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NASA To Determine Hubble's Fate
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Oct 26, 2006 10:21 AM
from the you-can-store-it-on-my-lawn dept.
from the you-can-store-it-on-my-lawn dept.
clickclickdrone writes "According to the BBC NASA is debating whether or not to send astronauts in to space to service the Hubble telescope. Without intervention it is thought to be good for another 24-36months.
Given the quality of images and data it has produced since it's launch, it sounds like a no brainer to me but the people who hold the purse strings are rarely predictable when it comes to spending money."
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The Hubble Lives On 132 comments
tanman writes "CNN reports that NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has agreed to send astronauts on one final mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. No date was reported for the mission, other than before the shuttle fleet is retired. From the article, 'A rehab mission would keep Hubble working until about 2013. It would add two new camera instruments, upgrade aging batteries and stabilizing equipment, add new guidance sensors and repair a light-separating spectrograph. Without a servicing mission, Hubble will likely deteriorate in 2009 or 2010.'"
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Auction Hubble (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's no moon! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Auction Hubble (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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FOR SALE: One Space Telescope, under warranty. w/ 3-year service contract. Ask for Tony.
Re:Auction Hubble (Score:5, Interesting)
Surprisingly not. Most astronomers I rub elbows with are not too supportive of the Hubble program. Sure, the pictures and deep field stuff is nice, but with recent advances in adaptive optics, we can build enormous ground-based scopes for much less money that outperform Hubble. And Hubble has diverted hundreds of millions of dollars away from other projects. I'm not a zealot for either side, but the professional astronomical community is certainly not of one mind on this.
Parent
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Interesting, which institution's astronomers are you "rubbing elbows" with? I'm a physicst, not an astronomer, but of all the astronomy faculty, post-docs, and grad students at my institution I know of only a single professional astronomer (out of dozens, maybe even approaching 100+) that favors phasing out Hubble, and that's only because he is a PI in a Hubble replacement proposal. And this includes astronomers that primaril
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Re:Auction Hubble (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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I'm sure you're just being facetious, but I figured I'd note for anyone that finds this sort of thing interesting, the Hubble can't track the earth. It's moving too fast, any images taken would end up as a streaky blur. Earth slides beneath it at something like 4 miles per second, and the shutter on the Hubble is intended for long exposures.
The Hubble doesn't even have the resolution to pick out the lunar landin
Get their attention... (Score:5, Funny)
Tell them Hubble might have found oil on a distant planet, and that we need to take another look.
Actually... (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini-Huygens [wikipedia.org]
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Prey tell, how so?
-nB
Re:Get their attention... (Score:5, Informative)
How about "Dissociation of Methane into Hydrocarbons at. Extreme (Planetary) Pressure and Temperature.", by F. Ancilotto, G. L. Chiarotti, S. Scandolo, and E. Tosatti, in the February 28, 1997 issue of Science? Their molecular dynamics simulations show that methane is likely to breakdown into a mixture including ethane, butane, and even alkanes (i.e. oil) at the high pressures and temperatures found deep within the interiors of Neptune and Uranus. No living organisms involved.
Let me guess, you probably think that oil is an infinite resource that magically renews itself.
Even when you feel certain that you're right, you should try to be more polite about it just in case you're wrong. Otherwise people may end up giving your opinions the same disdain you've shown to others.
It sounds like you saw the topic, immediately thought "abiotic oil nutjob", and hurried to wail on him. However, just because you recognize the biological history of oil on Earth doesn't mean you have to jump to the conclusion that no other processes operate elsewhere. Take that attitude too far and you'll end up trying to find the alien messages in pulsars.
Parent
Not Only Money (Score:4, Insightful)
it sounds like a no brainer to me but the people who hold the purse strings are rarely predictable when it comes to spending money.
There's way more than money at stake here. Maybe Hubble is worth the risk to the astronaut's lives, but you can't just ignore that issue.
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Re:Not Only Money (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Not Only Money (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of the "save Hubble" defense seems to be more sentimental than practical. I'm not saying it should be tossed in the bin just because it's old, but it IS old, and technology has advanced tremendously since it was put into orbit. I'm not against being sentimental either, but if the money doesn't exist to maintain two space observatories, I know I'd choose to get an all new one.
Parent
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That really isn't the choice. There isn't a replacement waiting in the wings that we can choose to launch instead. According to the WP article on HST [wikipedia.org], there may be a newer telescope that would be ready to launch in 2010, but that project is currently unfunded and thus that launch date should be pushed back by the time it would take to get funding. The JWST
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I think it would be a shame to have no functioning space-based telescope.
If they don't fix it, it will be a whole lot of years before (or, indeed, if) they get around to putting up a replacement. I can envision them not repairing Hubble, and then ultimately not putting up a rep
Re:Not Only Money (Score:5, Insightful)
There's way more than money at stake here. Maybe Hubble is worth the risk to the astronaut's lives, but you can't just ignore that issue.
Thats the core of the debate I'm sure, but its a ridiculous point. Space travel is always a risk to an astronaut. If astronauts have a problem with the risks involved then they should get a different job. I'm sure there is a whole line of would be astronauts ready to take their place. Its was a risk when they first put the Hubble in place, and when they serviced it the first time. The risk is unchanged since then, in fact it should be lower since they now have ideas of what problems they may encounter.
Parent
Many astronauts have spoken (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
their lives are not their own (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm just saying that just because we have astronauts willing to go doesn't mean we can
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Re:Not Only Money (Score:5, Insightful)
You're kidding, right? Anyone who manages to become an astronaut knows full well about the risks, and chose it anyway. If we were having to conscript people to go fix Hubble it would be one thing, but since the line of people who would volunteer to do it would stretch all the way from the launchpad to the vehicle assembly building, I say we let them do it!
<flamebait>Besides, it's not any riskier than being a soldier in Iraq...</flamebait>
Parent
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Since I'm biting on the flamebait, I'm not going to waste the time crunching numbers, but I think if you did you would be supprised just how much safer you are in Iraq over being an astronaut (percentage wise that is).
-nB
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This is going to sound cold - but its realistic.
The astronauts lives really aren't worth considering. They are volunteers and know the score - and there are hundreds if not thousands more where they came from. OTOH, the Orbiters are
Not so one-dimensional (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately for us, the current administration.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, our current president is (seemingly) not quite sharp enought to get most of what science discovers using the HST. He'd rather have "feet on the ground" as it were, telling him things like "We've landed and claimed Mars in the name of the USA" rather than "We've made a startling discovery regarding the dynamics of planetary formation within stellar nurseries".
That said, maybe it is time we went back to the true promise of space exploration - getting mankind out into the Galaxy. There is a certain attraction to the notion of manned space exploration versus robotic/remote methods. Certainly a kind of heroic appeal to the act itself; and all of our robotic/remote exploration was and is intended to ultimately pave the way for manned exploration anyhow. Perhaps we know enough now to take those first tenative steps into space.
Like most coins, this one appears to have two sides.
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Consider that while the push to put a human on the moon was mostly a marketing campaign the end result was that the public was happy to see large sums of their money spent on it. The shuttle program had similar hype but
The debate (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps they could take the space elevator...:b
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Why spend more money on it? (Score:2, Funny)
Astronauts or Hubble. Easy. (Score:2)
Yeah I know, the astronauts know the risks involved. Yet the risk is bigger to who manned space program should something go wrong, especially something going wrong on a mission that is "largely" optional.
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The only space missions that are not entirely optional are the ones that involve recovering crew from a space station.
If we can't afford the risk to service Hubble, then we can't afford the risk to do anything else in space and should just mothball the entire manned space program right now.
The shuttle is no
Abandonded property? (Score:2)
Mike broke the Hubble. (Score:3, Funny)
Replace it... (Score:3, Interesting)
already done (Score:3, Interesting)
Benefit to mankind (Score:3, Interesting)
Hubble may simply not be good enough (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hubble may simply not be good enough (Score:5, Interesting)
On top of that we've also sent up other spacecraft, or are building them, that dwarf Hubble's capabilities.
Hubble does have the rather unique ability to stay parked on a single target, continuously, for very long periods of time. No Earth based scope can do that. But again, there are smaller, faster, cheaper craft in service or coming on line soon that will have better imaging and better processing power.
I don't know that Hubble should be repaired and kept operating, but I do think it should be brought back to Earth for placement in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.
Parent
Outsource it to save money (Score:3, Insightful)
So glad I have all the information in front of me. (Score:3, Insightful)
The real problem (Score:3, Informative)
Grammar for Fun and Profit (Score:3, Insightful)
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Also, along the lines of another poster a fleet of NOAA immaging satalites would rule. Think of a google earth type site getting a high res refresh of the whole earth each week.