me that government bureacracies are awash in paperwork and rules, which stifles productivity and risk-taking. They also tend to be underfunded or have their funding priorities dictated externally, which restricts what they can do.

      Meanwhile, the people who never the less try to actually get shit done take the most flak; getting anything done inevitably means stepping on toes or running against a rule or two, s

  • What the goddamn hell (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 05, 2005 @07:28PM (#11855485)
    The last eight years of NASA history have been a basic running thing of massive administrative incompetence and poor oversight at NASA resulting in consistent disaster and the only results being that since "NASA isn't working" we're cutting science out of NASA and putting more power in the hands of the administrators that failed to provide appropriate oversight in the first place.

    People keep questioning whether NASA should continue, given the disaster it's been. Man, NASA's fine. It's people like Sean O'Keefe that have to go. Thank God he's retiring. Unfortunately I'm afraid of who his replacement will be, especially since his replacement seems to be coming in as part of a program to cut out what little science is left in NASA's programs in order to dump all the budget to a vague "let's go to mars!" plan that seems about as well-conceived and likely to turn out as planned as any of those five unsuccessful shuttle replacement programs NASA blew its budget on at the end of the 90s.
    • I find it interesting that there are two frontpage Slashdot articles in a row that discuss what happens when a non-engineer (and someone who never had any real connections with engineering at that) is put in charge of engineers.

      "Unaffordable, unrealistic, and unachievable"? Maybe the financing would have been problematic, but the latter two are virtually never a problem for engineers left to do their work. The robotics would have to be adapted, yes, but that's not an impossible job.

      This is the kind of t
    • Are "formal risk analyses" on novel missions worth squat anyhow? I really don't believe whatever number they came up with would be worth anything. They don't really know the risk. Nobody does.

  • For What It's Worth.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PDXNerd ( 654900 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @07:29PM (#11855491)
    When you are dealing with Red Tape, you cannot just say "We want a new telescope" because the answer is "What is wrong with your current telescope? It sees the universe just fine, right?"

    So, you say your current telescope is old and you need a budget for something new and bigger and better, technology progresses, right?

    What we can infer is that NASA has something else they want to put up that, if they "rescued" the Hubble, would cut into the budget for their new thing they want to put up.
    • But surely their lawyers can find an example of prior art!

    • Re:For What It's Worth.. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The problem is O'Keefe, the old administrator, who was selected by Bush for the NASA head administrator position. He then made sure Bush's Mars agenda would get pushed, against the will of most of the actual astronomers, scientists, and engineers.


      NASA has some of the brightest scientists around, but is headed by a bureaucratic mess, and especially given that Bush selected chairs who would loyally cut programs to push whatever Bush wanted.

  • Build a bigger new one (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zymano ( 581466 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @07:31PM (#11855503)
    Don't go throught the regular contractors because they want billions of dollars.

    Contract small companies that are willing to build one for peanuts.

    Find some other material other than glass to construct it from to save on weight. Maybe a thin ceramic that can be slightly bent with heat or electricity.

    some facts:

    # How big is it? This mirror measures 2.5 meters (98 inches) across and weighs 748 kilograms (1,650 pounds). The useable surface of the mirror in the Hubble was slightly smaller-about 2.4 meters (94 inches)-because the mirror mounting covered the outer edge.
    # Why doesn't it look like a mirror? This mirror was never used, so it never received a reflective coating. The mirror in the Hubble was coated with a thin layer of aluminum and also overcoated with magnesium fluoride, so it could better reflect ultraviolet light.
    # What is it made of? The mirror is made of Corning ultra-low expansion glass. The front and back surfaces are fused to a lattice core and to the inner and outer bands, creating a sturdy but lightweight structure.

    • You should credit [si.edu] your sources when posting someone else's material. Wouldn't want to be accused of plagerism, after all.

    • so.. first you suggest that use a small company and do it on the cheap..t hen you suggest them finding a new material which of course is not cheap. and here i was thinking that they already could have gotten quite a number of universities into the project to build the thing for them(like lots of instruments on the rovers and so on).....

      biggest problem with a space telescope is putting it up there(and making it not need repairs, because getting up there again is very expensive).

  • Emotion vs logic (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 05, 2005 @07:32PM (#11855509)
    So many people are making so much fuss about the decision to let the Hubble die, when there are ALREADY better telescopes in operation, and MUCH better telescopes planned. If NASA has to go fix the old one, not only are they just delaying the inevitable, but they're also delaying other, more useful missions.

    • Re:Emotion vs logic (Score:4, Informative)

      by CondeZer0 ( 158969 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @05:51AM (#11857811) Homepage
      You obviously have no clue what you are talking about, there are many wavelengths that can't be covered from the ground and that are not properly covered by and other space telescope, specially in the UV.

      Hubble has some other great advantages over any ground telescope: a much darker background, and possibility of _much_ longer observation times, for certain things this is not important, but for other tasks this is _fundamental_.

      When you request some time at Hubble you already have to explain _why_ that task can't be done in any other way, so Hubble is already being used only for things that can't practically be done with anything else.

      And JWST wont help with this, because as anyone with a clue knows, it's designed to _complement_ Hubble, not to replace it, and their capabilities do not overlap.

      Currently there are not even plans to build anything that could replace what Hubble provides.

      And for those that say that Hubble is old, thanks to the previous Shuttle missions to it, many of it's instruments have been replaced with much better and improved versions keeping it at the front of the state of the art.

      (Actually the cancelled servicing mission was going to install some really cool and powerful bits that costed various hundreds of millions of $ and now are just gathering dust)

      So stop the FUD already and inform yourself.

    • Except that the other telescopes do not cover the same frequency. Yes, Shri Kulkarni (I believe he was the one) developed some impressive adaptive optics for the Keck Telescopes, but people still need Hubble because it's in space instead of under the earth's absorptive atmosphere. Similarly, Spitzer and other planned telescopes are not replacements because they operate at different frequencies. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the only option is to service Hubble, though I think it would be a good PR m

  • that's sad (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dj42 ( 765300 ) * on Saturday March 05, 2005 @07:32PM (#11855512) Journal
    I hate to see something like Hubble just fall to Earth. There are EXPLORERS willing to risk their lives, and people will to risk their equipment. From what I understand NASA astronauts are WELL AWARE of the risks presented by doing such missions. What is sad to me is that we use spin-off and related knowledge and technologies from things like the Hubble launch, but that the actual results of it seem to just be icing. It's the process of doing it that seems more important than the "End Result". Strangely, you would think in-orbit manned repairs would really take priority (considering the amount of pricey objects up there: in life and in money). But I guess if you don't once, why would you bother to do it again? Outer space and inner space are two of the most important human agendas. To see them back-seated to political and financial concern are reflective of our state as a people.

  • A bit misleading (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rijrunner ( 263757 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @07:39PM (#11855552)
    The CAIB did a fairly large number of risk asessments for returning the Shuttle to flight. That covered just basic flight and the risks involved. The numbers for Hubble would be essentially those numbers.

    I rather suspect that the risk analyis for Hubble would be something along the lines of "For non-strategic flights on Shuttle, we have to have a 99.5% chance of success". Since the baseline Shuttle analysis for the risks on return-to-flight are already outside that boundry, then it makes zero sense to spend money digging deeper.

  • Little to do with safety (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CaptDeuce ( 84529 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @07:42PM (#11855573) Journal

    ... previous NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe made the decision "based on what he perceived was the risk". This perceived risk is in performing a manned shuttle mission that is out of range of using the International Space Station as an emergency refuge. ...

    Loose consensus at sci.space.tech is that O'Keefe's decision has virtually nothing to do with safety and everything to do with the extremely tight schedule necessary to complete ISS (International Space Station).

    O'Keefe stated that he would abide by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) report. My understanding is that board did not insist that the Shuttle be able to seek refuge at ISS.

    It's interesting that the article speaks of "risk" but doesn't explicitly use the term " safety risk" which is assumed. Indeed, the risks of any extra Shuttle flights go beyond the safety of the crew. Consider that the Shutle's only mission is ISS assembly after which the fleet will be retired -- and rightfully so. If a Shuttle were even to be reparably damaged with no injuries to the crew, the ISS program would be seriously threatened.

    • O'keefe made a snap decision. Ok, no problem. After all he has years and years of work doing engineering assesments. Oh wait. He is an accountant and a politician. IOW, he has NO SKILL SETS that are required for making intelligent choices on this unless there was something else driving this.

  • *sigh* (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gt_swagger ( 799065 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @07:51PM (#11855617) Homepage
    It's really sad how far NASA has plummeted down the priority list since it wasn't being pushed to 'defeat' communism. The decline in NASA's quality and quantity of work are inevitable given how their budget seems to be the sacrificial lamb in Washington so often. I, for one, will continue to be interested in the heavens. As was said in my favorite commercial: "We've always watched the stars. If you look at the sky you can see the beginning of time."

  • Two sides to this story (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ExtraT ( 704420 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @08:32PM (#11855852)
    Basically, there are two sides to this story. First of all, any kind of talk about risks is complete bullshit. The risks are no greater than in all previous Shuttle missions, and flying within docking distance of ISS is not a magical solution that somehow makes the risks becaom significantly smaller. It's just that NASA became so politicized, that they routinely use purely political tricks, and this talk of risk is exactly that. They are just repeating their routine after the Challenger accident: back then it turned out that the Shuttle's lack of emergency escape system proved to be a bad idea. So, their solution was to invent a bogus, unuseable escape system to make everybody shut up. The only thing this system is good for, is torturing the crue very creatively for PR purposes. And now they came up with the "if it breaks, we'll dock at ISS" solution. A complete garbage. On the other hand, NASA is right in one thing: Hubble IS NOT WORTH REVIVING YET AGAIN. It's better to let it die gracefully and replace it with a new and better telescope. A Shuttle mision to repair Hubble is, at this point, a complete waste of resources and a tremendous hinderence to the NGST program. In short - NASA became a purely political organization, one that is incapable of telling people the hard truth, and consistenyly choosing to replace it with sweet lies. And this certainly didn't happen just yesterday. :(
  • I remember reading an earlier story here about the estimated cost to send humans to mars in the 70-90 billion dollar range. Bush during re-election pledged about a 3 billion dollar increase and a new long term mission.

    Obviously funding to fix hubble had to be cut to pay for the shoe string budgeted mars exploration.

    The safety hazard is really a coverup.

  • Hubble Origins Probe: replace instead of repair (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @09:30PM (#11856177) Journal
    I'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone about the Hubble Origins Probe, a proposal to replace Hubble with a cheaper and better (and, dare I say, faster) craft:

    An international team led by Johns Hopkins University astronomers have proposed an alternative [spaceref.com] to sending a robotic or manned repair mission to the ailing Hubble Space Telescope [wikipedia.org]. Their proposal is to build a new Hubble Origins Probe [jhu.edu], reusing the Hubble design but using lighter and more cost-effective technologies. The probe would include instruments currently waiting to be installed on Hubble, as well as a Japanese-built imager which 'will allow scientists to map the heavens more than 20 times faster than even a refurbished Hubble Space Telescope could.' It would take an estimated 65 months and $1 billion to build and launch, approximately the same cost as a robotic service mission.

    Here's the official web site, with slideshows and posters explaining the planned scientific instruments:

    http://www.pha.jhu.edu/hop/ [jhu.edu]

    In my opinion the original Hubble is mostly valuable for sentimental/historical reasons. From a pure cost/benefit analysis, replacing it seems the best solution in pretty much every possible way.

  • Political Decision, As It Shoud Be (Score:4, Insightful)

    by reallocate ( 142797 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @09:38PM (#11856230)
    The political fallout from a disaster during a Hubble repair mission is something NASA can't absorb. No risk analysis can act as a buffer between NASA and a disillusioned public and a Congress full of people looking for reasons to gut NASA.

    O'Keefe's decision was a political decision made for political reasons. Choosing not to fly the Shuttle's most dangerous mission was the right decision in the aftermath of Columbia. Not a popular decision, but the right decision.

    Risk analysis is an engineering tool, but leading NASA is not an engineering task.
    • The Shuttle's most dangerous mission was Centaur, which would have put a fully fueled liquied booster in the payload bay - at a few tons over the rated capacity of the launch vehicle. It was cancelled in the wake of the Challenger accident, and I heard none of the engineers wishing it hadn't been...
      "...not an engineering task".
      Actually, we refer to some forms of management as "electropolitical engineering".

  • Interesting point (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Zenmonkeycat ( 749580 )
    I've been part of the die-hard Hubble fan club since it launched, and when I heard that NASA was going to end the project by, in layman's terms, "not giving a s--t anymore," I was very pissed off.

    But a friend of mine (and a robotics engineer) made a good point: Hubble sure kicks ass, but we've got bigger and better technology now. Maybe we can spend all the "Hubble Rescue" money on something even more impressive, which would yield even better imagery than our good ol' HST.

    Sure, I'll be very sad when (n

  • NASA failed to be bureaucratic!?

    Did they suddenly switch to an achievement based payroll?
  • This guy in Space Daily [spacedaily.com] a year and a half ago wrote an interesting article that proposed the idea of using an ESA hosted launch of a Soyuz (or two) to service Hubble. I have no idea if its feasible, but I wonder if anyone in NASA is considering ideas like this.

  • FUD, FUD, FUD (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JetScootr ( 319545 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @10:57PM (#11856618) Journal
    NASA officials have stated publicly the agency's decision to cancel further servicing to Hubble was made on safety issues alone, not cost.
    I hope so, I don't want to think that it's too expensive to save lives...the article rewords this same position 7 times in a row as if there's something wrong with this position.
    As Gregory told Congress, "Administrator O'Keefe made a very conscious, deliberate and well-informed decision that the shuttle would not service the Hubble."

    ... "NASA historian Steven Dick ... revealed that, in fact, no formal risk analysis had been completed."
    This doesn't say anyone claimed there was a formal document generated. One can be well-informed without lots of formal paperwork.
    The decision was made (by O'Keefe) based on what he perceived was the risk."
    Sometimes it's just a no-brainer. Why strain over it?
    For example, according to ... anonymous, one company actually proposed using an updated version of the module that was built in the 1990s to allow the shuttle to dock with Russian Mir space station...so the crews could be transferred from one spacecraft to the other in a shirt-sleeve environment...
    Docking between human life support systems is irrelevant. Hubble is not a human-bearing spacecraft, and has no "inside" to dock to, no airlock. The piece of equipment mentioned here is as useless to fixing Hubble as it would be to fixing the engine of your lawnmower.
    O'Keefe testified before the National Academy of Sciences in June 2004, he made no mention of this docking module option, telling academy panel members that the only method available for crew rescue was a spacewalk
    Since there's no "inside" of Hubble, the repairs have to be made from the outside of Hubble, like your car has to be repaired from the *outside* of the engine, this was and will always be true. So a spacewalk is the only way. Kinda like getting wet is the only way to swim.
    Nor has NASA ever apparently considered the idea of using one of the several available supply modules to supplement the provisions of an orbiting shuttle...such a module could be used as a supply depot for a damaged shuttle - a form of safe haven ..."
    A "supply depot" is not a "safe haven" - it's a spare parts cabinet. A "safe haven" would be a second working space craft that could replicate all the functions of the first, otherwise, if something goes wrong, you have two sets of problems: the limits of the disabled vehicle, and the limits of the "safe haven". If they both can't do the same thing at any point, you're dead. Redundancy for safety must be planned in total in advance, or it's useless.
    ...thereby extending its time in orbit ...
    Having a safe haven does not lengthen the time the orbiter can stay in orbit - same as the "supply depot" situation. The redundancy is not there to be relied on for primary mission objectives, but to bail you out if needed.
    Two such supply modules...are under development ...
    Now we know why they weren't considered. They don't exist yet.
    As Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., noted during those same science committee hearings, "If we're unwilling to take the risks to go to Hubble, then what does that say about (our willingness to mount) a moon and eventual Mars mission?
    It says that we recognize that the shuttle's old and busted technology left over from the 1970's and if we're gonna do something bold, we gotta do it with new hotness. I could go on, but I think I've made my points....
    • I could debate each of your points individually, but that would take more time than you appear to have put into understanding the story.

      On your comments about no need for formal risk assessment;

      Basically, I don't believe that having a scientific risk assessment done would be all that foolish when deciding between various possibly multi-billion dollar options. It is becoming more and more clear that O'Keefe made the wrong judgement; of the groups that have since looked at the issue, now including the Nati
      • I was thinking the story was about the title: "Backing a bad HUBBLE decision". shuttle-to-shuttle docking has no impact on Hubble repair mission, because Hubble isn't a space shuttle.
        Since no one has ever done a "rescue mission" of one manned space craft using another manned space craft (with the possible exception of a few of the trips up to Mir), designing everything needed to make it work, and to make sure it would work under most plausible failure modes would take far longer than Hubble can wait.
        If one
  • damned good thing he's headed out of there. now, if the new guy has some cojones and puts the hubble mission back on the schedule, we're getting somewhere.....

  • Why start now? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by idlake ( 850372 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @06:52AM (#11857893)
    This was clearly a judgment call, not due to a formal analysis. NASA doesn't want to repair the Hubble, for various political and technical reasons.

    And why should they do a formal analysis? The whole point of making Hubble human-serviceable was probably to serve as another ustification for the shuttle program. The rational, low-risk decision would have been to start planning on sending up an entire replacement telescope years ago, for less money and less risk than the service missions.

    So, why start now with formal cost/risk/benefit analyses? No manned mission would survive that kind of analysis at this point: at this point, it's pretty much always cheaper and less risky to achieve whatever scientific or technological objective we have with unmanned missions.

  • Not NASA! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by johansalk ( 818687 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @02:14PM (#11859408)
    This doesn't surprise me at all. What surprises me is that people continue to remain oblivious to the obvious and in denial of the damning. O'Keefe's decisions do not represent NASA, they represent the Bush administration. People seem to assume that because he was a NASA administrator then his decisions reflect those of NASA, well NO, he's a politician who joined the Bush administration on its very first day and whose niche is spinning budgets wherever he was dispatched to serve their political objectives. Does it surprise me that he made a decision without a formal study of the technical and scientific issues? No more so than the policies of the Bush administration on climate change that continue to ignore and defy all scientific and technical consensus, or for that matter, on embryonic stem cell research, the economy, or other issues. This is an administration that's driven by dogma and electoral politics. This is an administration whose core electorates and campaigners include evengelical creationists who continue to believe that God created man and woman 6000 years ago and that creation as told in Genesis ought to be reintroduced to science curriculae and taught to school children. This is an administration headed by a president who asserted that "On the issue of evolution, the verdict is still out on how God created the Earth", which is an even more explicit assertion than the creationist campaigners' own "evolution is a theory, not a fact" stickers that they want on schools' science books. Anyone who cares enough about science to study its history and how its epistemological method came to be what it is today will be clear in knolwedge and mind that for many centuries from Copernicus through Kepler and Galileo and to Haley and Newton the the history of science was none other than the history of astronomy; the history of the struggle between the scientists who directly observed the heavens with their eyes and telescopes and the clergy who derived their authority from the scriptures that they claimed came from those very same heavens. Telescopes were the defning instrument of science that eventually led to societal secularism through Descartes and Bacon and Hubble is simply a fancy version of Galileo's own instrument that continues to inform us on how we came to exist by eyeing the birth of the universe that's evident in its distant depths and giving further credence to secular teachings, and many of Hubble's findings have found their way into university and school curriculae already. Anyone who believes that money for the Hubble servicing mission can not be found by an administration that provides tens and tens of billions in "faith-based initiatives" that amount to nothing more than handouts to their core campaigners and that deliberaly runs a budget deficit of hundreds and billions that will lead to nothing less than the cold-blooded collapse of the humanist institutions of social security and welfare programs is out of his mind. This is kleptocratic administration that seeks to reverse centuries of humanist progress and return us to our "original foundation" of being under the mercy of a criminal clergy and under the dominion of a militant marcantile. I suspect what I have written above may invite the diatribe of a kukluxitious clan whose ideas of political conduct derives from their tribalist tradition in spectator sports and who approach reasoned debates with the mentality of a dogfight, but I couldn't care less about responding to them, for it is all futile to reason with dogs, and they'll eventually get what they deserve in their trashtastic future from a political elite who couldn't care less about them beyond the expolitation of their mass stupidities.
  • I don't understand, is it just incompetence or is there a global anti-space conspiracy... Russian government and the space agency did exactly the same with Mir. No transparency, few solid arguments, no impartial studies. Just an arbitrary final decision - "Dump it into the ocean". A useful tool destroyed for no apparent reason at all.

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