Astronauts, Robots to Save Hubble 213
BungoMan85 writes "Astronauts who serviced the Hubble Space Telescope, among others, feel that NASA's administrator Sean O'Keefe shouldn't be too quick to abandon the now 14 year old space telescope because of safety concerns arising from the Columbia disaster." And an anonymous reader writes "At the insistance of congress, NASA is looking for a way to save the Hubble. "It's the most unpopular decision I could have made," Sean O'Keefe said of his decision to cancel the shuttle mission planned to fix Hubble. He has authorized his engineers to pursue the possiblity of a robotic rescue mission. This could be a great opportunity for private industry contractors."
Screw it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I would have to agree... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe if we can't put it in a sustainable orbit (for repairs and such) why not bring it back to earth? AFAIK this has never been done and would be a huge test of the space agency... but once it was back on earth, not only could it be in a museum for all to see, we could also test all the different pieces of equipment on it for radiation exposure levels, and see just how well it held up to micrometorites and the like. There's a wealth of knowledge hubble still holds, discarding it now is a complete waste.
Re:Risk factors?... (Score:5, Interesting)
On the surface doesn't it appear that Sean O'Keefe is more concerned about avoiding another catastrophe rather than focusing on real safety? That type of thinking leads to unwilligness to take risks which is showing up in the form of bad decisions such as the one that pertains to not servicing the Hubble telescope.
Tough call... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I would have to agree... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I would have to agree... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:scared (Score:3, Interesting)
I really think that is it. They must have known that not servicing the hubble would be an extremely unpopular decion.
But they started to look at all the nuts and bolts of things that could go wrong and they had to start being honest with themselves.
There has been a specific culture in Nasa to overlook bad engineering that could be a major problem later on.
They knew that foam was falling off the shuttle since day one, but they just ignored it not realizing that it could have the kinetic energy of a cannonball. Same with the O'Rings and temperature.
How many other systems remain that are "marginal" and could result in a catastrophic failure? I bet there is a few.
If the shuttle blows up again that would quickly put Nasa out of business.
The thing that people need to remember is that everytime an astronaut goes into space they are riding a bomb.
Spaceplanes instead would be nice, but they simply do not exist.
Re:Risk factors?... (Score:1, Interesting)
Now, he is less willing to take risks, yet it is only through good risks that we move ahead. A number of NASA people have expressed the willingness to "take the risk" as they KNOW what is truely involved.
And yes, his unwillingness to do the real job is leading to very bad decisions.
Re:I would have to agree... (Score:3, Interesting)
Just because something is old, in no way makes it obsolete.. We still use virtually the same aircraft since the 1980's, the Boeing 737 and 747 have been obsoleted many times over by the 777 and other new aircraft, but the 737's and 747's are still in constant usage. Why? Expense and Risk Management. It's simply cheaper to use and maintain a working platform, than to build a new one and have it fail in some catastrophic way nobody could have planned for.
Ah, but the Boeing 737s are controlled by the private sector, which is very very good at continuing to use old resources, or finding a new use for them if they expire. (Take an example - the owner of a factory which manufactures steel rods goes bust. A new owner takes over, who manufacturers skateboard axles. A crap example, but you get my picture).
Hubble is controlled by the public sector, which is inherantly crap at finding new uses for old resources. You can justify a vastly larger budget by putting something completely new into space than you can by servicing something old.
Re:Wrongheaded policy (Score:4, Interesting)
The other possibility is that they just decided to dump it and didn't think people would react like this. I guess it depends on whether O'Keefe is really smart or really stupid.
Only if there is money (Score:5, Interesting)
No one is gonna do this work for free and who says NASA has the money. IMHO,the moon and Mars mission stuff is a shellgame with Hubble a victim. The administration says it wants to do something big but it will cost a lot of money. So, to "save" money, it will do some preliminary research. To fund this research, they cancel other programs. These other programs cost more than the research so they save money now (to pay for Iraq? tax cuts?). And since the research never comes to anything, they save money in the long run.
Remember, this is the administration that cancelled much of NASA's earth observing work and then turns around and says, "Gee, we can't find any signs of global warming."