NASA Urged to Reconsider Shuttle Mission to HST 199
LMCBoy writes "Space.com reports today that the National Academies of Science has released its recommendation to NASA on the future of the Hubble Space Telescope. They conclude that 'NASA should take no actions that would preclude a space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.' They also say that none of the safety requirements of the CAIB report preclude a manned servicing mission to HST." Read on for more.
"The NAS recommendation would reverse NASA's previous position that a shuttle repair mission is ruled out for safety reasons. In the wake of strong criticisms of this decision, NASA has also been considering a robotic repair mission. The robotic mission would not risk human lives, but it relies on a number of bleeding-edge technologies that would have to be deployed on a very short timescale. HST's remaining gyroscopes are not expected to last beyond 2007."
I hope they go ahead with this mission (Score:5, Insightful)
Some actual costs from NASA ... (Score:5, Informative)
And Hubble's second servicing mission [nasa.gov] cost $347 million plus another $448 million for the Shuttle flight - I believe that is in 1996 dollars.
So as a taxpayer, for all that dough, how 'bout some new satellite pictures [komar.org] of my house! ;-)
Re:Some actual costs from NASA ... (Score:3, Informative)
OK, I'm a child of the late 1970s, so I hear you when you scoff at recent rates of inflation. But according to the inflation calculator [inflationdata.com], something that cost $1 in 1996 would cost about $1.21 right now. That's not really negligible.
Re:Some actual costs from NASA ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on exactly what you are buying. If it's gasoline, it'll cost more today. If it's a computer hard disk, it'll cost approximately the same. If it's a gigabyte of storage in a large system, it'll cost significantly less. The problem with inflation calculations is that "cost of living" isn't a very good reference index for things like space telescopes.
This is a problem that everyone has to cope with when one considers upgrading a home computer. The machine you have right now may be almost worhtless, considering its capabilities and what the same capabilities would cost today. But you spent a lot for it a few years back. So we are always reluctant to trash or donate an old computer, but from the viewpoint of a cost/benefit analysis it might be the most rational thing to do.
Of course, the cost of space missions hasn't gone down like computer hardware did, but still one wonders if a better and more advanced space telescope couldn't be built at the same price a maintenance mission to Hubble would cost.
Re:Some actual costs from NASA ... (Score:5, Informative)
Since most of the expense is in the launch -- and that would be comparable for a new satellite -- the answer is No. But more importantly, there is a replacement for the Hubble in the pipeline (the James Webb [nasa.gov] Telescope) but it is not scheduled for launch until 2011. Given the precariousness of NASA's launch capability, politicals will, and funding, one has to regard that as a soft date.
Meanwhile, if they don't service Hubble, it will have to be de-orbited. (Note that even just deorbiting the thing will cost about $300 million [space.com], which is around 60% of the cost of the proposed service mission -- not counting any hypothetical replacement.) Unserviced, Hubble will fail in 2007 or 2008. That leaves at least 3 years where there will not be an orbiting telescope with the breadth and coverage afforded by Hubble.
(What's three years? Well, for one thing, we might miss a supernova in the Milky Way. They should happen around once a century but none have been seen in the Milky Way since 1600 or so. It would be almost criminal to have such an event happen during a window when we couldn't observe it from orbit. We could have to wait another few centuries for the next chance.)
Re:Some actual costs from NASA ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I hope they go ahead with this mission (Score:4, Interesting)
The Hubble was built in 1985. So, your analogy is a bit off base. It would be more like repairing that old 128k MacIntosh you bought back then. There's a time to repair, and there's a time to move on to newer technology. Otherwise, you're only hanging on for sentimental reasons, not for science.
Re:I hope they go ahead with this mission (Score:3, Insightful)
The Hubble was built in 1985. So, your analogy is a bit off base. It would be more like repairing that old 128k MacIntosh you bought back then. There's a time to repair, and there's a time to move on to newer technology.
If all you had was that 128k Macintosh, and you knew you wouldn't be able to get a replacement for another decade (at best), then it would make very good sense to repair it.
Re:I hope they go ahead with this mission (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it would be exactly like that if and only if computational power had not increased exponentially in the interim and only one such orbital Macintosh existed.
Re:I hope they go ahead with this mission (Score:3, Informative)
Ideally, I would like to see several Hubble clones in solar orbit - capable of acting
Re:I hope they go ahead with this mission (Score:5, Insightful)
Hubble is in the wrong place - it is inoperable for half the time, since the earth blocks its view as it orbits - much better to place it the Lagrange point like the JWT. Modern space scopes can have much bigger lightweight segmented mirrors - again like JWT. Hubble is also just plain old - all the bits are starting to wear out, take micrometeor hits, and so on. Manned repairs also make no sense whatsoever, at the current (stupid) shuttle mission costs.
Hubble has of course been great sucess in many ways, but technology has moved on since the late 70's when it was concieved.
Personally I wonder if it is even worth spending $300m+ just for a "safe deorbit" - its the old argument - ie: that money spent AIDS drugs for Africa would save many more lifes than are threatened by Hubble reentry..
Re:I hope they go ahead with this mission (Score:3, Interesting)
Not necessarily true. Hubble is in orbit at a fairly shallow inclination (28 degrees). Picture the Solar System--the Sun and Earth-Moon system are all in the same 'horizontal' plane; Hubble's orbit is slanted about thirty degrees from that, but still pretty close. Pointing 'up' or 'down' out of that plane, neither Sun, Moon, nor Earth ever enters its field of view.
Re:I hope they go ahead with this mission (Score:5, Informative)
What a shame it would be to spend all that money putting Hubble up there and then not servicing it because of budget cuts. That would be like spending $20,000 on a new car and then deciding a few years later that you can't afford to take it in for an oil change. It's already up there, they might as well service it.
Hubble is in the 14th year of a 10 year mission. The decision to service hubble is no different than deciding to put a new engine in an old car with 200,000 miles, with the added twist that there is a 1 in 50 chance that a 7 person crew would die doing it. The reason NASA O'Keefe has decided not to service Hubble with the shuttle is that it is judged to be unsafe given the Columbia review board's recommendations. Namely, the shuttle should have access to the safe haven of the ISS if it is to keep flying. This story adds nothing new to the debate. Hubble's replacement is on the way. Perhaps its leisurely schedule of the James Webb Telescope can be accelerated.
Re:I hope they go ahead with this mission (Score:3, Informative)
For that sort of observatory, schedule is not a top priority. Nor was it for Hubble. Performance is so critical (and so difficult), that it's ready when it's ready - you just hope you can keep a lid on costs.
Show me the money... (Score:5, Informative)
But what about the finacial concerns? I don't think NASA has the funding to allocate to a Hubble Repair mission... could the safety claims just have been a smokescreen to cover when the real reason was because they can't get the funding to do this?
Re:Show me the money... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Show me the money... (Score:4, Insightful)
The current political pressure on NASA is to go to the moon and Mars. If NASA has to spend all of its money on that, there's nothing left for Hubble.
Re:Show me the money... (Score:2)
The current political pressure on NASA is to go to the moon and Mars. If NASA has to spend all of its money on that, there's nothing left for Hubble.
It's a good idea for NASA to drag its heels right now. If the administration changes in November, there may be a new, er, vision, and commitments made now may become wasted effort and money.
Re:Show me the money... (Score:5, Interesting)
They've done it twice before, and I don't see any reason they couldn't do it again as long as the shuttle they use is equipt the same as the one they used twice before. That might take some extra funds doing the retrofit.
Tell ya how to take a vote folks, have the irs add a 50 dollar checkoff line to the 1040, where 50 bucks of your refund would go instead to nasa.
I'd bet nasa would hear a get off your butts and doit message loud and clear cause I know I'd sure do the checkmark.
I use 2 of its deep field images, totalling about 70 megs, as backgrounds for 2 of my 8 screens. Everytime I switch to one of those screens I'm reminded of just how usefull that the hubble has been even if it was in need of a set of glasses to clear it up. The last one, showing stuff as far out as 13 billion light years, is a truely impressive image since we are seeing the universe as it was when it was less than a billion years old when that light was sent on its way here.
Properly maintained, that scope can and will be making new discoveries, adding to our knowledge of the universe and physics in general, stuff that cannot be done thru the haze of our atmosphere here on the ground, a hundred years from now.
I'd like to see them add an RPG powered ion engine to it, not a very big one of course, just enough to give it a few ounces of push so that its orbit could be maintained over an extended period as one of the things the shuttle must do each time its there is to give it a push to correct for the decaying orbit. That pushing we are told, over-extends the shuttles available fuel, possibly endangering the ability to steer at landing time. The shuttle that goes there must have the robot arm, and it must be stripped a bit in order to lighten it to even reach the hubbles altitude which is about 50 miles above the design envelope of the shuttle.
But the point is, it CAN be done. Dangerous, maybe. But I don't recall that any of the crews who have been there regretted doing it.
Cheers, Gene
Re:Show me the money... (Score:2, Interesting)
What about asking other nations or private organisations for money to service it?
What about selling Hubble?
What about giving it as a gift to anyone who wants it?
Re:Show me the money... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Show me the money... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Show me the money... (Score:2, Interesting)
As to funding, yes NASA is strapped for cash, but attempti
Re:Show me the money... (Score:3, Interesting)
Stupid bureaucrats.
Re:Show me the money... (Score:2)
Re:Show me the money... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Show me the money... (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, the instruments which were slated to go up have already been built, so you're looking at a substantial loss of investment if a servicing mission doesn't go.
I heard an estimate of 1 billion USD today for the robotic mission. A manned shuttle mission would likely be comparable in price. However, even if they don't send a repair mission, a robotic mission to HST will still need to be sent, in order to attach rockets which can safely splash it down into the ocean. Otherwise, there's no way to control where it will come down. The cost of this robotic-splashdown mission is half the cost of the full robotic-servicing mission (500 million USD).
It would be a shame to scrap HST because we didn't want to spend an extra $500 million to save it. That's almost exactly the average price of a single space shuttle mission. NASA's annual budget is $15 billion. It's not a lot of money, considering what we're getting for it.
Re:Show me the money... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's even more the shame for all the money saved during the last year+ of non-flight. That $500 million isn't money that's unavailable, but it is money that would go to a purely intellectual goal. The current ruling ideology does not value social/intellectual concerns.
Re:Show me the money... (Score:2)
something else? I suppose the question is, "what?"
Oh, and about the money already spent on equipment
for addon... that's a sunk cost. It really doesn't
matter from an economic point of view. Right now
it would be an issue of "what's the next best
alternative for that money?" It best be something
important.
None of this is to say I don't think it should be saved,
just that there's more (and less) to the situation
than meets the eye.
Re:Show me the money... (Score:4, Informative)
Not really. NASA does have the money (assuming it's funding isn't further cut). But NASA administrator O'Keefe re-arranged the NASA priorities after Bush's claim for a Mars mission. The safety issue further added into this, but wasn't entirely a smokescreen.
This is troubling because Bush appointed O'Keefe directly, and O'Keefe reports (or is supposed to, at least) back to Bush. More annoyingly is that O'Keefe single-handedly made the decision to cut the funding for Hubble Servicing Mission 4. He probably had advice from some panel or other, but in his email he stated the decision to cut or not to cut would be his alone.
Luckily enough scientists and politicians acted out to fight O'Keefe's initial decision. Personally, I don't know if he decided to cut it just because of the Mars announcement or not, I think he just doesn't want any more astronaut deaths or serious accidents to occur under his watch. However, I think it's a shame to let NASA's scientific progress stagnate strictly due to safety issues.
On the side note, the whole Mars thing seems bunk, when was the last time anybody even heard any other information about it? Maybe there'll be some more talk about Mars (talk is cheap) until November elections.
Re:Show me the money... (Score:2)
Why not read the report that was recently released (the report was the first step in the planning/feasibility validation of the directed goal)...
moon to mars [moontomars.org]
Safety concerns are perfectly valid. (Score:2)
The best bet for NASA is to either shut down the shuttle fleet or use it only for shuttling people to the station. Another disaster, especially linked to something high profile, will kill NASA.
I would rather the Hubble burn up before risking anyone on the shuttle.
Funding (lack of) (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, what's the point of throwing people up in space station compared to what you can get with an orbital telescope? The price of reparing this has got to be a tiny slice of what the ISS gets every year.
Re:Funding (lack of) (Score:3, Insightful)
Apples and oranges, I'm afraid. It is true that people on the ISS cannot reproduce the valuable data that Hubble provides about distant stars and planets. However, the people on the ISS are capable of carrying out other forms of research that may be just as valuable. For instance, placing people on the ISS allows us to learn about the effects of living in space. This kind of experiment is
Re:Funding (lack of) (Score:3, Informative)
The NSF did a study of the ISS a few years back and concluded tha
Re:Funding (lack of) (Score:5, Insightful)
The Shuttle's design didn't originally include solid fuel rockets. This was later made a requirement as part of a compromise aimed at lowering the Shuttle's design and flight costs. The company that designed and built the SFRs was called Morton Thiokol, now called Cordant Technologies, which was based in Utah. Coincidentally this company had strong ties to the NASA's adminsitrator James Fletcher.
Fletcher built up political support for the Shuttle by throwing some aerospace jobs to Utah. The first US politician to fly aboard the Shuttle was none other than Senator Jake Garn of Utah in April of 1985.
This is the same reasoning behind many of the ISS decisions. NASA can't build something like the ISS without pretty hefty funding from Congress. In order to get funding they have to promise jobs and/or money to the constituencies of the legislators they're asking for money. NASA's administration also knows that if they promise individual companies contracts they can get them to make said legislators happy by writing them nice big campaign checks. Almost all government projects are based around this favor bartering system.
Space telescopes aren't very lucrative contracts so it is hard to sell them to aerospace companies and Congress. The umpteen billion dollar ISS on the other hand is an easy sell as long as the construction can go as slowly as possible.
Why NASA bugs me (Score:5, Insightful)
And now what- we don't have the guts to fix Hubble? I think what this is really about is that we don't want to spend the money, that the head of NASA (O'Keefe is not even a scientist) is willing to bank on ground based telescopes under construction being able to fill in for what Hubble currently does (such as the almost burned observatory in Arizona). That is a dangerous, if not stupid, bet to be undertaking. Instead, we are going to throw our dollars at an improperly positioned space station that is doing trivial, not very important science and the search for life elsewhere in the solar system at a time when we are not technologically well equipped for such missions. We need to focus on near-Earth applications, going no further than the moon until we can bring down the costs and time needed to explore planets like Mars, Jupiter and Saturn for signs of life. I would rather obtain good astrophysics data than bad, inconclusive data about whether water existed in a crater on Mars many unspecified millions of years ago.
Re:Why NASA bugs me (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, let me say that I'm an astrophysicist. I value "good astrophysics data" more than anyone else. I think Hubble should remain in a functional state, at least until a replacement (with detectors in more than just a couple frequency ranges) can be put into space. I also believe that going to the Moon right now is a waste of time and money.
But, I will never say that about Mars. Three points:
1. Whether or not you are happy with it, there is nothing wrong with doing something that gets the public excited about space exploration again. Sure, getting a man (or woman!) to walk on Mars has more engineering value than scientific value, but it will re-energize the population about the value of exploration. Can you think of a better time for astrophysical science than the 1960s?
2. While we always prefer "good" data, we as a civilization would be selling ourselves short if we never tried to reach for the frontier. I think Kennedy said it best: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard..." Sure, it's hard to obtain conclusive data about the existence of life on Mars. But it needs to be done. The fact that it's hard is no reason to throw our hands up into the air. It's simply too important to be ignored.
3. Despite occasional comments (and glimmers of hope) suggesting otherwise, the search for life on Mars is primarily focused on the existence of life in the past. Because most scientists now believe that life on Earth was carried over on meteorites from Mars, these studies are examining our very origins as a civilization. Even if life wasn't transported from Mars to Earth, discovering the abundance (or lack) of life on Mars will tell us a lot about how life develops in this and other solar systems. Now, honestly, which gets you more excited: smaller error bars on stellar luminosity data, or answering in some small way the mystery of where we came from? One of these makes astrophysicists like myself very happy, the other answers the collective questions of an entire species trying to understand who they are.
Re:Why NASA bugs me (Score:5, Informative)
It's possible, sure. Even proven that the planets have swapped rocks many times, but "most scientists" ?
Personally, I'd find it quite spiffy if it turns out that life came from space originally... makes the mystery much more interesting.
Re:Why NASA bugs me (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why NASA bugs me (Score:2)
Re:Why NASA bugs me (Score:2)
NASA relevancy: historical & fictional paralle (Score:3)
The books are about a lost Terran colony (that's us) that has been out of touch with the rest of the universe by accident
Re:Why NASA bugs me (Score:2)
If there is a major accident, an astronaut can get back to a tried-and-tested apollo style lunar capsule, launch pretty much immediately and get back home in a few days.
On mars, you only have fast(ish) routes back to earth every 18 months (assuming something close to current rocket tech) with a 6 month transit time. A moon base will also give NASA time to invent & test new vehi
Re:Why NASA bugs me (Score:3, Interesting)
bobhagopian writes:
I'm going to make a brief comment here.
Going back to the Moon will have some research value. To say we've exhausted what we can learn ab
Re:Why NASA bugs me (Score:3, Insightful)
So we're just supposed to give up? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the idea at NASA that we should just not try something because there's a risk? I mean, is this the same agency that put men on the moon eleven years after being formed? Should I just not go to work tomorrow because I could get run down crossing the street?
What the hell happened to this country's can-do spirit?
Re:So we're just supposed to give up? (Score:5, Insightful)
On 9/11 the terrorists succeeded in replacing it with "what can we do to best cover our ass."
Re:So we're just supposed to give up? (Score:3, Insightful)
We did that to ourselves, terrorists can only kill people.
Re:So we're just supposed to give up? (Score:2)
It's really annoying, because NASA is funded w/ our tax dollars, but Bush has the ability to pick and choose it's head administrator at will. O'Keefe was a Bush appointee, and always in the back of O'Keefe's mind will be the fact that Bush can withdraw his position. Thus,
Totally screwed up priorities ... (Score:2, Interesting)
The bean counter idiots in charge of NASA intend
to replace HST with an inferior IR space-based
telescope. The same contractors that have been
working on HST are working on the "replacement".
There is far more money to be made developing a
new telescope than there is for "maintenence" on
the HST. The development of a bleeding edge
robotic servicing mission also is more profitable
for the contractors than a manned mission.
It all boils down to money, and where that
Re:Totally screwed up priorities ... (Score:2)
Re:can-do spirit vs. recklessness (Score:3, Insightful)
To use your story... every crane lift is dangerous, and a certain (small) percentage fail. Still, we are careful and take out timee. Had we not, the species would just be sitting around like Moongazer, afraid to leave the cave.
Make up your minds! (Score:5, Insightful)
No one's willing to take risks or make a decision anymore. All we need is another damn shuttle disaster to slow everything down and have people screaming "its too dangerous to explore space - spend all your money down here".
Re:Make up your minds! (Score:2)
I definitely want Hubble serviced. What I don't want is this BS should we shouldn't we crap that has the potential to cost lives and slow down the space program even more.
Robotic repair mission a bad idea (Score:2, Insightful)
With the recent success of the Mar
Re:Robotic repair mission a bad idea (Score:2)
You know, space programs in general and NASA in particular have a very good track record of taking tons of bleeding edge technologies, throwing them all together in a mission, and pulling it off wonderfully. Your scenario is possibl
[OT] Your sig (Score:5, Funny)
3.1415926535897932384629
In case you're not aware: s/9$/6/
And don't ask why I know that off the top of my head . . .
Re:Robotic repair mission a bad idea (Score:2)
NASA and Being Sexy (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite the fact that every time we try and use a new way to look at stuff (some obscure spectrum of something or other, for example) we find a lot out there, NASA stopped building an array of sensors in Antarctica (which son of George H Bush that put the pressure on them to do this is left as an exercise to the reader). The reason is that the populace seems to like sending stuff somewhere. Seeing more just isn't cool anymore. The Hubble telescope will fall into disrepair because people don't like looking at stuff. They insist on touching it. Even if that means the stuff is more than a few orders of magnitude closer.
I guess I'll sum it up.
Going to Mars with a robat that touches stuff and messes around: SEXY
Looking at shit with a few big mirrors: NOT sexy
Re:NASA and Being Sexy (Score:3, Informative)
On the flip side, some glitz and glamour is also needed to keep the public interested, which interests politicians and helps them direct more money at NASA. Remember, NASA has to convince the government that it needs to be funded. The sexy projects have public appeal, and have more influence in this regard.
That's why
Re:NASA and Being Sexy (Score:2)
Re:NASA and Being Sexy (Score:2)
I think that should be rephrased:
Going to Mars with a robot that touches stuff and messes around: FUNDING
Looking at shit with a few big mirrors: NO FUNDING
Re:NASA and Being Sexy (Score:2)
NASAs' Short Sightedness (Score:5, Insightful)
The astronauts have already said that they are willing to accept the very reasonable level of risk to fly the mission and repair the Hubble. It is terribly ironic that one of the few worthwhile shuttle missions of the last decade is scrapped because something MIGHT go wrong. They seemed perfectly willing to risk human lives to fly loads of fairly useless experiments just a couple of years ago. Nobody would argue that the shuttle has lived up to the lofty promises that NASA administrators made to Congress in order to get the funding for all of this in the first place. The shuttle, despite that fact the shuttle itself is reusable, has cost billions more dollars than equivalent rocket missions would have. In fact, one of the main selling points of the shuttle, that it could carry 20 tons into low earth orbit, is moot because the shuttle almost never flies with the maximum payload for safety reasons. The decision not to save one of the best scientific investments ever made is a slap in the face after all of the money which NASA has sunk into the shuttle program. The Hubble Space telescope has added tremendously to our knowledge of the universe and inspired a generation of young scientists and engineers. If any further proof was needed of the impotence and wrong headed thinking at NASA then this is surely among the most damning pieces of evidence. Let us hope that they make the right decision before it is too late.
Re:NASAs' Short Sightedness (Score:4, Interesting)
The worst thing of all is what the US government spent the money on, when they'd cut it from NASA's budget.
Vietnam.
I wonder... in a hundred years, will historians point to this decision and say that this is the moment when the American dream died?
Re:NASAs' Short Sightedness (Score:2)
Happy to see this! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Happy to see this! (Score:4, Insightful)
Now for those that say that Earth-based telescopes (EBTs) can now do an equal job, I don't believe that for a minute. No two ways about it, once light hits the athmosphere, it is scattered and some of it is irrevocably lost.
Here's another aspect that makes Hubble superior to EBTs: Hubble will never have a cloudy night.
Hubble is perfect for working in tandem with EBTs. I'm thinking the Deep Field Proyect: Hubble gets the clear image, finds an intriguing gap, and Hawaii's Keck is called into action to zoom in as deep as it can on those coordinates. And then, voilá, the most distant object ever pictured makes itself apparent. The people operating Keck would not have known where to point if it wasn't for Hubble. This is just one example of how Hubble keeps astronomers thinking outside of the box.
Also, any more servicing missions that Hubble gets from the Space Shuttle will only increase the know-how for future maintenance missions, as there is NOTHING that can replace on-the-job experience.
For many reasons, including pretty pictures, I believe the only thing that could possibly replace Hubble is another Space Telescope, and that's not in the near horizon, so let's keep Hubble, what do you say?
NASA's "Safety Concerns" were a smokescreen. (Score:5, Interesting)
However NASA was excited about sending an unmanned robotic mission to service Hubble, and they claimed that there were companies working on proposals to provide that robot.
My take was that this is the result of putting a non-scientist bean-counter (O'Keefe) in charge of NASA, coupled with an administration keen on cutting social funding while simultaneously funding private contractors as though there was no tomorrow.
Re:NASA's "Safety Concerns" were a smokescreen. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:NASA's "Safety Concerns" were a smokescreen. (Score:5, Insightful)
The NASA guy (high up in the org) was really keen on the robot. He claimed to have seen "video" that was not (his words) "Power Point engineering".
I'm highly skeptical of the robot idea, and here's why:
NASA can afford to, and is capable of, repairing Hubble with a manned mission right now. The risk to the crew is negligibly greater than a mission to ISS, and NASA plans to send crews to ISS a-plenty.
The risk to Hubble on a manned mission is fairly low. The risk to Hubble by entrusting it to an untested and today uninvented and yet-to-be-engineered robot is very high.
I am *far* from convinced that cost and safety are rational reasons for the attitudes of being extremely against a manned mission to Hubble and being so emphatically enthusiastic on a robotic mission to Hubble. It doesn't add up. There are reasons I'm sure, but they *aren't* the officially stated reasons.
Re:NASA's "Safety Concerns" were a smokescreen. (Score:3, Informative)
I agree with your general thread (that a manned repair mission is preferable because it has a higher probability of success), but to be fair, the robot is not yet-to-be-engineered. It exists, and it works. It was built by the Canadarm guys. It was meant to go up to ISS for remote work outside thespace station, but the HST guys kind of
Re:NASA's "Safety Concerns" were a smokescreen. (Score:2, Insightful)
THAT'S why sending people into space to actually DO things is SO DAMN IMPORTANT. Now, the question is: "Why do we keep sending 40 year old PHD's and NOT 20 year old Construction Workers?"
Re:NASA's "Safety Concerns" were a smokescreen. (Score:2)
For another, you design a robot that can "phone home" for instructions in the case of the unexpected, just like a human would.
And for the third, developing a robotic repair capability would allow us to maintain things like the JWST if we need to, things that are outside of our current human space presence. How can you possibly view that as bad?
Yes, human space exploration is good, but we know how to send missions to
Re:NASA's "Safety Concerns" were a smokescreen. (Score:2)
Tea Kettle (Score:5, Interesting)
There's also quite a bit of money and resources already devoted to the HST. Instruments and components have been built and paid for and the work is already done. Letting it sit on a shelf indefinitely would be a magnificent waste. Besides the money already spent a mission will have to be sent up, automated or not, to de-orbit the HST.
NASA ought to bite the bullet and push the envelope a little bit. It doesn't matter that they would be using untested technologies. Fixing the HST would be the test. I have little doubt that it would be feasible to robotically service the HST. A small cadre of tool laden AIBOs with rocket packs should be able to do the trick. If NASA is too scared to send people into space they could at least send a few cute robot dogs.
The technology and techniques learned with the HST could be applied later with the ISS' construction or even an in-orbit repair of a Shuttle or other craft. Maybe we could even start designing satellites that are meant to be services by robots to extend their useful lifetimes. Companies would be much more likely to invest in satellites if its potential operational life of 20+ years instead of 12 if everything goes alright.
Re:Tea Kettle (Score:2)
Actually, probably not; it's like computers. A 12 year old satellite is already obsolote; why would they bother trying to fix it when they could stash it into an inactive orbit and launch a new one?
They should just buy one Soyuz (Score:5, Interesting)
they should by one Soyuz from us, Russians.
Of course, Soyuz is technology of early 70'th,
but it would be newly manufactured, when shuttles are PRODUCTION of eithties. It is also order of magnitude cheaper. We fly space tourishs to ISS for $20millions or so.
can't make the orbit? (Score:2)
its all about the shuttle (Score:3, Interesting)
Because if something goes wrong, NASA are out one expensive irreplacable shuttle and only have 2 left.
Which isnt that much of a margin for error when it comes to sending shuttles up to finish the ISS.
Send up Space Ship One! (Score:3, Funny)
Oh wait...
Hardly Objective (Score:2, Interesting)
I think the Hubble should be saved, too. It is by far the optical device with the best 'seeing'. NASA and the scientific community have already labor
Re:Hardly Objective (Score:2)
Oh, please. Who are "the rest of you guys" supposed to be in this scenario?
FYI, the NAS committee was formed because O'Keefe bowed to intense pressure from scientists, politicians and the general public over his unilateral decision to let HST go. He asked NAS to form this committee and to give him its recommendation.
Why does it cost so much ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Difference in altitude (Score:2, Informative)
56,000 miles is pretty impressive, but 160k miles it is not. So the Shuttle still has a couple of magnitudes advantage over our x-prize favorites.
Re:Difference in altitude (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway. Sub orbital is a lot easier than orbital flight, is the real answer.
The decision has been made (Score:4, Insightful)
O'Keefe is facing a grim reality - he can't fund all the projects he's got running. I'm not voting for Bush this year because he's run up a huge budget deficit - a deficit so large that us boomers won't live long enough to see retired. You younger ones will be paying for it long after we're gone. Since I'm pissed about the budget deficit, I can't very well say Nasa should get more money or fault O'Keefe for saying "you gotta choose and this is what my choices are..."
Re:Shame (Score:5, Funny)
No.
KFG
Re:Shame (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Shame (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Shame (Score:2, Interesting)
The hubble space telescope uses a CCD equivalent to a less-than-consumer-level digi-cam.
This site [hubblesite.org] says: "The Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 has four CCDs, each containing 640,000 pixels." so that's a 2.5 mega-pixel camera.
Let's all keep this in mind....
Re:Shame (Score:5, Informative)
From that same page: "They can see objects that are 1,000 million times fainter than the naked eye can see. "
For one thing, Hubble's cameras are cooled (can't find their temperature, but IIRC it's far below zero) to reduce noise. Also, the CCD design is bound to be different. This [mailbag.com] gives an idea of what's involved.
Re:Shame (Score:3, Informative)
The Advanced Camera for Surveys, built between 1996 and 1999, was installed in 2000. It has a 4096x4096 pixel detector.
Where was your 16 megapixel camera in 1999?
The replacement for the WFPC2, the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC), will also have a 4096x4096 detector, along with a 10Mpix IR detector. Both of these sensors are of much higher quality than a consumer CCD.
Re:Shame (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Shame (Score:3, Interesting)
OK, I'll buy the idea that robots could bring the HST to a safe re-entry and destruction. I won't buy the idea that what we have available today and what we ca
Re:uh.... (Score:4, Informative)
They are special poloroids. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hubble, the Black Hole (Score:4, Insightful)
Crawl back under your rock.
Re:Hubble not to be maintained? thats crazy (Score:2)
If a blackhole came near enough to us to affect us, we would be *screwed*, warning or none. We don't have interstellar flight and would be unlikely to develop it in time, and you'd need interstellar flight to avoid that sort of disaster.