On Sun, 28 Mar 2004 23:27:53 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
(Greg Kuperberg) made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In article ,
Rand Simberg wrote:
as if Hubble doesn't [have international partnerships]?
Hubble doesn't. Not any with whom we have treaty-level commitments.

These so-called treaty-level commitments with the space station aren't
actual treaties.

I didn't say they were. But there would be hell to pay if they were
abrogated, and the likelihood of any future "international
cooperation" would approximate zero if that happened. I don't
necessarily think that's a bad thing, but I'm sure that the State
Department does.

And even if they were treaties, the Bush administration,
for one, hasn't been shy to renegotiate treaties that it doesn't like,
or even pull out of them.

We pull out of treaties for which there are provisions to do so, and
when we consider it important to the national interest to do so
(actually, the only one that I'm aware we've withdrawn from is the ABM
Treaty, despite all the hooting and hollering from the tranzis). I'm
not sure what would be involved in withdrawing from our formal station
commitments, but obviously the administration isn't prepared (yet) to
do it.

This is really a lot of political glad-handing.

Of course it is.

That it's international or even treaty level doesn't make it any better.
The fact that the space station is supported at the treaty level is part
of what makes it a white elephant.

Of course it is. But it is.

At the genuine level - as opposed to the treaty level - the Hubble
Space Telescope is indeed an international project. Scientists from
all over the world use it.

That's meaningless. We have no ongoing agreements with any other
nations to allow their scientists to indefinitely use Hubble. That's
like saying that American Airlines is an international project because
it flies people from all over the world.

O'Keefe's treatment of Hubble is an international setback in the view
of both scientists and ordinary people.

Even if that were true (I doubt it) their views don't matter. What
matters is the views of the governments.