Hubble: We Don't Need No Stinking Glasses

Goodbye Hubble. you served us well. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is
doomed to reenter the earth's atmosphere on a Kamikaze mission a few years
hence. Its fate was sealed in the FY06 budget just sent to Congress. I can
yada yada over its history and potential and historic findings, but the
point of this blog is a question: "Do we actually know what we're doing
here?" The answer is strikingly simple but all too familiar - probably not.
We are taking an instrument of historic value - a national treasure - and
throwing it away like so much rubbish that has the potential to serve for
many years or even decades in the future. The HST discovered so incredibly
much in its relatively short life (compare its life to the great telescope
at Palomar where its namesake did so much of his pioneering work.) The
corporate whine is that it is just too expensive to keep it in service.
Okay - it is expensive - but I would strongly argue with "too expensive".
The fact is, everything is expensive. We are almost certainly making a
mistake. The very day HST is gone we will go back to astronomical myopia.
The decision to scrap the HST is like saying that we as a human species no
longer need our glasses and we are quite content to be nearsighted. That,
of course is patent foolishness and is, in fact, idiotic. And yet, alas, we
have decided: we don't need no stinking glasses. The last moron that said
that was hit by a bus.

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From Dennis Chamberland's Blog Quantum Limit
http://QuantumLimit.com

The Ultimate Mars Colony
http://MarsWars.com