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Space United States Science

NASA Cancels Hubble Mission, and Other Space Bits 467

Posted by michael from the false-economy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "NASA Watch is reporting that NASA has cancelled Servicing Mission 4 for the Hubble Space Telescope. The reason given is not for budgets, but for safety." ender81b writes "With all the excitement generated by the Mars Exploration Rovers now is a good time to look at future space exploration missions. One of the most exciting is the Kepler spacecraft which will search for terrestrial planets around nearby stars. Other interesting upcoming missions include the New Horizons mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper belt, Deep Impact which will fire a small impactor into a comet to study the insides, Messenger which will fully photograph Mercury for the first time, and the ESA's Herschel infrared space telescope and Rosetta spacecraft which will land on a comet for the first time. Whew, good time to be invovled in space exploration!" StarWreck writes "Cnet.com is reporting that the Mars Rover uses Java. The same piece of software that lets people around the world play video games on their cell phones is now letting scientists drive the ultimate remote-controlled car across the surface of Mars."
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NASA Cancels Hubble Mission, and Other Space Bits More

NASA Cancels Hubble Mission, and Other Space Bits

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  • I'm so fucking pissed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pyrrho ( 167252 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @10:42PM (#8004993) Journal
    Making NASA stronger == Kill NASA.

    Don't Leave Children Behind == Leave them behind.

    Healthy Forests == Cut down the forests.

    I'm a space fan. I like manned space programs too. But they are going to wreck what NASA does do well, scientific research, for a program they will also not complete.

    • Re:I'm so fucking pissed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MillionthMonkey ( 240664 ) * on Friday January 16, 2004 @11:01PM (#8005131)

      Making NASA stronger == Kill NASA.
      Don't Leave Children Behind == Leave them behind.
      Healthy Forests == Cut down the forests.

      I'm a space fan. I like manned space programs too. But they are going to wreck what NASA does do well, scientific research, for a program they will also not complete.

      You forgot:

      "Clear Skies Act" == degraded air quality standards
      "Improve Head Start" == dismantle Head Start

      Your post makes an excellent point and it's a shame you were moderated down for political reasons. NASA is doing good science with their robots, which are getting better and better. They are making impressive progress with what they have been given to work with. All of it will be scrapped for a pointless manned mission that will lose its funding after the election.

      No matter how cynical I get, I can't keep up with these people.

      • That about sums it up. Back when the Bush Baby's daddy was President he also proposed a Mars mission. The cost was estimated at around $400 billion, which makes sense, as the Apollo program cost us over $110 billion in today's dollars. A manned Mars mission would be far more complex and expensive. As a result, the proposal never got anywhere - Congress shrugged it off, and NASA went for the ISS, which began life as Reagan's $8 billion "Freedom" station before shrinking and mutating into the $100 billion

      • Re:I'm so fucking pissed (Score:5, Funny)

        by caffeineboy ( 44704 ) <skidmore.22@osu . e du> on Saturday January 17, 2004 @12:32AM (#8005497)
        Someone said on Fark the other day:

        The next law will be the "Cake and Pie for Everybody Act" in which Cheney and Bush their buddies line everyone up and slap us with their dicks.

        But I think that was the 'tax cut'...

        Ask people if they think that the repeal of the "death tax" has one little thing to do with them. People are convinced that it was something that applied to everyday people....

      • Re:I'm so fucking pissed (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Catbeller ( 118204 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @10:52AM (#8007353) Homepage
        Be more cynical.

        Bush is allocating 1 billion a year for the moon and Mars. Impossible.

        In return, NASA is being asked to give up the Hubble, the Shuttle, the Space Station (eventually). And funding for all other programs will be cut or eliminated as well, "for the Mars mission".

        The "Mars Mission" is twenty years in the future. It will have to survive five administrations, ten Congresses, and the eventually bankrupting of the Federal kitty by the tax cuts and increased non-discretionary spending.

        Point is, the "Mars mission" won't survive. I've watched the space program for thirty-five years, and things like this don't maintain momentum, especially in hard financial times.

        NASA, I hear, initially was jubilant; now they realize what they are being asked to give up: everything. For a pig in a poke.

        You are being just cynical enough. This is a way of disbanding the manned program while looking like heros, or "spatial pioneers", as Bush called them (I am not making that up).

        Five years from now, NASA will be all but gone, with a few contractors making a bit of money researching new systems that never make it to reality.

        I didn't believe it would happen so fast! Hubble already given up?

        I only wonder if Bush is smart enough to have thought this up himself, or if his Grand Viziers came up with the scheme while telling George about Mars and "Spatial Pioneers"? Does the King actually believe what he is saying? Is he that dumb, or that smart?

        And these comments are "flamebait" if you are a far-right whacko, kids.

        I'm not laughing.

    • NASA == SAFE == MORON (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BadlandZ ( 1725 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @12:22AM (#8005467) Journal
      Look, anyone who thinks strapping them self to a piece of hardware that is thousands of tons and 90% fuel will ever be safe.. I have a bridge to sell them.

      The space race was a race, and in the 60's people new race was a risk that people took, was not safe, it was a balance between safety and cutting edge... It's a calculated gamble. You balance the risk with the will to win.

      In this day of safety latches and plastic electrical covers for "child safe homes," and McDonald's lawsuits over hot coffee being too hot, is it any wonder that NASA is failing?

      When I was a kid, I stuck a fork in an electrical outlet and LEARNED MY LESSON, I put my hand on the stove and LEARNED MY LESSON. I also have been burned by hot coffee in a McDonald's Styrofoam (not environmentally friendly) coffee cup.

      Did I sue? Did I blame society? NO. That's just life lesson, things hurt, knifes are sharp and carving a pumpkin can result in injury... THAT WAS LIFE.

      Now days, with the world as it is, is there any wonder NASA is failing? What was that famous 60's quote by an Apollo astronaut? Something about "we are sitting in a 10 sq ft cone on 90 tons of explosive fuel, does this feel as crazy to you as it does to me?" Something like that, I wish I had the real quote.. But point is, It's about pushing the limits of what humans can do, not about putting foam safety bumpers on all the sharp corners you could get a bo-bo from.

    • Re:I'm so fucking pissed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by xenocide2 ( 231786 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @01:50AM (#8005750) Homepage
      Hey, be glad. They're going to trash the space shuttle program. Someone's finally had the guts to admit it was overcosted and didn't meet its goals of reuse nor capability. It needs booster rockets to achieve escape velocity, and additional payload rockets to place military satellites, for more than the conventional saturn rocket did.

      On the other hand, a lunar base provides NASA with a place to test and innovate. I'd be interested to see the results of a thermocouple placed on the moon. Given that the temperatures fluctuate greatly between the sun light and dark sides of the moon, there may be a design that proffers a good deal of power to be found. But I'm hardly a knowledgable EE in the topic. More than likely they'll pursue a solar powered system, even though a full day on the moon lasts about 28 earth days. Some of the advantages of a lunar base: a lunar telescope, with a highly stable orbit. The moon does wobble some, but its estimated that only 51 percent of the face of the moon is visible from earth - this means a fairly stable location.

      And there's no way in hell you'll be able to send a space shuttle to the moon. Even if you could, it wouldn't be coming back.
    • I'm a space fan. I like manned space programs too. But they are going to wreck what NASA does do well, scientific research, for a program they will also not complete.

      Why? For doing other things than messing around with Hubble? Hubble has been a successful mission already, and most missions comes to and end. Wrecking NASA sounds like a slight exaggeration when you check out their currently planned (and active) missions.

      I'm personally looking forward to the Kepler telescope dedicated to find earth-like pla
    • Wake up and pay attention. This decision has been inevitable since the CAIB released its findings. All future Shuttle flights must be able to access the ISS for safety reasons. Flights to Hubble can't access ISS. End of story.

      BTW, science is not the motivation for space travel. Nor are pretty pictures.

  • failure not an option (Score:5, Funny)

    by ir0b0t ( 727703 ) * <mjewellNO@SPAMopenmissoula.org> on Friday January 16, 2004 @10:43PM (#8004998) Homepage Journal
    Sir, we've run into a serious problem with the mission. These Nielsen ratings are the lowest ever.

    Oh my God! We've been beaten by a "Connie Chung Christmas."

  • The Mars Rover does not use Java (Score:4, Interesting)

    by corebreech ( 469871 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @10:43PM (#8005000) Journal
    The article states only that Java is being used for the software used to send commands to the rover and process the output.

    I'm assuming that the limited amount of power the rover has access to would forbid the use of Java, would that be right? And if everything is controlled from the ground anyways, we're not talking about especially complicated code in any case, so why bother with the overhead?

    Then again, if they're sending code to the rover maybe Java does make sense; bytecode tends to be smaller than machine code, so you get better utilization of upstream bandwidth.

    (Anybody know what OS the rover uses?)

    • Re:The Mars Rover OS (Score:5, Informative)

      by dekashizl ( 663505 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @10:48PM (#8005036) Journal
      Anybody know what OS the rover uses?

      MER2004 Mars Rovers use an OS by Wind River [windriver.com]. Read about it at that link (press release).

      --
      For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
      (AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History [axonchisel.net].

      • Re:The Mars Rover OS (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 16, 2004 @11:24PM (#8005242)
        If anyone's curious about the CPU used by the rovers, it's one of the POWER derived radiation hardened chips made by BAE Systems [baesystems.com]. While it's PPC based, it's more similar to a family of CPUs that split off even before the first of the Mac PPCs, the 601. Similar operating speed and power, however, as the first of those.

        The newer PPC based space capable CPUs are RAD750s, which are directly related to the G3 PPC powering iMacs and iBooks.

        While on the topic of space hardware, and going back to photograph mercury, what kind of camera equipment was used to take images of the moon and mars in the 1960s/1970s? I was told by an English teacher that each photo was snapshotted on film, then exposed in a small photoprocessing lab inside the probes, and scanned to send back to earth as there was no possibility of capturing fast moving images on CCD that far back. I think that sounds a bit of wishful thinking urban legend. Anyone know for sure?

        thanks

    • Re:The Mars Rover does not use Java (Score:5, Informative)

      by zulux ( 112259 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @10:48PM (#8005044) Homepage Journal
      we're not talking about especially complicated code in any case, so why bother with the overhead?

      The rover isen't just a dumb remote controll car - NASA issues it rather sophisticated commands and the rover moves itself and decides on it own how to cary out those commands.

      The reason for it is that Mars is too far away to manage the rover in real time - you have to wait 20 minuite to see the effects of your command.
    • I think the apps for stuff on earth are java, the code on the rover is not. If you look at the command center you will see SUNs around, and lots of the engineers sitting around with apple powerbooks, so I can see the apps for it being java.
    • I'm assuming that the limited amount of power the rover has access to would forbid the use of Java, would that be right?

      Well, J2ME runs on cellphones, right? That is a restricted power environment. The original intent of Java was for small devices. As far as control from the ground, yes that is true, but it's not real time because of the rather long distances... you would certainly want some autonomy in the rover.

  • Hubble Links! (Score:5, Informative)

    by dekashizl ( 663505 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @10:44PM (#8005015) Journal
    With all those links, you'd think maybe a Hubble link would surface... Here's a couple good ones:

    Hubble For General Public [hubblesite.org]
    Hubble For Scientists [stsci.edu]
    --

    For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
    (AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History [axonchisel.net].
  • And, therefore, make a complete fool of themselves?

    I can see the inevitable kneejerk reaction now. "OMG Bush is taking away money from science to fund his reelection he is evil."

    Get A GRIP!

    This was being considered before Bush's new proposal. It is not the fault of his proposal. And we are going to have a replacement put up. Nothing is being lost here, nothing is being sacrificed on the altar of MTMS, Man To Mars Soonest.

    • Re:So, anyone want to be the first to assume? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Friday January 16, 2004 @10:55PM (#8005088)
      There's already a huge "safety" issue blocking this project... the fact that it depends on a space shuttle to get the people who are going to do a repair mission up there. With all those grounded, and a backlog of missions building up, we knew that somebody wasn't going to make the cut...

    • Re:So, anyone want to be the first to assume? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phr1 ( 211689 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @10:56PM (#8005092)
      It may have been considered before Bush's proposal, but it didn't become a necessity til after Bush's election stunt killed off the possibility of doing anything else with the Hubble. That's why it was only a proposal before and is a reality now. And that, in turn is why the news reports correctly attribute the Hubble abandonment to Bush's boondoggle.
    • This was being considered before Bush's new proposal. It is not the fault of his proposal.

      To quote "John Grunsfeld, NASA's chief scientist" in the CNN article i linked a few posts after yours,

      "He said the decision was influenced by President Bush's new space initiative and "Grunsfeld said Bush "directed us to use this precious resource" (the shuttle) toward completing the International Space Station and fulfilling U.S. obligations to the 15 partner nations."

      Who are we supposed to believe? NASA, or you

      • Grunsfeld may have pawned off the decision to let Hubble drift on Bush, but he probably considered it a Godsend. As much as they hated to let a perfectly good instrument go, NASA has known they needed to ditch the follow on Shuttle mission in favor of the next space telescope. It's been the user community that had been pushing to keep Hubble going, and now NASA can tell 'em to take it up with the boss.

        NASA doesn't have that much money to play with anymore, and the hundreds of millions needed for another repair mission (even before the backup orbiter issue) was going to seriously screw up the timing of even getting the follow on telescope into the sky, not to mention the other robotic missions they're trying to keep alive.

      • Bush's plan helps some places (Score:5, Interesting)

        by wass ( 72082 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @11:43PM (#8005313)
        Interstingly enough, look at the NASA centers that benefit the most from Bush's ISS/moon/Mars plan.

        The three main beneficiaries are Cape Canavral (launch, at Florida), Johnson Space Center (Mission Control, at Houston), and JPL (interplanetary craft, at Pasadena, California). FL, TX, and CA. All of these centers, and hence states, will see vastly increased funding. And all of these centers are also in key states Bush needs to win the election.

        Sorry about the conspiracy theory, but it's an interesting trend, noticed especially by several NASA folks too.

    • We _plan_ to have a replacemnt sent up. The current plan assumes about a 3 year gap when we won't have a space based telescope. If the economy doesn't get more rosy, that three year gap might stretch to five or more. Ground based telescopes have also improved and can take up more of the slack than many expect, but there is some risk here. For ex. what happens if there is a nearby supernova during that window when we don't have a space based scope? We have a small but significant chance of missing a once in

      • Re:So, anyone want to be the first to assume? (Score:4, Informative)

        by wass ( 72082 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @12:53AM (#8005567)
        You are mistaken about some things.

        Ground based telescopes have also improved and can take up more of the slack than many expect

        For imaging, adaptive optics can sometimes approach space-based acquisitions. But for spectroscopy out of optical (IR and UV) ground-based scopes are very limited.

        Plus, Hubble does UV, and James Webb Space Telescope will do near-IR. So UV astronomy will be severly hit. The FUSE telescope will still provide far-UV observations, but near-UV observations will be missing.

        The decision to deorbit Hubble has already been made.

        Do you mean 'was' made? The decision was to originally deorbit Hubble sometime after SM4, which would most likely be a decade or so after the expected failure of the next 1 or 2 gyros without SM4.

        Plus, prior plans were made to bring Hubble down to Earth (only the Columbia shuttle was big enough to fit Hubble). Now, instead, a $300 million rocket will bring Hubble back. Plus, $200 million has already been spent developing new instruments for SM4, which needs somewheres between $500 - $700 million for launch. That's alot of lost science just to put a telescope in the Smithsonian.

        Yes, this is not related to the manned mars mission.

        NO, the new Manned Mars Mission not only included a $1 billion extra funding, but $11 billion reallocation away from other NASA projects. So YES, the Manned Mars Mission did contribute greatly to the current Hubble funding shortage.

        Nothing is being lost here to the new programs

        No programs being lost, you mean, except for the programs developing instruments for SM4, the scientists expecting to use these instruments. Plus all the observing that would have continued after the 1 or 2 gyros break, which wouldn't have broken if SM4 went through. Those programs?

    • It is not the fault of his proposal.

      While it is certainly true that the decision is not a direct result of the Bush proposal, it certainly is a factor that was considered.

      The main factors include:

      • Safety - There would have been additional requirements placed on the flights due to the after-effects of the Columbia accident.
      • Replacement - The replacement for the HST is due to go up in 2012, so there's a relatively small window with no orbital telescope (at least, if all goes well)
      • Priorities - Because o

      • Re:So, anyone want to be the first to assume? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Witchblade ( 9771 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @01:13AM (#8005644) Homepage
        Replacement - The replacement for the HST is due to go up in 2012, so there's a relatively small window with no orbital telescope (at least, if all goes well)

        Exactly. As an astronomer let me assure you that all of these [harvard.edu] are absolutely [caltech.edu] worthless [hawaii.edu], and all scientific progress [eso.org] will cease once this horribly-redesigned-to-justify-a-manned-shuttle, wasn't-even-built-right-by-political-contractees turkey that's reached the end of its operative lifetime.

        Actually, it is a shame in a purely emotional way. Just like when MIR was deorbited. But it's still the right call.

        And I don't mean to demean the astronauts who at risk to their own lives got that POS in something like working order, and finally gave everyone some pretty pictures.

    • SM4 was SO close... (Score:5, Informative)

      by wass ( 72082 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @11:39PM (#8005298)
      Here are some other things about the Hubble.

      The following estimates state that servicing mission 4 (really 5 considering there was 3A and 3B) spent about $200 million so far developing instruments. But the NASA head administrator (Sean O'Keefe) estimated that only $40 million remains for funding to completion. IMHO, it's a total shame and waste to pull the plug now, if we're only $40 million away from goal.

      Another note regarding safety is really suspect. Supposedly all future shuttle missions will go to ISS in case of failure, so the astronauts can stay there and maybe use an escape pod if absolutely necessary. Hence, no more Hubble missions in the interest of safety.

      What is missing from this discussion is that NASA is still keeping with their plans to bring Hubble back down from orbit as per an international treaty regarding space debris above a specific size. This entails heavily modifying one of the shuttles as Colombia was the only one large enough to fit the HST inside its cargo bay.

      So they consider bringing Hubble down intact (as opposed to crashing it into the ocean, for instance) higher priority than keeping it running. I think that's a shame, again.

      SM4 is important. Hubble only has 3 functioning gyros right now (SM4 would replace these and batteries, as well as install new instruments). If one of these gyros breaks, Hubble is severely crippled, and can do some, but only limited pointing and hence less science. If the next gyro breaks beyond this, then Hubble is effectively next to useless.

      Come on NASA, change your mind and keep the SM4. It's been in progress for a long time, and its estimated cost is a drop in the bucket compared to some other USA funded endeavours (cough IRAQ cough).

      • Re:SM4 was SO close... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by demachina ( 71715 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @11:19AM (#8007505)
        Sean O'Keefe is a bean counter(accountant) Bush sent to NASA to trim its budget. Neither of them have any interest in space exploration or science. I saw O'Keefe's new conference on CNN after the Bush announcement and it was sickening watching someone who had no vision, knowledge of or interest in space, dodging questions and avoiding specifics on this supposedly bold new initiative. You would think they would have prepared for this announcement and presented a bold vision, rather than looking like a deer in the headlights not knowing exactly what all this means or being unwilling to admit it.

        Having seen the funding timeline for this at the news conference its pretty clear what the plan is. Kill off the space shuttle and the ISS while you divert all the space enthusiasts attention with the promise of bold missions to Mars and the Moon. Of course none of those start ramping up for years and until you've already started killing off space exploration and when it comes time to bend metal on the new projects, Bush will be long gone, no one will want to pay the tab and the conservatives will have managed to kill off the civilian space program. Conservatives love killing off all parts of government not associated with the military or law enforcement.

        This is a perplexing dilemna because killing off the space shuttle and ISS is exactly what the civilian space program needs to be come viable again. But when you do it you actually need to have a viable new program to replace it and this new program simply isn't viable.

        You get a definitive clue something is wrong because they are going to continue wasting money to finish the completely useless ISS while they kill off the really valuable Hubble. Get a clue. The Hubble, like all the great observatories, is a priceless resource and they are one thing that should survive out of the current NASA along with JPL's efforts.

        To me this smacks of the classic, clueless political manuevering and bureaucractic thinking that has been devestating space exploration for the last 30+ years.

    • Re:So, anyone want to be the first to assume? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by spenton ( 712960 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @12:02AM (#8005389)
      I think I might be able add a little perspective here, and yes "OMG .." is a good start. I have been working for the past 5+ years on a science instrument for SM4. We've been busting ours butts, and our instrument is complete and ready to go. Today we learned that our mission is cancelled immediately, thanks for playing, do not collect$200, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.

      The 'safety' issue is that the shuttle must fly a different orbit to service the Hubble than for a trip to the ISS (International Space Station). Once in orbit, a tile-damaged Hubble bound shuttle could not change its orbit to reach the safety of the ISS. NASA COULD however have another shuttle on the pad to catch up to the damaged orbiter and unload the astronauts. The problem is cost, whether to have the extra shuttle ready, or to employ a in-orbit tile fixing procedure.

      GW is forcing NASA to re-direct $11Billion dollars from existing science projects to add to his contribution of $1Billion, so that we can send our ass(et)s to the Moon.IMHO, the cancelling of SM4 is purely about saving money. IMHO, this is GWs 'pie in the sky', get there before those evil Chinise and do it now, or I'm gonna cry, 'vision'.
      The Hubble has been the best observatory ever constructed, and while ground-based optical telescopes have caught up the Hubble is some respects, no ground-based telescope can measure UV light, or compete with the Hubble on image stability (among many other things).

      What's to become of the Hubble ? We cannot just let it fall back to Earth, very large pieces will survive the re-entry. Ideas have been tossed around with the options being to spend tons-o-cash to de-orbit it with a special rocket pack (guiding it into ocean), or bring it down with a shuttle.I doubt that the rocket pack can be constructed before Hubble re-enters in 2006. So, we may have to send a shuttle up to bring it down anyway.

      FYI, SM4 would have extended the Hubble's livetime considerably with new Gyros and pushing Hubble back up to the shuttle yes maximum elevation. This would allow for overlap with JWST. Without this facility (HST) an entire arm of the astronomy community will be cut off.

      Can you imagine if GW told the military, sorry about cancelling those jet-fighter things, don't worry we're gonna build this large wooden badger that's gonna show those silly French guys real good.
    • It is not the fault of his proposal

      Oh no, it's not Bush's fault, he only said he was going to completely change NASA's mission to focus completely on a trip to the Moon and to Mars, which leaves no money to do anything else.

      Are you a fucking moron [cnn.com]????

      "He said the decision was influenced by President Bush's new space initiative, which calls for NASA to start developing the spacecraft and equipment for voyages to the moon and later to Mars. The president's plan also called for the space shuttle to be retired by 2010. Virtually all of the shuttle's remaining flights would be used to complete construction of the International Space Station."

  • Space: not yet? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's become clear to me, after reading more about our new Moon/Mars initiatives, that we need to make our space program a little more profitable or at least a little less spendy.

    We're spending in the billions for a failure rate that wouldn't be tolerated in any long-term business venture. The program should seek alternative funding, perhaps via advertisement opportunities or by seizing the potential of the universe as a means of solving our garbage crisis, so that we can meet our space exploration goals

    • Re:Space: not yet? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by caseih ( 160668 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @11:52PM (#8005352)
      The thing is that we'd be spending billions on our own economy. This pays off greatly in terms of jobs and technological advancement. It's not like all this money ends up in space. An earlier slashdot posting mentioned that the estimated return on investment of the moon shots was about 9 dollars in the economy for every dollar spent on the program. People seem to forget that what makes our economy strong is actually perception and activity. Oddly enough, this is often used as an excuse to run budget deficits (fiscal policy). While any extreme is bad, extreme stinginess and an unwillingness to spend money (even money we don't think we have) actually slows the economy down, which is one of the reaons for our present slump.

      I'm also astounded by the negativism and pessimism by the majority of slashdotters. If we're to go forward and make any progress as society, we have to seriously adjust our attitudes. If we aren't ambitious, then we will stagnate as a society, and all of the social ills that we see around us will get worse, not better, as a result.

      • It isn't negativism. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ArsSineArtificio ( 150115 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @12:54AM (#8005571) Homepage
        I'm also astounded by the negativism and pessimism by the majority of slashdotters.

        The responses you see here aren't really negativism and pessimism. They're anti-Bush hysteria. If Howard Dean had announced the same plan, the same I'm-against-Bush-because-the-man-on-TV-told-me-to crowd would be drooling all over themselves at this brave heralding of man's destiny in the stars.

  • Simply put (Score:5, Funny)

    by gluteus ( 307087 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @10:46PM (#8005026)
    You killed Hubble! You bastard!

  • For safety? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Daetrin ( 576516 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @10:50PM (#8005057)
    According to CNN [cnn.com]:

    "John Grunsfeld, NASA's chief scientist, said NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe made the decision to cancel the fifth space shuttle service mission to the Hubble when it became clear there was not enough time to conduct it before the shuttle is retired."

    "He said the decision was influenced by President Bush's new space initiative, which calls for NASA to start developing the spacecraft and equipment for voyages to the moon and later to Mars. The president's plan also called for the space shuttle to be retired by 2010. Virtually all of the shuttle's remaining flights would be used to complete construction of the International Space Station."

    I sure hope Bush follows through on his promise of funding, because NASA is going to be fucked if they start shifting priorities to his ideas and then don't get the money to follow through.

    • One of the NASA e-mails states that "Basically, the problem was that a Hubble Shuttle mission would require special safety procedures to be developed that would not be necessary for an ISS mission. Only ISS missions will be carried out in the future."

      However, the press does not seem to be reporting on the safety concerns. The BBC News [bbc.co.uk] is reporting that "Nasa to abandon Hubble telescope" [bbc.co.uk]. "Nasa is halting all space shuttle missions to service the Hubble Space Telescope, a move that will lead to it becoming u

    • Re:For safety? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fname ( 199759 )
      Canceling Hubble might be a good idea in the long run, but I think it's a shame that it's being done in the name of safety. NASA is basically saying that Shuttle is not reliable enough to return people from orbit. But it will be a long time before any other vehicle approaches a 99% success rate (Russian capsules excluded).

      I think a lot of the changes being made in wake of Columbia make sense, such as inspections at the station and using our much-improved imaging capabilities to inspect STS. These changes b
  • The same piece of software that lets people around the world play video games on their cell phones is now letting scientists drive the ultimate remote-controlled car across the surface of Mars.

  • *sighs* NASA seems to have a lot to learn. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ShadowBlasko ( 597519 ) <shadowblasko@@@gmail...com> on Friday January 16, 2004 @10:52PM (#8005071)
    Okay, now I know that it is somewhat of the geek stereotype that "If its not broke, gimme a minute to make it faster", but why does it seem like we are abandoning the HST?

    Yes, I know that technically it is coming to the end of its projected life span, but that does not mean we should just let it die. I never cease to be amazed at some of the images (yes I know they are touched up) that the HST has given us.

    Yes, NASA and JPL are (and righfully so) basking in the glory of the success of the latest Mars probe. But what about in 6 months when those probes are gone. All I see in these stories are future flights. Why abandon something that is still giving us good results.

    With the less than perfect track records of probes sent by *any* space agency, I can't pin my hopes of data (and dreams) on future flights.

    I think its only wise to keep the HST working as long as we can, or at least until the Webb (is that correct?) telescope is up and functional.

    Just my .02, YMMV.

  • Servicing Hubble. . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bagheera ( 71311 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @10:55PM (#8005085) Homepage Journal
    I've been a fan of the Space program since I was a kid watching guys in bulky suits bounce around on the Moon. I may have been a fan earlier, but I don't remember much about the space program before Apollo.

    Hubble was an amazing piece of hardware, designed to be serviced by the then-existant shuttle fleet. Which, as we all know, isn't what it used to be.
    NASA's budget is limited. Always has been, always will be. They've got to make decisions on whether to keep servicing an old scope that, admitedly, is still doing good science, or spend their money on new projects that will arguably jump the state of the art as far ahead of Hubble as Hubble did in its day.

    With the quality and light gathering abilities of surface based scopes approacing or surpassing Hubble - thanks to advances in adaptive optics and other fields - the decision to discontinue servicing Hubble is understandable. It was a fantastic instrument, and it will be missed when the mission finally ends. Note that the announcement isn't "Turn it off tomorrow." It's "We're not going to do any more servicing, but we'll let run until it dies of natural causes."

    • Re:Servicing Hubble. . . (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MtViewGuy ( 197597 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @11:13PM (#8005188)
      I think while Earth-based telescopes have equalled or surpasssed the Hubble Space Telescope thanks to the use of segmented mirror designs and adaptive optics, you still want to have a powerful telescope that will operate beyond the refractive interference of the Earth's atmosphere for very distance object imaging.

      The is where the James Webb Space Telescope now in development comes in. It will have a much larger primary mirror than the HST, and will of course sport adaptive optics so the precision of the primary mirror need not to be so extreme. The new space telescope might have high enough resolution that we might be able to see even the effects of smaller, rocky crust planets circling around other stars.

  • Hubble was great, but we need to move on (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @10:58PM (#8005108) Homepage
    While a lot of this might be politics, the truth is, Hubble is what it is and has reached a point of where the question is, is it important to spend billions to service Hubble, or do we move on to something better. It would be nice if the space crews could drop by Hubble now and then and clean the bugs off the mirror, charge the battery, change the oil, but the truth is, this will be a task for the antique space junk fanatics of the centuries to come, they can take pictures of them next to it and post them on the Net with their cars with fins. We need to move on.

  • Public outrage (Score:4, Interesting)

    by spanklin ( 710953 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @10:58PM (#8005110)
    Hubble has been the best publicity generator for astronomy for *years* now. My bet is that this was announced when and how it was precisely because they are hoping to generate enough public outrage to get this decision reversed. Personally, I know it was a blow to many of my colleagues. Trying to get HST time has been difficult and frustrating, but you can't deny its impact. The number of high quality science results that have been generated by the telescope dwarfs just about all of its competition when you use most object measurement criteria. We'll see what happens, I guess, but my guess is that the astronomical community is going to at least try to put whatever weight they can muster behind getting the HST servicing mission made a priority again.

  • Rover Software (Score:4, Informative)

    by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @10:58PM (#8005113) Journal
    "The same piece of software that lets people around the world play video games on their cell phones is now letting scientists drive the ultimate remote-controlled car across the surface of Mars." The specific Java program used to run the rover is called Maestro. It is available for Wintel, Mac, Linux and Solaris, from: http://mars.telascience.org/home/ Regular science and graphics updates come in here. You can get/view them just like the folks at JPL see them.
  • So the rover runs Java huh? I can see some advantages. I just hope they programed it well. Seeing that made me think of a story one of my programing teachers told me one.

    There was a team doing a robotics competition for their school (this was college level). Their task was to make a ping-pong playing robot and theirs went to the competition and was doing fantastic. It had been beating the opponents and they were sure they'd win. They had a great Java program to do it.

    The problem was that the CPU they were

  • Mapping mercury (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Saven Marek ( 739395 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @10:59PM (#8005117)
    As a note about fully mapping mercury, it seems to be one of the forgotten planets nobody talks about much, but has had some attention in the past.

    Still, there are some interesting Mariner shots [nasm.edu] of the planet online [nasa.gov]. Not quite half has been mapped yet, but there's some interesting features that make it unique.

    nude macgirls webcam [151.197.31.93]

  • AP story contradicts NASA claim (Score:3, Interesting)

    by corebreech ( 469871 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @11:00PM (#8005127) Journal
    They're saying [cnn.com] the Hubble won't get serviced because there isn't enough time to do it before the shuttle fleet is retired. And since the date for the retirement of shuttle was selected after the Mars announcement, I think it's fair to say that Hubble is being neglected for budgetary reasons.

  • What will happen to Hubble? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Hays ( 409837 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @11:05PM (#8005158)
    This article (http://www.nature.com/nsu/030728/030728-13.html) from the summer had the following speculation-

    "Until recently, the agency had planned to have the space shuttle return Hubble to Earth for museum display. "No one wants to do that anymore," says Anne Kinney, head of NASA's astronomy and physics division.

    In fact, the US astronaut corps opposes "risking human lives for the purpose of disabling great science" representative John Grunsfeld told the meeting. It would support a servicing mission to extend Hubble's life or ensure its safe re-entry, he said. A servicing trip to the telescope costs NASA about US$700 million, much of which maintains planning teams at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

    The option of moving the Hubble to a higher storage orbit has also been dropped. Instead, NASA favours attaching a rocket booster to the telescope in 2010 to steer it to burn up over the ocean.

    So far, NASA has found no affordable way to attach the rocket and extend the telescope's life without degrading its performance. Defenders argue that the problem can be solved, and that useful observations can still be obtained from the telescope after the booster is attached."

    I guess it's just going to drift while. It's in a 600km orbit.

  • That java program is Maestro (Score:3, Informative)

    by LedZeplin ( 41206 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @11:11PM (#8005176)
    The said java program named Maestro can be downloaded and tried out here:


    http://mars.telascience.org/home [telascience.org]


    They have a data pack from gustav crater and will be updating it with more data packs as the rovers mission progresses.


    I did notice that it was a hog of a program, it nearly brought my workstation to it's knees.

  • Risk vs. Reward (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wrmrxxx ( 696969 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @11:14PM (#8005193)

    The messages linked to state that the Hubble service mission was cancelled purely for safety reasons, and that "Only ISS missions will be carried out in the future" out of concern for shuttle inspection procedures. The general purpose space shuttle has been reduced to only being used for one particular type of mission - it's useful life is effectively over.

    The space telescope is a science project that has produced a lot of valuable information. There is some risk involved in a mission to service it, but there is not known to be a high probability of failure.

    The newly announced mission to mars also has a science component, but is also largely a human exploration project. Without sending people, we could still get great science done by sending robots, especially if we were to spend the same amount of money as we are willing to spend to send humans. Sending people is a feel-good exercise, yet for this we are willing to take on great risks. The chances that some harm (if not death) will come to the astronauts looks very high. Even with the kind of technology we might be able to develop over the next 30 years there are still some serious inherent risks that will not be overcome.

    It's an interesting contrast:- for science we are apparently not willing to take any risk, but for the sake of a feel good exercise we are willing to take an enourmous risk.

  • This will cost us more than it saves... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by case_igl ( 103589 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @11:22PM (#8005230) Homepage
    The articles state that NASA is going to "design and build" a robotic attachment to send up to Hubble when the lifetime is over. This is going to dock with Hubble, the control the re-entry so that it doesn't end up hitting a populated area.

    Seems to be, the costs of one additional shuttle mission may very well be cheaper than the costs to design and build this robotic craft.

    Also, the original plan called for a final shuttle flight to return Hubble inside the payload bay. Hubble was to be studied in detail to see the effects of long-term exposure in space to help design future craft to be more resistant.

    After that, it was going to be given to the Smithsonian AIr and Space museum. A fitting place given the discoveries made with Hubble.

    Sometimes I think we are often shortsighted these days...Doing everything for the bottom line and not thinking about future generations ability to "see and touch" some of the great things we have done.

  • Word from Garrett (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mikey-San ( 582838 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @11:24PM (#8005236) Homepage Journal
    Bruce Garrett, a member of the Hubble team, has posted to his blog about the matter:

    http://www.brucegarrett.com/brucelog_2004_1_1.ht m# b22

    Just thought that was worth mentioning.

  • ISS above everything? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mhw25 ( 590290 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @11:28PM (#8005262)
    Quite sad, really - that NASA choose to put all its resources on ISS first and foremost. They cite safety reasons, that they cannot create a workable safety protocol for a Hubble mission. But had they not had 4 Hubble missions - 1 for launch and 3 servicing.

    It seems like it is just an excuse from the head of NASA, who was a beancounter, alone. Perhaps the most tragic thing was that Columbia was lost while on a purely-for-science mission.

    The thing is, bang for bucks, Hubble must be at least two orders of magnitude above the ISS in returning scientific data. It would not have costed above 10billion, compared to the hundreds of billions the ISS sucked up, and it had given us little, or next to nothing scientific data. No permanent scientific crew, the Destiny science module not being put to good use because the barebone crew of two is too preoccupied running it. All it stands for is an ego booster - we have a permanent manned presence in space, albeit a skeletal crew stuck for years in low Earth orbit, forever tied down doing endless plumbing just to keep it there.

    I am starting to doubt if we will see a Hubble successor. And the sad fact is that we will not be fully realising the potential of Hubble, a good piece of hardware that had inspired and impressed so many of us at such a bargain price of under the cost of a B2 bomber.

  • Right.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by abertoll ( 460221 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @11:39PM (#8005301) Homepage Journal
    We're thinking of sending someone to mars, but that Hubble thing--WAY too dangerous!

  • Java? That explains it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Markus Registrada ( 642224 ) on Friday January 16, 2004 @11:44PM (#8005317)
    I wondered why that Rover was so damn slow. It took days just to drive it off the lander.

    Hmm, Java.

  • savethehubble.org (Score:4, Informative)

    by justi9 ( 545090 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @12:03AM (#8005395)

    For US residents:

    If you'd like NASA to reconsider, http://savethehubble.org [savethehubble.org] is carrying a petition to uncancel the servicing mission.

    You might also consider sending a message to your representative. The house.gov website makes it easy.

  • Parts of UV spectrum will be lost (Score:5, Informative)

    by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @12:16AM (#8005447)
    Interestingly, Hubble is (soon to be was) the only telescope that could observe certain wavelengths of ultraviolet used to test metallicity. Since Earth's atmosphere is opaque in these wavelengths, space-based observatories are the only way to observe these wavelengths.

  • It's not just space junk (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sstaton ( 51605 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @01:06AM (#8005615) Homepage
    I cannot wrap my head around the fact that we're not going to retrieve the greatest observatory of the 20th century when we have the means and the mandate (if the comments about international space treaties are correct). We don't have Columbus' ship; we don't have Leif Erickson's boat, but we do have the HST. It's as monumentous a vehicle of discovery as any and we can save it. If we cannot keep it flying, we must bring it back and place it in the Smithsonian. It's one of our (human race talking here) greatest accomplishments. It's not a weapon. It exists solely to measure THE SHAPE and SIZE of the UNIVERSE. If that doesn't get us some karma from ET, what will? We cannot throw this -- dare I say? -- sacred relic away. It showed us the Universe as if for the first time.

    500M$US to bring it down? Chicken feed to an Administration that spends 1000 times that in deficit. Shame. Shame on them.

  • Move On! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bhima ( 46039 ) <Bhima.Pandava@g3.14159mail.com minus pi> on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:19AM (#8006268) Journal
    With all due respect to those that died in all of the previous space missions. NASA, The current US administration, and the US public need to get over it and move on. Space travel is currently dangerous business. Every one who engages in it are educated and trained professionals. They know exactly the dangers, better than all of those who second guess them. I don't see the astronauts saying "Hell No I won't get in this craft, it's too dangerous". They realize that for what they are doing the track record is pretty good. Can safety at NASA improve? Of course! Should we stop until it's perfect? No!

  • Cassini-Huygens (Score:3, Informative)

    by Brown Line ( 542536 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @07:50AM (#8006579)
    Your list of upcoming missions left out the most exciting of all: The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn. It will be entering Saturnian orbit in 165 days; next year, it will be dropping the Huygens probe into the atmosphere of Titan. This is very cool stuff coming up this July. Here's the home page for details: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm

  • The Hubble costs too much to maintain (Score:3, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @02:42PM (#8008809) Homepage
    Each servicing mission for the Hubble costs more than all the proposed large ground-based telescopes put together.

    If NASA is going to spend a launch on space telescopes, they may as well put up a new one. The Hubble was designed when NASA PR was claiming that shuttle launches were going to be cheap. They're not. Each one costs about a quarter billion dollars.

    • Not true!!! OK, yes the missions are expensive (few hundred million), but the largest ground-based observatories cost on order of 100 million each (e.g., Keck, VLT, etc.) with a few million per year in supporting costs. And as for "propsed" large ground-based telescopes put together -- that is ALSO quite false. There are several 30-100 meter telescopes at various levels of development and these are going to cost much more than Keck or the VLT telescopes. There was also a study done concerning the scient

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