NASA idiots cancel service mission to Hubble

Just read in the NYT that NASA will not fly the scheduled mission to service
the Hubble telescope. The one thing they've done with the Shuttle that was
worth doing, and now they've chickened out. What a bunch of turkeys!!

Mark Folsom

Mark Folsom wrote:

Just read in the NYT that NASA will not fly the scheduled mission to service
the Hubble telescope. The one thing they've done with the Shuttle that was
worth doing, and now they've chickened out. What a bunch of turkeys!!

Mark Folsom

Time to replace the current administration!

Mark Folsom wrote:

Just read in the NYT that NASA will not fly the scheduled mission to service
the Hubble telescope. The one thing they've done with the Shuttle that was
worth doing, and now they've chickened out. What a bunch of turkeys!!

Mark Folsom

Do you really think NASA made that decision all by themselves?

It is at the request of mr Bush, he wants NASA to focus on going to the moon and
mars.

db

"db" wrote in message
...
Mark Folsom wrote:

Just read in the NYT that NASA will not fly the scheduled mission to
service
the Hubble telescope. The one thing they've done with the Shuttle that
was
worth doing, and now they've chickened out. What a bunch of turkeys!!

Mark Folsom

Do you really think NASA made that decision all by themselves?

It is at the request of mr Bush, he wants NASA to focus on going to the
moon and
mars.

db

I recall reading that Hubble is approaching the end of it's service life,
and that there are other projects in the wings. If that's the case, sounds
like the decision is part of a standard risks/rewards analysis. Maybe
someone who has more direct knowledge the could share?

Considering NASA's concerns for shuttle reliability it would make sense that
they would pick and choose what they signed up for. I don't think it was a
simple decision.

O'

"OhBrother" wrote in message
...

I recall reading that Hubble is approaching the end of it's service life,

No. Not by a long shot.
It has yet to even reach its fullest potential. It has not yet reached
the prime of its life. All the components to accomplish that
have already been built and are waiting in a clean room for delivery.
They cost millions to produce, are the best of their kind ever made,
and are not usable on any other telescope.
Millions ****ed away.
The Hubble Space Telescope is the most productive telescope in
history and it was about to get 10 times more productive.

O'Keefe has shown the blindest "vision" in history.

and that there are other projects in the wings.

1. The year 2014 is not what I would call "in the wings". That is
when Hubble's "successor" (the NGST) is supposed to launch.
What sane person would throw away a car a decade before
he or she plans on buying a new one to replace it?

Besides, the NGST doesn't even replace Hubble.
It will only do 1/4 of what Hubble can do. It is limited to the
infrared. Hubble spans from the infrared to the ultraviolet.
The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (which is one of the
multi-million dollar new components already finished and
bagged up ready to go) is predominantly an ultraviolet
spectrograph and will not be duplicated in any planned
spacecraft and cannot be used on the ground due to
atmospheric absorbtion. Millions wasted. Who knows
what great science would have come out of it....
The WFPC 3 was to be the next workhorse camera
with a throughput 10 times greater than the WFPC 2.

The best was, by far, yet to come.

If that's the case, sounds
like the decision is part of a standard risks/rewards analysis.

It isn't. My understanding was that it was not a consensus
decision. It was a unilateral decision on the part of NASA's
Director based on his bean-counter interpretation of
Bush's "vision". Kill first. Promises of pie-in-the-sky sometime
far enough in the future so that they won't be in power anymore
when the promises aren't kept.
It a chicken **** LACK of vision and balls on the
part of O'Keefe.
He would have no problem whatsoever with finding astronauts
willing to take the risk. Or civilian volunteers, for that matter.

Considering NASA's concerns for shuttle reliability it would make sense
that
they would pick and choose what they signed up for. I don't think it was
a
simple decision.

No. Instead it was a stupid, ugly, short-sighted decision.

On Fri, 16 Jan 2004 22:25:43 -0800, "Mark Folsom"
wrote:

Just read in the NYT that NASA will not fly the scheduled mission to service
the Hubble telescope. The one thing they've done with the Shuttle that was
worth doing, and now they've chickened out. What a bunch of turkeys!!

Mark Folsom

The scope just needs a couple of die-hard batteries. They should have
planned for this.
Now NASA is going to design a robot to go up and kill the Hubble
accurately so it dives into the ocean!
This is so pathetic!

Mark Folsom wrote:

Just read in the NYT that NASA will not fly the scheduled mission to service
the Hubble telescope. The one thing they've done with the Shuttle that was
worth doing, and now they've chickened out. What a bunch of turkeys!!

How can Management be held responsible when they never lift the heavy
end? Management makes decisions, workers make mistakes. American
zero-goal education comes to the US space program: Make the average
low enough and every mission is above it.

Uncle Al sees a bright bright day when the Space Scuttle will be
hauled out to its launch pad, fueled, diagnostics run, defueled,
diagnostics run, and hauled back to its hangar. Mission accomplished!

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The Net!

On a sunny day (Sat, 17 Jan 2004 07:07:01 GMT) it happened Sam Wormley
wrote in :

Mark Folsom wrote:

Just read in the NYT that NASA will not fly the scheduled mission to service
the Hubble telescope. The one thing they've done with the Shuttle that was
worth doing, and now they've chickened out. What a bunch of turkeys!!

Mark Folsom

Time to replace the current administration!
Honest, I agree with Sam on this subject.

Even before the new plans to go to the moon and Mars, NASA was
planning on decommissioning the Hubble Space Telescope after the next
servicing mission. They have already started the project for the Next
Generation Space Telescope (NGST) which will be much larger and
further away from the earth.

Uncle Al wrote in message ...
Mark Folsom wrote:

Just read in the NYT that NASA will not fly the scheduled mission to service
the Hubble telescope. The one thing they've done with the Shuttle that was
worth doing, and now they've chickened out. What a bunch of turkeys!!

How can Management be held responsible when they never lift the heavy
end? Management makes decisions, workers make mistakes. American
zero-goal education comes to the US space program: Make the average
low enough and every mission is above it.

Uncle Al sees a bright bright day when the Space Scuttle will be
hauled out to its launch pad, fueled, diagnostics run, defueled,
diagnostics run, and hauled back to its hangar. Mission accomplished!

COMMENT:

This month's Popular Science had a an article on fixing NASA, and with
it as intro picture, a classy photo of the last Saturn V, lying on its
side in Florida, with a handicapped parking space in the parking lot
in front of it.
Welcome to the 21st century.

My heart lept for about 10 seconds, as I thought that they were
actually going to do a piece suggesting that NASA's problems stem
partly from the switch from a culture in which the prime motivator was
to get the job done, to one at present in which the prime motivator
seems to be to provide equal opportunity jobs, out of congressional
pork (see most of the rest of goverment).

But no, although the author made a number of good suggestions, not a
single (politically incorrect) word was spoken about the need for a
strict performance-based institution. Such things are, after all, now
illegal, where as they weren't in the 1960's. You can have equal
opportunity employment mills in academia, where the only difference
that results is that the number of papers is the same, but they are
crappier ones, and nobody notices because the reviewing standard has
fallen also. But in engineering if you do this, not only do bridges
tend to fall down, and things tend to fall out of the sky also. And
hit the ground or water faster than they should. Wups. With NASA,
people have noticed this happening, but they would rather literally
die (or more specifically, kill more astronauts) than fix it.

Well, at least the astronauts who are hamburgerized these days are
properly ethnically, racially, religiously, and sexually diverse.
Killing a liberal lady schoolteacher is good for the NTA, as it
reminds them that they are still here on planet Earth with those laws
of nature which pay absolutely no attension to who does or doesn't get
"left behind" when it comes to math and physics. No matter how hard
politicians and management would like to pretend otherwise.

SBH