Nasa Says 'no' to Hubble Reprieve

falconed writes "From the BBC, 'Nasa has given a final "no" to requests for it to change its mind and grant a reprieve to the Hubble Space Telescope.' Not much new info here; canceling the program due to safety issues. This has been discussed on Slashdot before."

Time it to go down in the middle of Utah......

[ckathens]

Just a thought, kill two birds w/ one stone.

typical NASA

[xeeno]

The original decision to kill hubble wasn't made by a group but by one person, Sean O' Keefe. The official reasoning is that it's too risky to keep sending people up to do trivial things like maintenance because the shuttles are old and dangerous. The real reasoning is more likely along the lines of "if we lose another shuttle people will get fired over it."

If NASA was so concerned about safety then they would have learned from the original shuttle disaster.

The truth of the matter is that when you strap your ass to several kilotons of explosives with the intent of blasting yourself into orbit there is always the chance of fatality. Sure, the shuttles are old and rickety. We knew this 10 years ago. So, NASA. What have you been doing in the last 10 years about it? Answer: nothing.

The cost per shuttle in maintenance is amazing, but if you get rid of the shuttles in favor of something more efficient then you lose money and jobs. It's the same way any other monolithic government organization works - the more crap you put between yourself and the project = more money and jobs are created.

So, people. Are you willing to put people out of work to make a more efficient space program? Are you willing to get rid of the head of NASA because he likes his job and doesn't want to lose it? Would you do the same thing if you were in his position? Can you think of a way that you can maintain the job number and the influx of money while actually getting things done?

I'm not defending NASA, believe me. I work with people that work for NASA. They work 30 minutes a day and take 3 hour lunch breaks, just like the .com people did before the bottom of the market fell out. And we all know how much work got done then, don't we? Zilch. There's a reason why the running joke is that NASA is welfare for scientists. But then again, can you think of any alternatives?

Re:typical NASA

[1029]

But then again, can you think of any alternatives?

Yes. Loosen up the gov't monopoly on space flight and let the private sector take over.

Re:typical NASA

[mike77]

I work with people that work for NASA. They work 30 minutes a day and take 3 hour lunch breaks...

I work for NASA myself, and I don't know who you work with, but the people who belong at NASA put in long hours. I put in 10 hour days on a regular basis. Admittedly I don't work at one of the major centers, but I find your generalization to be rather unfair to us folks who care. Sure there are poeple who do what you say, but I'd argue that's not the norm. Maybe it is for the pencil pushers, but the engine

Re:typical NASA

[pla]

Weren't the astronauts alive in both cases of the shuttle exploding until they hit the earth extremely quickly?

In the Challenger explosion, yes. The actual "explosion" made a big fireball but packed little destructive force. Other evidence, such as the use of emergency oxygen masks, indicate that the crew survived the initial blast.

For the Columbia, I haven't heard one way or the other, but considering the ship actually broke up (rather than just the fuel tank rupturing, causing a fireball)... And th

Why not give it to DoD?

[Pakaran2]

You could point it towards Earth and look for those WMD's. Obviously Saddam won't tell where they are, so we need to get creative.

Re:Why not give it to DoD?

[downix]

You know it wouldn't be used for WMD tho. It would be used to look at topless sunbathers while the manager's in his office.

Re:Why not give it to DoD?

[Anonymous Coward]

snipped from the Hubble FAQ on the NASA website:

Hubble could take pictures of the Earth, but the image quality would be extremely poor.

1. The problems are that Hubble has a fixed focus which is set for looking at the distant stars and galaxies. The Earth is way too close. An object about 2-3 meters across would be one fuzzy dot. This is not nearly as good as Hubble could do if it could be focused.

2. The surface of the Earth is whizzing by as Hubble orbits, and the pointing system, designed to track the d

Re:Why not give it to DoD?

[Buran]

Another reason is that the sensors aren't built to look at something as bright as Earth, so they'd be blinded permanently.

The KH-12 satellite is reportedly a modified Hubble (that might even be the other way around) that IS designed to look at Earth, though, so it's been done already. Here's a picture [echelononline.free.fr] - tiny, but the resemblance is there. Notice that the dish antenna is in a different spot, if this picture is accurate.

Re:Why not give it to DoD?

[Buran]

Google for 'kh-12' and 'hubble' together, or 'kh-11' and 'hubble'.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question529.htm [howstuffworks.com]

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/kh11.htm [astronautix.com]

http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/kh-1 2. htm

http://www.janes.com/aerospace/military/news/jsd/j sd011017_1_n.shtml [janes.com]

Actually, that's depressing. We have several Hubble-type satellites up there that our government just flings up there whenever the hell it wants and it won't save the one that people actually care about!? Argh. As if I we

Re:Why not give it to DoD?

[JungleBoy]

Hubble was not the first space craft to fly that size lens. When hubble was being built, Lockheed already had the equipment to test and validate the lens. As we all remember, when Hubble was put into orbit, its lens was seriously flawed and a shuttle mission had to go up and add some 'contact lens' to correct it. Now why would NASA fly an unvalidated lens when the equipment existed to validate it? Lockheed offered to do it for them, but the test equipment was in the Skunk Works, so lockheed wouldn't let any of the NASA people in without fairly hi level security clearance. None of the NASA people had the clearance and NASA didn't want to cough up the money or wait the time required to get the clearance, so they just decided not to test the lens.

I'm sure the DoD has had very high resolution stuff flying for decades. My guess is that they resolutions higher than 1cm. I went to a few technical workshops down at JPL a year or two back. There was a software contractor there who worked for the DoD on extensions to the TIFF/GeoTIFF image formats. He said they have added extentions to the TIFF format to be able to store 1PB (Peta Byte) images in a tiff file (through internally virtual images/referenced data). Multiple times he made the comment that the earth at 1cm resolution is about 1PB.

I've talked to people who worked on the Agena satelites from the 60s into the 80s. He said that though he never say the target imagery, he did see some calibration imagry in the early 70s taken over the beaches of Southern California. And yes, he could tell if they person on the beach was a man or a woman, and if a woman whether she wasy laying face up or face down. This was in the early 70s!!.

At this point I'd put money on the DoD having a constalation of satellites with far higher resolution than Hubble. On the other hand, I'm sure hubble has very different types of sesor equipment then the DoD sats.

It's N.A.S.A., dammit.

[tiktokfx]

Or NASA if you must drop the periods, but never Nasa.

Re:It's N.A.S.A., dammit.

[th77]

To the Brits, it's Nasa. They like to make initial caps words out of acronyms, for example Nato. And British English tends to dominate in Europe, and elsewhere around the world, so...

Anyway, this is hardly a surprise from NASA. I mean, the requirement for *every* shuttle flight to be in ISS orbit, so they can get off and crowd into the station if there's an emergency is nice, but not terribly useful. Then again, the shuttle itself is being repurposed as little more than a, er, shuttle (as in shuttle bus) to the station. Grumble...

Re:It's N.A.S.A., dammit.

[XaProf]

And British English tends to dominate in Europe, and elsewhere around the world, so...

Actually, when I spent my year in Europe I met a lot of Anglophone Europeans who said they had a choice when they learned English to learn American or British English, and most chose British simply because Britain is closer than the U.S.

But elsewhere in the world? I'm not so sure. Every single Latin American I've met who speaks English speaks American English. The vast majority of Asians that I've met do as well, in sp

Re:It's N.A.S.A., dammit.

[bobbis.u]

Yeah, I've noticed the BBC do this before with NASA and lots of other acronyms. Like here [bbc.co.uk] where they do it with UNESCO and UNEP, even though they capitalise the first letters of the words when explaining the acronyms.

They do seem to keep abbrevations capitalised (e.g. DNA in that article). Strictly speaking, an acronym is an abbrevation that is said as a word, i.e. you say Nasa not N-A-S-A, but you do say D-N-A.

I think I will write to them though because it can't be correct to remove the capitalisation

Re:It's N.A.S.A., dammit.

[bobbis.u]

Actually, I have now checked the "Oxford Guide To Style" (a good resource for typesetting in British English). Firstly, it says "Acronyms take no points, whether all in caps..., in initial capitals with upper and lower case..., or entirely in lower case" so N.A.S.A. is incorrect.

It goes on to say "Any all-capital proper-name acronym is, in some house styles, fashioned with a single initial capital if it exceeds four letters (Basic, Unesco, Unicef). It appears the BBC does this with acronyms that exceed th

Re:It's N.A.S.A., dammit.

[BigDumbSpaceApe]

You notice tho, that they don't call themselve Bbc.

They should be able to keep Hubble going...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that they have found a good way to reduce costs..

http://www.post-gazette.com/images2/RR012704.gif

Sell it!

[heironymouscoward]

Slice it up into 5" square pieces and sell it to raise money for... uh... it's in space. Damn

What about the giant ants?

[Lieutenant_Dan]

The ones on the moon? The lens on the Hubble telescope was the only deterrent! Now they will attack us! We are doomed.

Will someone please think of the children!?

Makes no sense

[Wister285]

It really makes no sense that they decided to do this. Sure, it costs money to run one mission, but after that you have years of data collection. While we may be sending up another telescope, it doesn't matter. The James Webb Telescope can do what it is special at and then have the Hubble do some other tasks. Two telescopes means twice as much data collection for minimal investment!

You're missing the point

[Aardpig]

It costs a not-insignificant amount of money to keep Hubble's support infrastructure at STScI [stsci.edu] running -- above and beyond the maintenance costs required to keep the telescope alive. This is the principal reason for the cut -- to save money.

The same economic reasons have been used before to cut space-based observatories; the International Ultraviolet Observer is one example.

Re:You're missing the point

[Wister285]

As was said by another poster, "safety" is the primary reason. I think you just have to read between the lines though to see that they really mean they need to save money. This doesn't make any sense though since they are sending a rocket up to help the Hubble get into a better position to fall. Either way, NASA is making a conflicting decision.

Furthermore, if we can't service a piece of machinery in orbit, I don't understand how we are both going to the Moon and Mars. We even made it to the Moon with

Re:You're missing the point

[Dashing Leech]

Safety is indeed the primary reason. There are a variety of reasons:

The Hubble requires a due-east launch from KSC. The emergency landing sites in Africa are in the process of being shut down, so there'd be no emergency landing sites. (Setting them up again would be quite expensive.)

Return-to-flight rules for the shuttle include the ability to inspect the Thermal Protection System (tiles and RCC panels). As we speak the details of how this will be done are still being worked out. (I am personally involved in this process.) Right now plans include using both Canadarms (shuttle and ISS) to move a boom with a sensor package underneath the shuttle. Another task involves rolling the shuttle and viewing it from the ISS as it approaches. There is currently no inspection concept that would work for a Hubble mission, violating the CAIB requirements for flight. There are future plans for a free-flyer inspector, but that is years away. The ability to fix or patch damage would be even harder for Hubble than ISS.

Hubble is at approximately twice the height of the ISS. It is at the limit of where the shuttle can reach, so if there are problems they're essentially out of luck.

The shuttle can handle a fair number of failures on ISS trips, even including some engines. This is both because the ISS offers extra repair abilities and because of the lower orbit.

For large failures that can't be repair, the ISS offers a "lifeboat" for the crew who could survive there for quite some time until another shuttle or Russian spacecraft can retrieve them. On Hubble, they're screwed. Russians can't even reach them because of the orbital plane.

These are the jist of the safety reasons. But then come the technological and financial reasons. Why should Hubble be kept running? It may have been state-of-the art when it was launched, but there are now ground telescopes that are even better than it due to advances in adaptive reflector control. It's just not worth it anymore. It could probably survive and produce data for another 10 years, but at lower quality and much greater expense than we can get elsewhere.

Re:You're missing the point

[Hays]

What? You're involved in keeping our astronauts safe and you think that there are ground based ultraviolet or infrared telescopes that are "even better than" hubble? That's distressing.

"It could probably survive and produce data for another 10 years, but at lower quality and much greater expense than we can get elsewhere." I'll thank you to tell me where else I can get my high quality infrared and ultraviolet observations (specifically on the wavelengths in which the atmosphere is opaque).

I am not in a

Re:You're missing the point

[Dashing Leech]

you think that there are ground based ultraviolet or infrared telescopes that are "even better than" hubble?

No, I don't think so, I know so. (Well, as long as I trust people, papers, and reports who are the actual experts in the field.) Adaptive optics have generated ground based designs that are several times better than Hubble [eetimes.com] in infrared. It's not hard to find journal papers on the subject, though I haven't seen them reported much in the press. I'm surprised you don't know about them.

This may not

Re:You're missing the point

[Hays]

This may not be true for all wavelengths that Hubble can see, but it is true for a large part of it.

It is not true for much of the infrared range, because the atmosphere is opaque to some of it. The same goes for ultraviolet. Here's a graph of the infrared part -
http://www.coseti.org/atmosphe.htm

The webb telescope should cover some (all?) of that range when it's eventually launched. The Webb telescope will not cover the ultraviolet range that hubble covers. So your argument is that those ranges are n

Re:You're missing the point

[luna69]

> Why should Hubble be kept running? It may have
> been state-of-the art when it was launched, but
> there are now ground telescopes that are even
> better than it due to advances in adaptive
> reflector control....It could probably
> survive and produce data for another 10 years,
> but at lower quality and much greater expense
> than we can get elsewhere.

Duh, wrong. Adaptive optics can, indeed, do marvelous things. But HST is above the atmosphere, and is used often in wavebands that are

Re:You're missing the point

[Dashing Leech]

Please, check your facts before making sweeping statements about how HST isn't state-of-the-art.

Actually, I have been keeping up with state-of-the-art for quite some time, and I do know that HST isn't the best out there [eetimes.com] anymore for a lot of things. However, you are correct that I was wrong to make "sweeping statements", perhaps laziness on my part. There are still a few things Hubble is currently the best at, but much of its designed capabilities can now be done with ground telescopes, and in the near

The Three Biggest Lies

[Detritus]

• The check is in the mail.
• I'll respect you in the morning.
• It isn't about money.

Re:Makes no sense

[Buran]

I am a space buff and have been most of my life. I am quite angry at what I see as a cop-out and an unwillingness to accept the risks that have always been there as part of space flight. Why are we suddenly afraid to fly the kinds of missions the shuttle was designed to fly, and has performed quite well for over 20 years? Along the reasoning we're getting from these idiots, we might as well not have bothered, and we were insane to have been doing what we were doing for all that time. These people are now sa

New Telescope in ISS orbit?

[Mattb90]

Considering NASA's new rules, I'm guessing that the James Webb Telescope, which is set to replace Hubble in 2012 (which will now be 4 years after Hubble goes out of service) will be 'in range' of the ISS, so that any astronauts working on it will have the ISS as a safety net. Does this then suggest the same orbit for the telescope as the ISS, or at least a similar one?

And if so, does this not mean we are limited to low-orbits for telescopes we want to repair over time?

Re:New Telescope in ISS orbit?

[aitala]

The James Webb telescope will not be accessible by anyone - its going to be at the L2 point. There will be no way to service it if anything goes wrong. And it is a very complicated piece of machinery - including a multi segmented mirror which will have to unfold to be useable.

Re:New Telescope in ISS orbit?

[Aardpig]

The James Webb telescope will not be accessible by anyone - its going to be at the L2 point.

And the decision to situate the JWST at L2 was made primarily on economic grounds. With no possibility of sending a manned mission to service the telescope, you conveniently avoid any chance of having to meet the large costs which manned missions incurr.

From the economists' point of view, Hubble was a disaster in this respect: a huge amount of money was spent sending the shuttle to service the telescope (a shu

Re:New Telescope in ISS orbit?

[th77]

Oh, so it's like with appliances. "You mean I could take this vaccum cleaner to a repair shop if it has problems? That sounds expensive, so I'll just buy one that can't be repaired."

You make an interesting point, though.

Re:New Telescope in ISS orbit?

[ibpooks]

More like, a new vacuum cleaner is only $90; the service to fix my old one will be $50/hour plus parts, and I get back an old, partially broken vacuum.

Re:New Telescope in ISS orbit?

[GoofyBoy]

the decision to situate the JWST at L2 was made primarily on economic grounds

Really?

http://ngst.gsfc.nasa.gov/FAQ/FAQans.htm#anchor7 [nasa.gov]

Sounds like a good scientific reason to me.

Re:New Telescope in ISS orbit?

[Aardpig]

Really? http://ngst.gsfc.nasa.gov/FAQ/FAQans.htm#anchor7 Sounds like a good scientific reason to me.

And just below the information you cite (http://ngst.gsfc.nasa.gov/FAQ/FAQans.htm#anchor8 [nasa.gov]) :

When JWST is at the second Lagrange point (see previous question), it will be out of reach of the Space Shuttle and repairs cannot be made once it has been launched. This also means that no provisions have to be made to allow astronauts to make repairs.

There's your economic reason.

Re:New Telescope in ISS orbit?

[GoofyBoy]

>There's your economic reason.

My point is that its not the primary reason, which is a dumb assertion the first post.

Do you really need a reason not to go out and fix it? Why not just say "Usable for 1 year. If it lasts longer, its a bonus."

Re:New Telescope in ISS orbit?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

There's your economic reason.

I think that's stretching it a lot because you don't show a convincing causality. It doesn't show that the decision to go L2 was made because it avoids costs of upgrades vs. technical reasons which happen to avoid any chance of servicing.

The infrared noise issue is convincing enough of a reason because you want everything to be not just cold but damn cold to maintain the lowest noise floor. The telescope will not be able to measure temperatures that are below that of the me

Re:New Telescope in ISS orbit?

[j-b0y]

That's part of the distribution of costs agreement between NASA and ESA; NASA is paying the majority of the costs (and so American astronomers get the majority of observing time). ESA contributes an instrument and the launch vehicle and ESA member states gets a corresponding amount of science time, through a European Coordinating Facility.

It's not a bad agreement and not all that uncommon.

Re:New Telescope in ISS orbit?

[stevesliva]

What makes you think the Webb will be in LEO and servicible by astronauts at all?

Disposable Satellites

[Zilfondel2]

Remember, these things are disposable. It doesn't matter if it's a billion dollar telescope or an $800 million rover on Mars, eventually it will run down and that'll be that.

However, we don't currently have a replacement for Hubble, and even if we are ready to launch one, there is no guarantee that it will surivive launch, or actually work once in orbit.

Re:Disposable Satellites

[andih8u]

No guarantee anyone going up to fix Hubble will survive launch either.

Foreign nation

[Anonymous Coward]

Could a foreign nation collect hubble as space scrape and use it for it's own purposes. I have no idea about property rights in low earth orbit but i've seen tons of cheesy sci-fi movies that seem to support the possiblity :)

Re:Foreign nation

[stratjakt]

AFAIK, it'll cost more to maintain it (essentially rebuilding the thing in orbit) than it would to launch a new one.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

New X-Prize Goal?

[Glock27]

While far more ambitious than the first X-Prize, a privatized mission to save the Hubble would have vast implications for the advancement of spaceflight without the inertia and inefficiency of government. Perhaps robotic missions to a) boost it into a higher, safe orbit and b) at some later time replace the aging gyroscopes and other components.

Thoughts?

Re:New X-Prize Goal?

[Esion Modnar]

a) boost it into a higher, safe orbit and b) at some later time replace the aging gyroscopes

It's space, but isn't it still a very hostile place to be, even for a space telescope? You've orbital junk, radiation, etc., so what is the "shelf life" of a space telescope, even in a higher, "safe" orbit?

So, how long can you wait to do maintenance, before it's just space junk?

Re:New X-Prize Goal?

[Glock27]

It's space, but isn't it still a very hostile place to be, even for a space telescope? You've orbital junk, radiation, etc., so what is the "shelf life" of a space telescope, even in a higher, "safe" orbit?

A "safe" orbit refers to one that's not in imminent danger of reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. The HST was originally in a 600 km orbit, and truthfully I'm not sure that the orbit itself is an issue as much as the probable failure of gyroscopes and other equipment. Replacing equipment, however, is a

Re:New X-Prize Goal?

[Rick.C]

The down-side would be that just as your rescue mission blasts off, NASA could issue the command to fire Hubble's thrusters to de-orbit it. Even worse, they could do it just as you hook up with Hubble and take you down with it.

It would have to be a stealth project and include a plan to hijack Hubble's radio links, re-do the encryption and steal control away from NASA.

Shiver me timbers, Laddie! I be a Space Pirate!

At least I'm thinking this would be a far better definition of "piracy" than downloading MP

A low for a NASA manager?

[Stugots]

"The documents (from the engineers) really did not go into the kind of depth and detail that we already had," Readdy said, who faulted the two engineers' reports for their "superficial" analysis.

This one sentence bloew me away. A NASA manager faulting an engineer for being superficial is just so funny.

Virtually every NASA disaster (and certainly the most emotionally distressing ones, with a loss of life) can be traced to management and not technical decisions.

NASA is full of... well, you know

[rknop]

It's all about politics. The safety issues are largely an excuse.

The amount of money that will be spent on an automatic de-orbiting rocket for the HST to overcome a 1-in-700 (yes, that small) chance of some *property damage* (not even human injury) is going to be huge. Which would seem to indicate an obsession with safety, but really at its core it is an obsession with PR. I simply cannot believe that there aren't engineers capable of coming up with a last-ditch backup plan should a spacewalk inspection of the shuttle servicing Hubble show that there is damage. (And they're going to be spacewalking anyway if they're going to Hubble; not a big deal to go take a look at the bottom fo the spacecraft.) There are other shuttles...!

-Rob

Re:NASA is full of... well, you know

[GoofyBoy]

>The amount of money that will be spent on an automatic de-orbiting rocket for the HST to overcome a 1-in-700 (yes, that small) chance of some *property damage* (not even human injury) is going to be huge.

They are engineers. Thats what they do. Talk to a professional engineer or read up on professional ethics. Public safety superseeds costs.

>Which would seem to indicate an obsession with safety, but really at its core it is an obsession with PR.

Spin and public impression is the obsession of PR. Safety is secondary for PR.

Re:NASA is full of... well, you know

[rknop]

They are engineers. Thats what they do. Talk to a professional engineer or read up on professional ethics. Public safety superseeds costs.

Nothing is 100% safe. Otherwise we wouldn't launch the Shuttle at all. Otherwise you wouldn't leave your house every day.

If professional ethics prevented engineers from doing something that had a 1-in-700 chance of doing property damage, then no ethical engineer would design a road. I guarantee you that many people will die on highways in the next week. That's not a 1-in-700 chance of property damage somewhere in the world; that's a 100% chance of multiple human lives lost.

The risk of damage goes into the equation of costs. If any chance at all is unacceptable, then we can't ever do anything.

-Rob

Re:NASA is full of... well, you know

[tm2b]

Nothing is 100% safe. Otherwise we wouldn't launch the Shuttle at all.

Ummmm... we aren't, and that's why. :(

In capitalist Russia...

[Wister285]

Space satellites deorbit themselves!

Well, that wasn't as clever as it first seemed.

Too much data?

[laetus]

Can anyone answer this? These telescopes (both Hubble and Webb) can collect enormous amounts of data in relatively short periods of time.

That said, could one possible reason be that the astronomical community at large simply doesn't have enough resources to interpret both sets of data?

Re:Too much data?

[Aardpig]

That said, could one possible reason be that the astronomical community at large simply doesn't have enough resources to interpret both sets of data?

Data management has been a problem in the past, but storage and computing power today are both so cheap that it is rare to run into a problem. Even on my el-cheapo Linux box (Athlon XP 2600+, $600), I can quite easily crunch through gigabytes of astronomical data.

Re:Too much data?

[rknop]

That said, could one possible reason be that the astronomical community at large simply doesn't have enough resources to interpret both sets of data?

Given that the Hubble Space Telescope is oversubscribed by a huge factor-- that is, there are many more astronomers wanting to use it than there is time-- this sounds pretty unlikely.

Plus, nobody's talking about having the HST remain online after the JWST is launched. At best, the HST will last until the JWST's ostensible launch date, and we all know tha

Re:Too much data?

[Fnkmaster]

No - generally Hubble data is highly prized - in my experience working in astrophysics (quite a few years back), when we had data from a Hubble run, we'd eek as many papers and as much good stuff out of it as possible. No, astronomers put an absurd amount of time and effort into analyzing their data, or rather there are always a couple of grad students and undergrads around to run data through the ringer.

Especially since data is generally so incredibly noisy it takes huge volumes of it to get a reasonabl

a pitty

[cribb]

I still don't understand why NASA will be flying to the space station, but will not service Hubble which has done, and has the potential to do hundreds of times more science than the space station ever will. Besides, the ISS is currently serviceable as it is, with a bit more money even 3 people could be sent up and serviced with more soyuz aircraft.

but instead we have a prematurely scrapped Hubble, a disfunctional ISS that doesn't do anything anyway, and NASA with promises to fly to mars and build a "space plane" that is currently in pre-planning stage.

Re: a pitty

[Black Parrot]

> but instead we have a prematurely scrapped Hubble, a disfunctional ISS that doesn't do anything anyway, and NASA with promises to fly to mars and build a "space plane" that is currently in pre-planning stage.

Looks like bye-bye for NASA... until a few years from now when it looks like some other country is on the verge of doing something great, and then we'll pour a trillion dollars into a deathmarch program, after all the remaining expertise has been dispersed and the physical infrastructure has dec

Re:a pitty

[Planesdragon]

I still don't understand why NASA will be flying to the space station, but will not service Hubble which has done, and has the potential to do hundreds of times more science than the space station ever will.

Because we don't have a space program for scientfic achievement. We have a space program for human and national accomplishment.

No good for the astronomical community

[fee79]

This means that there will be at least 2-3 yrs before we have an active optical telescope. Sure there's Spitzer but it can only see in the infrared spectrum. I think the hubble's time is up too, but I don't think it should be allowed reentry until we have another visible light telescope in place.

It's obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as Hubble is working, there'll be less motivation for the "powers that be" (non-NASA) to fund the "next generation". "Hubble works so why do we need another telescope?" will overshadow any [other] requests. If Hubble were to suddenly stop working finding|funding, the next one [using today's technology] would be much easier to get into motion.

Loss if credibility

[kippy]

How does NASA expect us to take it seriously with the new Moon/Mars push when it says that the Hubble repare is to dangerous. I'm pro-Mars but I'm betting it will be a lot more dangerous to do those manned missions than to fix Hubble.

If saftey is an issue now, won't it stop them later from doing everything they're promissing for the next 20 years?

Re:Loss if credibility

[kippy]

New craft won't be ready for quite a few years. Hubble will degrade long before that. Besided, this is the same agancy that's saying that we'll finish building the doomed ISS. How is that any different than fixing hubble? by the way, the ISS is hardly a "safe haven". If they mess something up while building it, there goes your safe haven.

Lagrange points

[reverendG]

I've seen a few people suggest that not having the Hubble will be okay, because it's going to be replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope. There was a good discussion on slashdot [slashdot.org]about this before, however, that led me to this site [nasa.gov] that explains the Lagrange points.

The Lagrange points are so far away from the earth that there are no reusable space craft that can reach them. This will make it next to impossible to service the JWST should something malfunction or fail (like the Hubble did so notoriously).

Take it international

[-tji]

The knowledge gained from the Hubble is certainly not a US-only thing.. Open it up to all nations to maintain it. I'm sure that among Japan and the various European contries they could get enough $$ to run a repair mission.

Re:Take it international

[niall2]

The Europeans and Canadians already do support it (ESA supports Hubble to about 15% of it anual opperating budget [spacetelescope.org]). However none of them own it, nor can they go and fix it.

And none of them pony up for the $500 million shuttle launches. That falls fully on NASA. Is kind of like being a teenager and having your parents not give you the keys to the car to go on a date on Saturday night. Your not getting very far without them.

Re:Take it international

[-tji]

Okay great, the precedent is there.. The concept still stays the same. Ask the Europeans and Canadians to kick in more.. enough to cover the launch. Open it up to other countries for involvement, giving them access to the telescope in return.

Do the Russians have a vehicle capable of this sort of rendezvous while carrying the necessary parts/supplies/tools/crew? Maybe they could provide a cheaper launch option.

The Russians could provide their valuable experience from the Mir.. Their unique brand

When did the US turn into such pussies?

[KlomDark]

Yes, the death of the astronauts last year was very sad, but even sadder is that now they are so worried about someone getting hurt that even willing participants are not allowed to go fix a damn telescope!

And people got killed in the WTC, and we do nothing but make it tougher to get on an airplane. It's all gotta be perfectly safe!

Don't worry, nobody lives forever... Take some risks while you can. Die on your feet instead of your knees.

pointy hair

[kippy]

The astronauts who would repair Hubble are all chomping at the bit to get up there. It's NASA's mismanagement that is denying them the chance. This is mismanagement, not cowardliness. Well perhaps it is but it's all on the side of the administrators.

Re:When did the US turn into such pussies?

[Zak3056]

Yes, the death of the astronauts last year was very sad, but even sadder is that now they are so worried about someone getting hurt that even willing participants are not allowed to go fix a damn telescope!

It's an excuse.

The idea is to cut costs by removing the large hubble ground support--and the $500 Million cost of a shuttle mission.

"Safety" is a bullshit reason to avoid the PR disaster of saying Hubble is too expensive while ISS continues to soak up money and produce no science.

Re:When did the US turn into such pussies?

[0123456]

"The idea is to cut costs by removing the large hubble ground support--and the $500 Million cost of a shuttle mission."

In reality though, cutting a shuttle mission saves you at most about $150 million in per-flight costs, plus a few million in training costs. The shuttle program costs something like $3 billion a year to run regardless of whether a single shuttle flies, plus about $150 million on top for each launch, plus the costs of training and special equipment and payloads for each mission.

Why not REALLY sell it as surplus?

[spidergoat2]

Have they considered that perhaps another country might want to take it over for a few more years? Maybe India or Japan or England or another country would buy the rights and get some kind of value out of it. Oh, if you're paying attention George Bush, it might be a way to knock a few bucks off the national debt.... Whatever.

Earth to NASA

[Loki_1929]

Earth to NASA - come in NASA...

You're a publicly-funded, publicly-mandated government agency. If the public tells you to go to the moon, you go to the moon. If the public tells you to land on the sun, you'd best figure out some damn good materials that'll hold up.

If the public tells you to save a telescope that's told us more about the universe in the few years it's been active than we've learned in the previous 2,000 years, you save the damn thing. When you have 300,000,000 bosses, telling them all 'no' is not a good plan. The eggheads are saying safety isn't an issue, and the public is saying money isn't an issue. Hubble's budgetary requirements are infintesimal compared to its value to mankind and the three hundred million people who sign your damn paychecks.

Don't reconsider your decision, change it. Otherwise, you'd best get started calculating the trajectory for optimal burger flipping; got it?

MOD PARENT INSIGHTFUL

[kippy]

This is right on. Our tax money is paying for it and the overwhelming voice of everyone who knows about this is to save Hubble. Pro-Mars, Pro-Robot, Anti-nuclear, everyone who is into space stuff and millions who don't are calling for them to change their minds.

Re:Earth to NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

"It costs $1B to keep Hubble up. What programs are you going to bitch about being cut if that money is spent keeping an old small telescope in orbit?"

As posted elsewhere...

Cut foreign aid. Say, the $3+ BILLION per year that Israel gets. Go buy yourself a couple more Hubbles with that.

I won't bitch about that at all. Any more questions?

New Reality TV Show

[stuffduff]

Space Salvage (Shades of Salvage 1 [geocities.com])

Where cute incompetent teens try and rescue a multi million dollar space tellescope. Starting with 24 teens, the rigors of Network Space Training whittle it down to a crew of two, who use a decommissioned shuttle to retrieve the Hubble.

Note: Orbital Sex Scenes a must for ratings week!

NASA = safety or bust

[Dethboy]

Basically I think in the future you'll see NASA shying away from anything even remotely risky.

"He added that Hubble offers no "safe haven" for astronauts seeking refuge from a damaged shuttle, while the ISS does."

Oh good grief. What's next airbags and OnStar onboard the Shuttle?

It's space dammit. If you can't accept the risks then give the money to someone who does. Personally I'd fly to the freakin Hubble just so it can beam me back these bitching desktop images.

jim

Re:NASA = safety or bust

[M-G]

Oh good grief. What's next airbags and OnStar onboard the Shuttle?


Heh. Funny, but unfortunately, looks to be true. Crew safety should always be a high priority, but you can never eliminate risk.

Your car is a lot safer if you never leave the driveway, but you obviously won't get very far.

So when/if we go to Mars, are they going to be towing a little space dinghy behind them, or are we going to have to build a duplicate ship to fly alongside in case of an emergency?

what if columbus said no?

[oogoody]

Sorry man, those ships are dangerous.
And we might drop off the edge of the earth.
Way staying home.

Someone else would have gone

[HarveyBirdman]

And no one really thought the Earth was flat. They even had a rough estimate of its diameter.

Pitch it in a way Bush can understand....

[Astroboy!]

"You see, Mr. President, if we just attach missiles here, here, and here, we have an effective deterrent to any possible terrorist threat from a space-based attack."

"Fundin' ahproved!"

NASA's priorities are confused

[dtjohnson]

Apparently, the Hubble mission is now considered too dangerous because there would be no backup shuttle available to rescue the Astronauts if their shuttle developed a problem. Space travel is inherently dangerous but the margin of safety with only one shuttle seems acceptable given the number of successful shuttle missions that have already been accomplished. It is financially and technically unrealistic to have a backup spacecraft available for every mission. The space station continues to be supporte

it is a shame...Enjoy the pics while you can

[seriv]

I think this is on of the worse choice that Nasa could make. It is about the final choice to make science no longer an issue. Even if it is a saftey risk, so is going to the ISS, they are just sitting on a big bomb if something goes wrong. Safety is not the issue, engineers are saying so. But we should enjoy the pics while they are still around, this website is a news release center with high res pics of hubble pics. http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/ releases/year/ [hubblesite.org]

Petition to save the Hubble

[fireacc]

If anyone is particularly passionate about saving the Hubble, there is an online petition here:
http://www.savethehubble.org/petition.jsp [savethehubble.org]

Such a shame...

[Mondoz]

I know several people who have spent the past few years writing software to greatly improve the control that shuttle astronauts would have over the HST while docked with it...
Now it's scrapped.

How sad.

After using HST as a proving ground, this software would have been used to interface with many different hardware payloads... I don't know what will happen to their project now...

Now-Afraid-of-Space-Agency

[peter303]

What does that acronym spell? NASA!

...due to safety concerns?

[WheelDweller]

If we can't maintain a satellite (with no explosives or radiation or whatever) how can we be expected to start a moon-colony or anything else?

The Hubble's been one of the most successful programs we've had; other than a bug in the first mirror, we got it patched and it's show us things we never would have seen otherwise. (And it'd be very useful for spotting extinction-level asteroids.

My bet is that politics got involved and NASA's never been a PR-savvy organization. Shame, really. When you have problems and need to rally around something, you don't just dump a rare success.

The Russians, people really good at rock-simple boosting of many, many tons at a time, could use the business. Now that the whole cold-war thing is over, I'd see reinstatement of this program as big an event as all the detant meetings they ever held.

Back before Britian was attacked by Germany, someone was smart enough to do an "X-pize" kinda thing: they held a prize for making floatplanes to race. Political uproar was surprizingly vocal: "We might head into a war- why does the government want to mess with sea-racers?" Well, take the floats off and replace'em with bombs, and the fastest plane became the Supermarine Spitfire: a plane that very likely saved their lives.

I think the X-prize is a great idea. Maybe let NASA do the core research- let private companies compete on the transportation side. Then we'll be able to fix things like the Hubble and that industry can start making some real progress.

But if not, "Hubble, we barely knew ye."

combined with ISS

[Major_Small]

when I was reading the article, this thought came to mind: is there any way to append the hubble space telescope to the ISS? that way the astronauts can have a 'safe' place to stay if the shuttle is damaged, and the telescope can be fixed as soon as there's a problem...

Well if they must bring it down at least do this:

[Bob Bitchen]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=95894&cid=8213 447 [slashdot.org]

When did we start giving up?

[Buschman]

Back in the day, people strapped on things like the Wright Flyer, the Spirit of St. Louis, the Bell X-1, the X-15, numerous Mercury/Gemini/Apollo craft, to name a few. There were tremendous risks associated with all this, everyone knew it, everyone accepted it, and not all lived to tell about it.
Because of these advances and the sacrifices made along the way, we made myriad technological advances in engineering, medicine, chemistry, electronics, computer science, and of course haberdashery (velcro).
The astronaut pool is full of folks brave enough to risk their lives in the name of exploration and science. We should be careless or reckless, but we shouldn't be a bunch of agoraphobic pansies either.

Slashrot.

[Chess_the_cat]

Not much new info here

So let's talk about it some more.

Does Maritime Salvage apply to space?

[devaldez]

If so, then whomever decides to go up and save the 'scope will be entitled to ownership...that doesn't necessarily give them access to communications methodology, but it is certainly more than a start.

Could PRC or Russia claim salvage rights?

dave

Is this the beginning of the end of Nasa?

[cdn-programmer]

Some people have proposed that this is the beginning of the end of NASA. There is quite a lot of merit in this idea.

First you redirect the efforts into a direction that is going to be hideously expensive. In order to achieve this goal you abandon pretty much everything else. Then when the elusive goals of landing a man on Mars clearly are seen for what they are - an expensive boondoggle - you simply abandon that project and since there is nothing else left you can shut down all of NASA.

The problem with this future for mankind - one firmly planted on earth - like the proverbial ostrich is this:

There is a lot of energy in space and it can be harvested quite inexpensively. This has been known for decades, but with oil and gas cheap and plentiful on planet earth - space based energy systems really never were explored, much less exploited.

This is now changing. Is it really cheaper to fight wars in the middle east than to harvest energy from space? What of the lives lost? Is it really the case that anonymous teenage boys dying in a desert in Iraq is ok because:"----" You fill in the blanks. With enough creativity pretty much anything can be justified.

--------------

The nuclear program was set back decades through carefully crafted fear mongering. The movie "China Syndrom" is an excellent example of this. I wonder how much influence wealthy Texas oil barons had in this. Their oil would not nearly have had the value it has were a strong nuclear energy industry around. So instead of cheap reliable energy, we end up with such a regulatory mess that even huge corporations are afraid to propose a reactor. The latest example of this is Exelon (EXC:NYSE) who invested with the South African firm, Escom, in the development of the pebble bed reactor. Clearly they felt that the manufactured opposition to nuclear power would be great enough that it is not feasible in the USA to consider building a plant, so they dropped the idea.

I personally think it is rather sad that the USA considers fighting a war so they can grab Arabian oil and gas is preferable to building safe nuclear power plants. But then what would a Canadian know of USA politics?

Thankfully the rest of the world doesn't seem inclined to play along with these mad ideas and France and South Africa as well as India, and several Asian countries have vibrant nuclear programs.

But even this is twisted in the USA disinformation machine. Under the guise of nuclear non-proliferation it is suggested that since a power plant can produce Plutonium, that nuclear energy is inherantly unsafe. Then the USA goes off and builds reactors specifically designed to produce the plutonium. While the rest of the world is told to not use nuclear as a source of energy the USA meanwhile builds and deploys an arsenal of weaponry that boggles the imagination.

Of course while all this is taking place, the peaceful use of nuclear power is discouraged because of the "long lived wastes which take centuries to decay". Of course, there is no real effort to develope scintillation technology that will burn the wastes and turn them into electricity, and in fact, the vast majority never even hear that such technology is possible!!!

How is this any different than the politics that took place when DuPont brought out synthetic fibers and meanwhile Congress passed legilation that outlawed Hemp? They were so crafty back then that they employed the spanish word Marijuana rather than the common English word - because they bloody well knew that if the average joe sixpack knew what they were up to that they would never get away with it!

But since then, how many kids have been jailed and have criminal records because of these insane laws? How many kids have now lost their parents and are growing up in foster care and orphanages because of the antics of the DEA?

--------------

Well - this story is about NASA and decommisioning the Hubble. I personally think we need to be very vocal about

exciting future

[humankind]

Someone sent this to me in e-mail. It seems to sum up the issue nicely.

"We Live In Exciting Times"

I just heard that yet more funding is planned on being cut from NASA, the organization responsible for space flight, exploration and related technology.

All I can say is, "It's about time!"

Is all this NASA stuff really "science?" You people just don't get it.

Space is not the new frontier.

Creating new technology that can slice onions and potatoes into neat shapes, the ability to organize large quantities of neckties utilizing a single closet hanger, a hard taco wrapped inside a flour tortilla with ranch-flavored "Rio Grande Sauce", a new non-stick frying pan coating, penis enlargement vitamins, a chocolate-covered candy bar that will make you lose weight, a light beer "that doesn't taste like a light beer"... now THAT'S science! These amazing advancements immediately enhance the human condition(tm). But there's much more work to be done!

Why, why, why? Why do we insist on exploring the heavens when we have so many challenging frontiers upon us here in the real world? At least GW Bush agrees with me. It's time for the rest of the populace to take off their blue-blockers.

We live in an exciting time. I can't think of another time or place I'd rather be. While our parents and peers might have pondered the enigma of landing on the moon, we have much more pressing concerns: Will Richard get voted off of Survivor:All Stars? Is Michael Jackson going to jail for real this time? Will the seventh Harry Potter movie be as good as the sixth? What more can we learn about Janet Jackson's right breast? The Dukes of Hazzard is being made into a movie! Did you hear me? The DUKES OF HAZZARD! Will it be true to the original? We'll have to find out, but all I can say is, the anticipation is killing me!!

We've given a lot of "science" a try over the years. There's still no cure for cancer; clean-burning fuel technology isn't here; poverty and hunger continue to dominate regions and cultures. Surely after all this time, we should just admit that our resources need to be diverted to more immediate concerns that have the potential to reward us more quickly and efficiently?

Somewhere out there, a person still doesn't have the lowest interest rate on their fourth mortgage! In someone's backyard in Cleveland, there's a plant whose leaves may offer a slight reduction in hair loss among a small sampling of people in a clinical trial. And what are we doing? We're taking pictures of little spots of light millions of light years away. What's the point? If we still cannot produce a triple cheeseburger with "Swiss-flavored" cheese and "smoke-flavored" sauce for under 79 cents, something is wrong. Very wrong.

It's about time we got our priorities straight as Americans, the true superpower and leader of the free world and capital market.

We are wasting precious time and money staring into the heavens while other nations are rapidly approaching our advances in superior low-fat grilling technology. Somewhere out there, much closer than the moon or Mars, is the technology we need to make our clothes smell "winter fresh"; there's a new drink that's a cross between a Martini and Hawaiian Punch -- AND WE NEED TO FIND IT!

How much longer can we afford to spin our wheels with pointless interstellar pursuits when there are still movie scripts about rogue cops and cartoon characters that need to be green-lighted?

So we landed an RC car on Mars. Are you happy? Did we get any high-speed footage of this car in a chase sequence in which it flies into the air and explodes? No! What a total waste!

People, we need to get our priorities straight. Thank God for the Bush Administration!

Ok, ok, I do need to be fair to NASA. The organization did come up with the amazing "Contour Pillow(tm)", but I still sense that the NASA is being distracted with counterproductive ideals when an even more superior mattress technology is i

Re:elections?

[andih8u]

I'm sure fixing the hubble would garner tons of votes.

sheesh