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Space

Astronauts Should Fix Hubble 67

Posted by michael from the just-do-it-already dept.
Re-Pawn writes "NASA urged to send shuttle to Hubble - Astronauts, not robots, should fix the Hubble Space Telescope, says a new report by the US National Research Council (NRC). That conclusion is directly at odds with NASA, which is opposed to a human mission on safety grounds, following the Columbia disaster."
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Astronauts Should Fix Hubble More

Astronauts Should Fix Hubble

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  • Let's never speak of this again.
    -- NASA
    • Well it isn't safe as long as the management that was in charge during the Columbia mission is still in place. "They might burn up on re-entry!" "Oh well, nothing we can do about it..."
    • Of *course* manned space flight is unsafe.

      It's actually completely insane.

      That's no reason not to do it. But I say let's send manned missions where they're most valuable: to the moon, to mars. Not to swap batteries on Hubble.
      • But I say let's send manned missions where they're most valuable: to the moon, to mars. Not to swap batteries on Hubble.

        The Hubble has taught us 100x more about space and it's origins than that one trip to the moon. It just nearly killed a few guys so Kennedy (posthumously) could laugh at the Russians.

      • But I say let's send manned missions where they're most valuable: to the moon, to mars. Not to swap batteries on Hubble.

        The Hubble has consistently returned useful stuff, and continues to do so.

        I think we could sent a bunch more rovers to Mars if it meant losing out on the Hubble. 'Changing the Batteries' as you put it is far more useful than a PR trip.

        Sure, in the long term Mars and the Moon might have something useful. But dollar for dollar, I'd bet that the Hubble returns far more valuable data.

        Wh

  • O'Keefe (!NASA) is opposed, safety not the issue (Score:4, Informative)

    by Attitude Adjuster ( 683211 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @12:31PM (#11042874)
    It is NASA's administrator that is opposed to a shuttle mission to Hubble, but that is not a consensus opinion, nor is it based on any scientific or engineering recommendation. We could discuss why that is - the answer is his career in politics. Word is O'Keefe may be rewarded for his loyalty and ability to make tough unpopular decisions by the WH and get a higer profile job in the administration...

    Furthermore, as the National Academy of Sciences panel, and other panels before it, have said, the difference in safety (or chance of disaster, which ever way you want to look at it) of a single shuttle mission to Hubble is essentially the same as that of a single mission to the space station. The astronauts, when asked, all were in favor of going to fix Hubble. And they're much more likely to get the job done than the robotic mission, which is rather unlikely to work (read the NAS press release [nationalacademies.org])

    Of course, the plan is for 25-30 missions to the ISS, so the chances of horrendous disaster doing that is far higher cumulatively.

    • The Shuttle program, and NASA in general, is dead in the water, with O'Keefe at the helm. So of course he'll be promoted by Bush, along with his buddies running Iraq, the economy, the North Korea watch, education, the environment, energy supplies...
    • O'Keefe is following the recommendations of the CAIB. Would you have him ignore those recommendations only to lose another shuttle and crew trying to sustain an instrument that should be replaced, not repaired?

      Hubble has been an extraordinary tool, but it was never intended to last forever.

      The Shuttle has never had a serious purpose since NASA's preferred design was killed in the 1970's. It exists to sustain ISS, and ISS exists to sustain the Shuttle. Neither project serves the fundamental purpose of s

      • O'Keefe is following the recommendations of the CAIB. Would you have him ignore those recommendations only to lose another shuttle and crew trying to sustain an instrument that should be replaced, not repaired?

        Not at all - I wish O'Keefe would actually base his decisions on reviews by qualified personel, such as the CAIB. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board did not recommend against using the shuttle to service Hubble ( large PDF report here [www.caib.us]). It made return to flight recommendations on what neede


      • Would you have him ignore those recommendations only to lose another shuttle and crew trying to sustain an instrument that should be replaced, not repaired?

        I guess I'd rather have that than lose another shuttle crew trying to build what sounds like a fairly useless space station. The Hubble is at least proven to return very valueable scientific data. If safety vs usefullness is the big concern, I don't see O'Keefe trying to say we should dump the whole idea of the ISS since there's no point in risking
        • I'd prefer not risking any lives. I'd prefer replacing Hubble by carrying to fruition current plans for a new telescope. There's no reason to risk lives on a Hubble mission simply because lives are at risk on every Shuttle flight. The Hubble mission is significantly riskier because only one of the Shuttle vehicles is capable of reaching it. That means no possibility to rescue the crew if the Orbiter can't make reentry.

          As for zero-G, the best solution is to dramatically shorten the amount of time it takes

          • I'd prefer not risking any lives.
            Then you should go home and sit in bed all day. Living life is a risk for death. Exploring space is especially dangerous and will be for the forseeable future. Doing great things people haven't done before sometimes costs lives. How many people died trying to climb Everest? People _still_ die trying to do it? The astronauts are willing to risk their lives working in space, who are you to say they shouldn't?

            As for zero-G, the best solution is to dramatically shorte
            • As you well know, I did not say we should abandon space travel because it is too risky. I said I'd rather not risk any lives to repair an instrument that needs to be replaced, not repaired. I would not spend the money for a robotic repair mission, either.

              The impetus to repair Hubble is coming from people who have a career stake in its survival and from lay people reacting emotionally to the images it produces. They would have us believe that the choice is between Hubble and nothing. That's wrong. Let Hu

    • O'Keefe is indeed reluctant to veer from the Columbia Accident Review Board recommendations. The fact is the orbiter is just as vulnerable to debris strikes as it was 2 years ago. It is hoped that debris shed from the tank is reduced but it cannot be eliminated. Vulnerability to debris strikes is yet another flaw in the design of the shuttle that cannot be undone. Since the shuttle has no on orbit thermal protection repair capability or safe abort option, using the ISS is the only (and tenuous at that) o

  • Cheaper to replace it? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 09, 2004 @12:39PM (#11042981)
    The NASA FAQ [nasa.gov] says:
    How much does Hubble cost?


    Initially Hubble cost $1.5 billion to build and put into orbit.
    The linked article has a higher pricetag to save it:
    And though they differ in many respects, both a human and a robotic mission share similar price tags. The Aerospace Corporation and the US Government Accountability Office estimate that each type of mission would cost about $2 billion.
    Seems like we could just send up a new one for significantly less.
    • Maybe components and things are more expensive now?
      • More likely it's cheaper, as they've already invested the time in developing Hubble and learning what worked and didn't work, they can simply replicate that. Prototypes and one-offs are always more expensive do to the research and design work that goes into them. Theoretically, there are plans sitting somewhere that they could simply follow, and save a pretty penny.
      • 30% more expensive, after 15 years of R&D, than when invented by NASA? Of course not. Maybe the defense and aerospace contractors who make the parts have more clout to overcharge now than they did in the early 1990s? Hmm, there is intelligent life in the universe - at Raytheon marketing.
        • 30% more expensive, after 15 years of R&D, than when invented by NASA? Of course not.
          You're assuming that things get less expensive over time. That's only true of things that are mass-produced. If you build one of something, then twenty years later you want to build a second one, you definitely should expect the second to cost more.
          • No, if you are NASA, the first one will cost the most: including the R&D. The second one, while not as much cheaper as a mass produced item, won't require repeating the R&D. Even if it did, it would cost less to do it the second time around. Not 50% more.
            • That might be true if NASA built exactly the same thing again. But they generally don't.

              And even if they tried to build exactly the same item again twenty years later, much of the knowledge of how to build it is lost. Unfortunately not all the important knowledge gained from the designing and building a complex system gets recorded in a form useful for posterity. And twenty years later, many of the people that worked on the first one and have the necessary knowledge and skills are long since moved on t

              • Well, without the budgets and the blueprints, we're both speculating plausibly. Since the final answer is that the new budget is indeed 150% of the original, your scenario is credible, unless they've found another way to pay their vendors more money that conflicts with it. In any case, this is yet another reason why all NASA designs should be in the National Archives, with only a tiny percentage with actual exclusive National Security classification kept secret. The rest should be available to the public. O
              • I doubt that they even have all of the correct engineering drawings for the Hubble

                The technology for space telescopes has changed quite a bit since HST was built-- you wouldn't want to build an exact copy.

                It's not like other agencies hadn't built similar things before Hubble, and those agencies haven't been sitting on their butts for 20 years. Even NASA has flown and is developing new telescopes based on much newer technology. The basic geometry would probably be the same, but the primary mirror (and w
                • you wouldn't want to build an exact copy. Agreed. But I was just trying to refute the notion that building a second would be cheaper.

                  you might launch to an L2 orbit instead

                  AFAIK, that's exactly the plan for the Webb space telescope. But what will they do when its gyros need to be replaced?

                  but it's probably cheaper to build a new one from scratch

                  I don't buy it. A shuttle mission to the Hubble will cost about two billion. I don't think they can build another and launch it for that. Even th

                  • But what will they do when its gyros need to be replaced?

                    Let it fall out of orbit. It has a design lifetime, and it will probably last longer than that. It's only cost effective to service things when the cost of servicing is largely borne by someone elses budget line (e.g. the manned program subsidizing HST).

                    Even though the technology has improved, most of the costs of designing, building, and launching have gone UP, not down.

                    Sort of. If you want the replacement to push the state of the art to
    • One potential problem is that they still have to pay to send a mission to deorbit Hubble safely.

  • What is the shuttle for, anyway? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by VernonNemitz ( 581327 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @12:58PM (#11043185) Journal
    I'm pretty sure the original description of the Shuttle was to be a kind of "space truck", for both transport and servicing missions. To say it is too unsafe to use for its intended purpose just underscores the incompetence of whatever committee it was that bollixed the design. Get rid of them, and post a big sign in EVERY meeting room that (A) describes the debacle, and (B) recommend that it never, ever happen again. (Now, if only somebody in those meeting rooms actually paid attention to the sign....)
    • Well, seeing as the idea for the shuttle was originally conceived more than 30 years ago, I am sure that most of the people overseeing its initial design have since retired. Besides, it is difficult to blame just one group of engineers, when it is likely the entire culture of NASA that got the project in trouble. I don't know the whole story of the shuttle's design but I am sure there was plenty of compromises made in its design due to politics and budget constraints. Then there are the pitfalls of contr
      • the shuttle was originally conceived more than 30 years ago, I am sure that most of the people overseeing its initial design have since retired. Besides, it is difficult to blame just one group of engineers, when...

        Then launch their dentures and bedpans into space. That'll teach 'em!
      • The shuttle was originally conceived as the earth-to-earth orbit and return part of a 3-part transportation system. Part 2 was a earth orbit to lunar orbit and return vehicle, Part 3 was a lunar orbit to lunar surface and return vehicle. Think of a crude oil tanker too big to dock, with transfer vessels at either end.

        The shuttle was supposed to have a reusable liquid fuel only booster vehicle. As both accidents originated in the alternative boost system (solid rocket joint, external tank insulation), vo
      • "Retired" my ass.

        From what I saw, back in the 60's and 70's, NASA and the aerospace contracting community was a helluva neat and challenging place to work. Geek heaven.

        Yes, we weren't the most efficient people when it came to dollar measurement, but the way we saw it, we were pioneers, blazing new paths into the unknown. No one had done the things we were trying to do before, and generally, we succeeded.

        But it took a lot of time to understand how to do this, especially when human lives were involved.

    • Exactly. If you'll notice, all shuttles are marked with the letters "STS," which is an acronym for "Space Transportation System." Hell, the word "Shuttle" was used for a reason:

      According to Dictionary.com:
      shuttle (shtl) n.
      a. Regular travel back and forth over an established, often short route by a vehicle.
      b. A vehicle used in such travel: took the shuttle across town.
      c. A route used by a vehicle in such travel: the Washington-New York air shuttle.

      If it can't do wh
    • The fact that the design was bollixed became very obvious back in 1980 when the first flight of Columbia kept getting delayed by strange technical issues. As for the design committee, I imagine they've long since retired.

      Besides, what were they supposed to do? Congress told them to build a reusable shuttle, but didn't want to spend enough money to do it properly. So they kludged up a design that pretended to fit their budget constraints and still work. In the end it did neither, of course.

      Perhaps the de

  • We as a civilisation have even more of an issue to deal with, what will replace petrolium once peak oil has happened? The growth rate will continue to increase, yet actual supply will forever diminish. How are we as a globe supposed to combat the "War On Poverty" if there is not enough cheap energy available for even the current base of first world nations? Follow link in my sig for further details.
    • The likely answer is that we will start burning uranium. I am convinced that this will certainly be the mid-term solution. It might not be the solution in 500 years, but it sure as hell will be in 100.
    • http://tinyurl.com/4rjza is a very interesting read. Oil affects much more than the ability to move products via internal combustion engine. Less oil=less food=involintary population adjustment
    • Perhaps Oil will 'out live' humans. Thats the truly big picture here.
      thank you, thank you, I'll be here to keep you uplifted all week.
      • Considering the age of the planet, versus the age of the Human species, it will. Oil takes several tens of millions of years to form while under great pressures while the human species has only been on this earth for maybe 3 million years. Millions of years from now, oil will renew its self, and chances are heavily in favor of an extinction event occuring some time before them regarding the human race. So yes, petrolium will eventually renew, and will outlast the human race, because we will not be inhabi
    • Completely interesting read and yet so pointless. You miss the big picture here, yes one day our SUV's gas tanks will run dry. The crux here is "one day", but not today. The mass don't care if it happens or even when it happens as long as it's not in their lifetime. You taught a mass extinction event as wiping out humans within 3 million years, that's great by then we'll infect another world and rape it untill it's doomsday.

      Life is a cycle, enjoy your ride. For you get but one.
    • So we'll start using uranium and biodiesel, and in the long term maybe hydrogen, fusion or non-uranium fissile fuel.

      So what was your point exactly?

      There will always be a fuel source running out, there will always be a looming humanitarian crisis. There will be war, in five years or fifty or five hundred. There are always national powers rising and others failing; nationialism replaces religion, replaces tribalism, replaces greed. Human history dictates this. Barring $event (where $event refers to some
  • It'll CREATE JOBS!
    Possibly as many as 50, and only at a price of around 200000000 McDonald's value meals. Think about it...

  • Safe haven approach proposed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @03:12PM (#11044752) Journal
    How a 'safe haven' could help save Hubble: Study suggests launching module to shelter astronauts in emergency [msn.com]

    Some snippings:

    An "out-of-the-box" plan to put a new space habitat in orbit could be a leading contender for saving the Hubble Space Telescope, private-sector analysts say in a proposal being prepared for NASA. The habitat could be used as an emergency safe haven during the Hubble servicing mission, and then could serve as a base for wider commercial and exploratory space travel.

    The full proposal is being handed over to the space agency this week, sources told MSNBC.com on condition of anonymity. Independently, the National Academy of Sciences is due on Wednesday to release its own recommendations for repairing Hubble. ...
    In its study, the Aerospace Corp. developed a proposal aimed at keeping astronauts involved in the mission while addressing the space agency's post-Columbia concerns about safety, by adding the provision for the safe-haven module. ...
    The Aerospace Corp. study doesn't confine itself to criticizing NASA's robotic plan, however. It suggest that the shuttle repair option could be restarted with one modification: To accommodate the safety concerns caused by lack of a "safe haven" at the telescope, a special supply module should be launched into space near the telescope "just in case." ...
    As a space haven, the Aerospace Corp. proposes to use a carbon copy of the space station's first Russian-built module, known as the FGB. The FGB-1 was launched into orbit in November 1998 and is now known as the Zarya cargo module. A backup flightworthy spare, FGB-2, is still in storage. For years, the Russians have tried to market it as a commercial module for the space station, and their current plan is to use it as a future space research lab.

    But the Aerospace Corp. study suggests that the FGB-2 could be shipped from Russia for blastoff from a more southerly launch site -- perhaps Cape Canaveral in Florida or the European space base in Kourou, French Guyana.

    Once in space, small thrusters could keep the module in a trailing orbit, a few hundred miles behind Hubble. At that range, the shuttle could fly between the Hubble and the space module in about a day, with minimal fuel cost.

    In this scenario, the shuttle would head for the Hubble as originally planned, inspecting its heat-shielding tiles and panels on the way. If fatal damage is discovered, it would dock with the safe haven instead, and the crew would use the supplies on board to wait out the time it would take to launch a rescue shuttle.

    If the shuttle mission proceeds smoothly, the safe haven would be left in orbit.

    The open-ended scenario has sparked speculation about further opportunities for orbital space travel. Even if the FGB-2 turns out to be unavailable, some observers say it might be profitable to build the space haven from scratch, then use it for other purposes if NASA doesn't need it.

    In fact, one rumor claimed that Robert Bigelow, the Las Vegas hotel magnate who is developing plans for orbital tourism, would build the haven for free, with the caveat that it would revert to his ownership if not needed. Michael Gold, corporate counsel for Bigelow Aerospace in Washington, told MSNBC.com this was untrue. ...
    European and Russian space concerns are among other parties who might make use of an extra orbital module. France and Russia already have made a deal to build a Soyuz launch pad at Kourou, where the European launch consortium Arianespace puts satellites into orbit. Although the deal does not currently extend to human spaceflight, this remains a possibility, Philippe Berterottière, a senior vice president at Arianespace, recently told a White House space commission.

    Commercial space companies could conceivably turn such a module into a destination for high-paying, high-flying orbital tourists.

    Looking farth
  • I know it's pretty far-fetched, but can anyone tell me why the possibility of moving the telescope close to the ISS hasn't been brought up? If you're going to intercept the craft anyway (by man or machine), why not vector it so future ISS astonauts can get the job done now? For that matter, future repairs would be greatly simplified.

    • It's in the wrong orbit...it's higher than the ISS, and at a different inclination. Lowering its orbit would put it further into the atmosphere, degrading its capabilities and requiring reboost operations more often. It would also require a fairly large booster to make such a big shift in orbit. Also, the ISS is rather dirty, it releases gas and debris which could damage or interfere with the Hubble. Then, once you got it there, you'd have to use thrust periodically to keep the two nearby...they will tend t
    • It's an absurd proposal. Changing orbits like that takes impossible amounts of fuel. It would be easier to launch a new Hubble than to move the current one. (Something like how it's easier to go from 0 to 60 on the highway than to turn around from going 60km/h in the wrong direction.) Besides, once the Hubble is in ISS's orbit, it wouldn't function properly anyway because of atmospheric drag.

      What would have been smarter would have been to put the ISS in a useful orbit in the first place. It's in a bi

  • But.. but.. the Hubble only had a 10-year mission. (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Hubble was only designed to last 10 years. By the time of it's projected failure given no more servicing missions - it will have accomplished 90% of it's mission.

    Given the phenomonal cost of fixing the hubble - when it is past it's end-of-life design date - it is my opinion that the effort (and money) is better spent on a new, much improved, replacement.

    Look at the cost of fixing Hubble (and extend it's life for maybe another 2 years) vs. cost of a new one (which will last at least 10 years). In the p
  • Somebody, remind me why we need a space-based scope. With adaptive optics and ground-based scopes being soooo much cheaper to build, shouldn't we be spending our money other places? Like, say the 30-meter project?
    • That's where the smart money and effort is going... Adaptive optics pissed on hubble's visible-spectrum telescopy, making it relatively obsolete overnight...

      All the new techniques for ground-based are making it by far the best investment.

  • We wouldn't be having this conversation at all.

    Hubble would have been fixed by now and food would have been delivered to the ISS. I read a while back, and agree with it wholeheartedly, that just as populating the wild west a coulpe hundred years ago, space is dangerous too. Did people still go? Of course they did. It's the pioneer spirit that keeps us speading our wings. Does anyone believe that the astronauts going up think that the current methods of entering space are infallable? I'm sure they're well a

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