NASA Urged to Reconsider Shuttle Mission to HST 199
LMCBoy writes "Space.com reports today that the National Academies of Science has released its recommendation to NASA on the future of the Hubble Space Telescope. They conclude that 'NASA should take no actions that would preclude a space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.' They also say that none of the safety requirements of the CAIB report preclude a manned servicing mission to HST." Read on for more.
"The NAS recommendation would reverse NASA's previous position that a shuttle repair mission is ruled out for safety reasons. In the wake of strong criticisms of this decision, NASA has also been considering a robotic repair mission. The robotic mission would not risk human lives, but it relies on a number of bleeding-edge technologies that would have to be deployed on a very short timescale. HST's remaining gyroscopes are not expected to last beyond 2007."
I hope they go ahead with this mission (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Show me the money... (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, but the authors of this report have got fuck all to do with the way that NASA evaluates safety.
If one or more of NASA's safety panels decides a mission should not take place for safety reasons, then that should be taken seriously. Not overruled by a bunch of scientists.
Of course they are well-meaning, but they are not engineers, they are not safety experts, and, frankly, those scientists who have a vested interest in this mission (i.e., some of the astronomers) should remove themselves from this kind of panel.
Why NASA bugs me (Score:5, Insightful)
And now what- we don't have the guts to fix Hubble? I think what this is really about is that we don't want to spend the money, that the head of NASA (O'Keefe is not even a scientist) is willing to bank on ground based telescopes under construction being able to fill in for what Hubble currently does (such as the almost burned observatory in Arizona). That is a dangerous, if not stupid, bet to be undertaking. Instead, we are going to throw our dollars at an improperly positioned space station that is doing trivial, not very important science and the search for life elsewhere in the solar system at a time when we are not technologically well equipped for such missions. We need to focus on near-Earth applications, going no further than the moon until we can bring down the costs and time needed to explore planets like Mars, Jupiter and Saturn for signs of life. I would rather obtain good astrophysics data than bad, inconclusive data about whether water existed in a crater on Mars many unspecified millions of years ago.
So we're just supposed to give up? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the idea at NASA that we should just not try something because there's a risk? I mean, is this the same agency that put men on the moon eleven years after being formed? Should I just not go to work tomorrow because I could get run down crossing the street?
What the hell happened to this country's can-do spirit?
Re:Show me the money... (Score:4, Insightful)
The current political pressure on NASA is to go to the moon and Mars. If NASA has to spend all of its money on that, there's nothing left for Hubble.
Make up your minds! (Score:5, Insightful)
No one's willing to take risks or make a decision anymore. All we need is another damn shuttle disaster to slow everything down and have people screaming "its too dangerous to explore space - spend all your money down here".
Re:Show me the money... (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, the instruments which were slated to go up have already been built, so you're looking at a substantial loss of investment if a servicing mission doesn't go.
I heard an estimate of 1 billion USD today for the robotic mission. A manned shuttle mission would likely be comparable in price. However, even if they don't send a repair mission, a robotic mission to HST will still need to be sent, in order to attach rockets which can safely splash it down into the ocean. Otherwise, there's no way to control where it will come down. The cost of this robotic-splashdown mission is half the cost of the full robotic-servicing mission (500 million USD).
It would be a shame to scrap HST because we didn't want to spend an extra $500 million to save it. That's almost exactly the average price of a single space shuttle mission. NASA's annual budget is $15 billion. It's not a lot of money, considering what we're getting for it.
Re:Funding (lack of) (Score:3, Insightful)
Apples and oranges, I'm afraid. It is true that people on the ISS cannot reproduce the valuable data that Hubble provides about distant stars and planets. However, the people on the ISS are capable of carrying out other forms of research that may be just as valuable. For instance, placing people on the ISS allows us to learn about the effects of living in space. This kind of experiment is essential when it comes to thinking about very long missions to Mars and other planets. Not to mention all sorts of other space-based experiments that may not be feasible without a human to monitor them.
Re:So we're just supposed to give up? (Score:5, Insightful)
On 9/11 the terrorists succeeded in replacing it with "what can we do to best cover our ass."
Re:Why NASA bugs me (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, let me say that I'm an astrophysicist. I value "good astrophysics data" more than anyone else. I think Hubble should remain in a functional state, at least until a replacement (with detectors in more than just a couple frequency ranges) can be put into space. I also believe that going to the Moon right now is a waste of time and money.
But, I will never say that about Mars. Three points:
1. Whether or not you are happy with it, there is nothing wrong with doing something that gets the public excited about space exploration again. Sure, getting a man (or woman!) to walk on Mars has more engineering value than scientific value, but it will re-energize the population about the value of exploration. Can you think of a better time for astrophysical science than the 1960s?
2. While we always prefer "good" data, we as a civilization would be selling ourselves short if we never tried to reach for the frontier. I think Kennedy said it best: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard..." Sure, it's hard to obtain conclusive data about the existence of life on Mars. But it needs to be done. The fact that it's hard is no reason to throw our hands up into the air. It's simply too important to be ignored.
3. Despite occasional comments (and glimmers of hope) suggesting otherwise, the search for life on Mars is primarily focused on the existence of life in the past. Because most scientists now believe that life on Earth was carried over on meteorites from Mars, these studies are examining our very origins as a civilization. Even if life wasn't transported from Mars to Earth, discovering the abundance (or lack) of life on Mars will tell us a lot about how life develops in this and other solar systems. Now, honestly, which gets you more excited: smaller error bars on stellar luminosity data, or answering in some small way the mystery of where we came from? One of these makes astrophysicists like myself very happy, the other answers the collective questions of an entire species trying to understand who they are.
Re:Funding (lack of) (Score:5, Insightful)
The Shuttle's design didn't originally include solid fuel rockets. This was later made a requirement as part of a compromise aimed at lowering the Shuttle's design and flight costs. The company that designed and built the SFRs was called Morton Thiokol, now called Cordant Technologies, which was based in Utah. Coincidentally this company had strong ties to the NASA's adminsitrator James Fletcher.
Fletcher built up political support for the Shuttle by throwing some aerospace jobs to Utah. The first US politician to fly aboard the Shuttle was none other than Senator Jake Garn of Utah in April of 1985.
This is the same reasoning behind many of the ISS decisions. NASA can't build something like the ISS without pretty hefty funding from Congress. In order to get funding they have to promise jobs and/or money to the constituencies of the legislators they're asking for money. NASA's administration also knows that if they promise individual companies contracts they can get them to make said legislators happy by writing them nice big campaign checks. Almost all government projects are based around this favor bartering system.
Space telescopes aren't very lucrative contracts so it is hard to sell them to aerospace companies and Congress. The umpteen billion dollar ISS on the other hand is an easy sell as long as the construction can go as slowly as possible.
Robotic repair mission a bad idea (Score:2, Insightful)
With the recent success of the Mars missions, NASA is starting to get its good name back, they need to see this continue and properly manage their risk, not spend money on projects they know will in all likelihood fail.
NASA and Being Sexy (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite the fact that every time we try and use a new way to look at stuff (some obscure spectrum of something or other, for example) we find a lot out there, NASA stopped building an array of sensors in Antarctica (which son of George H Bush that put the pressure on them to do this is left as an exercise to the reader). The reason is that the populace seems to like sending stuff somewhere. Seeing more just isn't cool anymore. The Hubble telescope will fall into disrepair because people don't like looking at stuff. They insist on touching it. Even if that means the stuff is more than a few orders of magnitude closer.
I guess I'll sum it up.
Going to Mars with a robat that touches stuff and messes around: SEXY
Looking at shit with a few big mirrors: NOT sexy
Re:can-do spirit vs. recklessness (Score:3, Insightful)
To use your story... every crane lift is dangerous, and a certain (small) percentage fail. Still, we are careful and take out timee. Had we not, the species would just be sitting around like Moongazer, afraid to leave the cave.
NASAs' Short Sightedness (Score:5, Insightful)
The astronauts have already said that they are willing to accept the very reasonable level of risk to fly the mission and repair the Hubble. It is terribly ironic that one of the few worthwhile shuttle missions of the last decade is scrapped because something MIGHT go wrong. They seemed perfectly willing to risk human lives to fly loads of fairly useless experiments just a couple of years ago. Nobody would argue that the shuttle has lived up to the lofty promises that NASA administrators made to Congress in order to get the funding for all of this in the first place. The shuttle, despite that fact the shuttle itself is reusable, has cost billions more dollars than equivalent rocket missions would have. In fact, one of the main selling points of the shuttle, that it could carry 20 tons into low earth orbit, is moot because the shuttle almost never flies with the maximum payload for safety reasons. The decision not to save one of the best scientific investments ever made is a slap in the face after all of the money which NASA has sunk into the shuttle program. The Hubble Space telescope has added tremendously to our knowledge of the universe and inspired a generation of young scientists and engineers. If any further proof was needed of the impotence and wrong headed thinking at NASA then this is surely among the most damning pieces of evidence. Let us hope that they make the right decision before it is too late.
Happy to see this! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why NASA bugs me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Happy to see this! (Score:4, Insightful)
Now for those that say that Earth-based telescopes (EBTs) can now do an equal job, I don't believe that for a minute. No two ways about it, once light hits the athmosphere, it is scattered and some of it is irrevocably lost.
Here's another aspect that makes Hubble superior to EBTs: Hubble will never have a cloudy night.
Hubble is perfect for working in tandem with EBTs. I'm thinking the Deep Field Proyect: Hubble gets the clear image, finds an intriguing gap, and Hawaii's Keck is called into action to zoom in as deep as it can on those coordinates. And then, voilá, the most distant object ever pictured makes itself apparent. The people operating Keck would not have known where to point if it wasn't for Hubble. This is just one example of how Hubble keeps astronomers thinking outside of the box.
Also, any more servicing missions that Hubble gets from the Space Shuttle will only increase the know-how for future maintenance missions, as there is NOTHING that can replace on-the-job experience.
For many reasons, including pretty pictures, I believe the only thing that could possibly replace Hubble is another Space Telescope, and that's not in the near horizon, so let's keep Hubble, what do you say?
Re:NASA's "Safety Concerns" were a smokescreen. (Score:5, Insightful)
The NASA guy (high up in the org) was really keen on the robot. He claimed to have seen "video" that was not (his words) "Power Point engineering".
I'm highly skeptical of the robot idea, and here's why:
NASA can afford to, and is capable of, repairing Hubble with a manned mission right now. The risk to the crew is negligibly greater than a mission to ISS, and NASA plans to send crews to ISS a-plenty.
The risk to Hubble on a manned mission is fairly low. The risk to Hubble by entrusting it to an untested and today uninvented and yet-to-be-engineered robot is very high.
I am *far* from convinced that cost and safety are rational reasons for the attitudes of being extremely against a manned mission to Hubble and being so emphatically enthusiastic on a robotic mission to Hubble. It doesn't add up. There are reasons I'm sure, but they *aren't* the officially stated reasons.
Re:Shame (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I hope they go ahead with this mission (Score:5, Insightful)
Hubble is in the wrong place - it is inoperable for half the time, since the earth blocks its view as it orbits - much better to place it the Lagrange point like the JWT. Modern space scopes can have much bigger lightweight segmented mirrors - again like JWT. Hubble is also just plain old - all the bits are starting to wear out, take micrometeor hits, and so on. Manned repairs also make no sense whatsoever, at the current (stupid) shuttle mission costs.
Hubble has of course been great sucess in many ways, but technology has moved on since the late 70's when it was concieved.
Personally I wonder if it is even worth spending $300m+ just for a "safe deorbit" - its the old argument - ie: that money spent AIDS drugs for Africa would save many more lifes than are threatened by Hubble reentry..
They are special poloroids. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hubble, the Black Hole (Score:4, Insightful)
Crawl back under your rock.
Re:I hope they go ahead with this mission (Score:3, Insightful)
The Hubble was built in 1985. So, your analogy is a bit off base. It would be more like repairing that old 128k MacIntosh you bought back then. There's a time to repair, and there's a time to move on to newer technology.
If all you had was that 128k Macintosh, and you knew you wouldn't be able to get a replacement for another decade (at best), then it would make very good sense to repair it.
Re:Some actual costs from NASA ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on exactly what you are buying. If it's gasoline, it'll cost more today. If it's a computer hard disk, it'll cost approximately the same. If it's a gigabyte of storage in a large system, it'll cost significantly less. The problem with inflation calculations is that "cost of living" isn't a very good reference index for things like space telescopes.
This is a problem that everyone has to cope with when one considers upgrading a home computer. The machine you have right now may be almost worhtless, considering its capabilities and what the same capabilities would cost today. But you spent a lot for it a few years back. So we are always reluctant to trash or donate an old computer, but from the viewpoint of a cost/benefit analysis it might be the most rational thing to do.
Of course, the cost of space missions hasn't gone down like computer hardware did, but still one wonders if a better and more advanced space telescope couldn't be built at the same price a maintenance mission to Hubble would cost.
Re:NASA's "Safety Concerns" were a smokescreen. (Score:2, Insightful)
THAT'S why sending people into space to actually DO things is SO DAMN IMPORTANT. Now, the question is: "Why do we keep sending 40 year old PHD's and NOT 20 year old Construction Workers?"
Why does it cost so much ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I hope they go ahead with this mission (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it would be exactly like that if and only if computational power had not increased exponentially in the interim and only one such orbital Macintosh existed.
The decision has been made (Score:4, Insightful)
O'Keefe is facing a grim reality - he can't fund all the projects he's got running. I'm not voting for Bush this year because he's run up a huge budget deficit - a deficit so large that us boomers won't live long enough to see retired. You younger ones will be paying for it long after we're gone. Since I'm pissed about the budget deficit, I can't very well say Nasa should get more money or fault O'Keefe for saying "you gotta choose and this is what my choices are..."
Re:So we're just supposed to give up? (Score:3, Insightful)
We did that to ourselves, terrorists can only kill people.