NASA idiots cancel service mission to Hubble

"Harry Conover" wrote in message
om...
"Franz Heymann" wrote in message
...
"Harry Conover" wrote in message
om...
"Mark Folsom" wrote in message
...
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, at what point in time would you decide that Hubble had completed
its mission and productive lifetime?

Take into account the extreme costs involved in supporting it beyond
that "productive lifetime". Don't you really have a higher priority
scientific application that can more productively employ this funding?

I would have said that Hubble only reaches the end of its useful life
when
there are alternative facilities available which have higher resolution,
greater sensitivity, better pointing stability, better seeing and a
better
bandwidth than Hubble.

Franz, I would agree with you if the Hubble were a terrestrial
telescope with minimal upkeep and support expense, but sadly it isn't.

Telescopes are not just toys which you throw away when you have become
tired
of playing with them.

Here I have to disagree with you. Telescopes are simply one form of
research instrument which when it ceases to incrementally produce new
knowledge sufficient to justfify its upkeep, gets discarded.
Telescopes are precisely like microscopes or even precision machine
tools. When their research potential becomes fully exploited, they are
discarded by declaring them surplus and passing them down to other
users having less cutting-edge or demanding requirements.

If that is your criterion, then I would suggest that there is enough to be
learnt about the Universe via data which only the Hubble can provide that
its useful future life would be in the region of a century, unless a supeior
instrument came along.

This is very difficult to do with something occupying a decaying
orbital station. In the interest of science, we should consider
handing the keys for Hubble to another nation or international
federation, but given the extreme support costs involved, I doubt that
we would find many takers.

Then too, perhaps we could send a space shuttle mission up to capture
the Hubble and return it safely to earth, at a cost of millions of
dollars. Still, that would likely make it the worlds most costly
museum piece!

On the downside, there are still people alive that because of their
involvement with the initial Hubble project, would no doubt prefer to
see the Hubble destroyed in a fiery atmospheric burn rather than being
returned to earth in one piece. Recall that at the beginning, Hubble
exhibited some rather basic optical design flaws that were later
patched, but which a number of very senior people, in NASA and
elsewhere, would prefer not to see resurface.

That is, alas, only too true.

Franz

"Paul R. Mays" wrote in message
...

"Ken S. Tucker" wrote in message
...
Menwith wrote in message
...

Nasa is concerned with only one thing, getting the most money
to fly Monkey crap missions on the Space Shuttle II.
They would gladly ditch the Hubble if they thought it would
get them an extra two cents.
Also the arguement that Hubble is obsolete, is a half truth, sorta
like saying that a car that has run out of gas is useless.
There were plans for Hubble improvements.

The thinking of Nasa, after Columbia burned up, was,
1)the Hubble is a problem, if why go back for servicing missions,
that fact will be used by our critics to argue that a new shuttle is
not
needed

2)argue safety
3)therefore, new shuttle flights must be in the same orbital plane as
ISS
4)therefore, we must abandon the Hubble

Keep in mind that every dollar spent on 'science' is one less dollar
spent on the astronaut-soap-opera.

Menwith

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 Hubble was a great scope.. but it has already
outlived its oridginal designed life span by a long shot...
We can now do almost all observations just as well with
earth based systems ...

But only in a severely restricted bandwidth.
It sounds as if infrared and ultraviolet astronomers would have to resort to
using balloon-borne equipment once again.

[snip]

Franz

Harry Conover wrote:
Mark Folsom [snipped]


Obviously there will come a point in Hubble's lifetime when the
incremental value of data provided by Hubble will not justify the cost
associated with its acquisition.

Has this point been reached yet? If not, what will mark the point at
which it is reached? This then leads to the question: Can the
continuing expense of maintaining and operation the Hubble be more
productively spent in some other area of science?

Certainly good questions.

This is a far more basic question than one simply asking if the Hubble
will become obsolete when is is surpassed by a superior instrument. I
question if future information returned by the Hubble will exceed the
potential value of say discoveries made using a "supercollider" that
looks inside the atom, rather than a telescope that examines the far
reaches of space.

I believe the real question is whether future spending on science
should be focused on "big astronomy" or "big nuclear physics". Keep
in mind that the information acquired through astronomy is largely
historical, while that acquired through research into the structure of
atoms and fundamental particles may open a door through which the
future of man can possibly be shaped and controlled.

I'm biased (see my .sig line); I come down for 'big astronomy'. Keep in
mind that the recent discoveries in astrophysical cosmology have deep
implications for high energy physics. The distinction between
astrophysics and 'plain' physics has blurred.

[...] Most of our great terrestrial telescopes, while still used, are
largely regarded as museum pieces and barely maintained.

I can't imagine what you're thinking here. The statement is just plain
wrong.

Unfortunately, Hubble is too costly to maintain in orbit to ever
become a partially useful museum piece! That's the problem. Someday
someone will have to pull the plug on Hubble, and evidently NASA bit
the bullet and has decided that this day has come. Many people will
disagree, some strongly, but if today is not the day to pull the plug,
exactly when is, and who shall be entrusted with making that
determination and on what basis will it be made?

Harry C.
There are some things that can't be done except from orbit, and the
gap between the Webb Space Telescope and the expected deorbit of
Hubble is what hurts. Besides, the decision, as I understand it from
some other (sci.astro) postings, had little to do with Hubble's
usefulness and mostly to do with keeping the ISS schedule going. Bah!

--
Bill Wyatt ) "remove this" for email
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (Cambridge, MA, USA)

"Robert J. Kolker" wrote in message
news:KzaPb.107800$na.69915@attbi_s04...


Chosp wrote:


Exactly. You don't put a racehorse out to pasture until it starts losing
races. Not before it has even reached the prime of its life.
With almost a quarter billion dollars of upgrades ALREADY in existence
(and waiting in a clean room) to be installed - Hubble could still have
had
fully one third of its mission left. With those upgrades - it would not
have
become obsolete for its entire operational lifetime - even if it lasted
another decade.

Only one problem. We don't have a reliable vehicle with which to carry
out the repairs.

Nonsense. The shuttle is totally capable. And available.

The Scuttle is a brick with wings and a flying death
trap.

Horse****. There were four completely successful previous
missions to Hubble. The actual odds of an accident are no more
now than then (in fact, probably less) and there is no real reason
to expect the next mission would fail any more than any of the other
totally successful service missions.

One out of twenty five flights per orbiter (round numbers) have
ended in disaster. The Scuttle was promoted on a lie, that the the
vessel could be used to do lifting to oribit for something like a
thousand dollars a pound of payload. It has never come close to that.
The Orbiter is a piece of ****. It always has been a piece of ****. It
is a tile covered Abomination. It was conceived by a lie and every
dollar spent on the Scuttle has been a dollar not spent on a vehicle
with a decent lifting capacity.

Dollar for dollar we would have been better off using the Saturn rocket
for lifting material and throwing the rocket away after each flight.

All your pathetic, whiney excuses are no reason whatsoever to not service
the Hubble Space Telescope. It is not a piece of ****. It is not obsolete.
It hasn't even reached its prime. It is not going to be replaced with
anything
with its capabilities and there exists a capable and sufficiently reliable
means
of carrying out one more service mission.
Your blind hatred of the shuttle should not bleed over onto Hubble.
This just marks you as another sanctimonious chicken-**** who likes to
bitch.

But only in a severely restricted bandwidth.
It sounds as if infrared and ultraviolet astronomers would have to resort to
using balloon-borne equipment once again.

Well.....

you CAN launch a BUNCH of ballon missions for 500 million dollars.....

Guess the UV guys need to get thier parkas on and head to the south pole...


Bll

"BllFs6" wrote in message
...
But only in a severely restricted bandwidth.
It sounds as if infrared and ultraviolet astronomers would have to resort
to
using balloon-borne equipment once again.

Well.....

you CAN launch a BUNCH of ballon missions for 500 million dollars.....

Guess the UV guys need to get thier parkas on and head to the south
pole...


Bll

Guess again, Bill. That is just not how it works.
That $500 million is not available for anything
else whatsoever. Not one penny will be diverted
to new space science. No new balloon-borne
equipment will come out of this. No parkas.
No Antarctica.
That $500 million figure was derived from the fact
that the bulk of Space Shuttle operations have a
fixed overhead. That money mostly pays the
salaries of the workforce and upkeep of the
facilities as well as Shuttle refurbishment.
That money is spent whether the Shuttle
flies or not. That money will be gone, gone, gone
with nothing whatsoever to show for it.
Your premise is flawed. The shuttle flight to Hubble
was not an after-the-fact add-on mission - but an
already planned and budgeted operation and it
would not save $500 million to kill it. It would,
instead, waste a quarter of a billion dollars in
already complete, already paid for cameras and
detectors which are waiting in clean rooms to be
installed in Hubble. That quarter of a billion dollars is not
recoverable either. You are the one advocating
wasted money here.

Can the continuing expense of maintaining and
operation the Hubble be more productively spent
in some other area of science?

Possibly. But it won't be. The money will just be
frittered away.

Ben

wrote:

In article ,
Jan Panteltje wrote:
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.

Sigh! NASA has been under all kinds of administrations and still
is screwing up.

NASA was once doing ok. It got progressivly worse as the US government
became ever more right-wing since the late 60's/early 70's, while
NASA's budget was cut again and again.

db

Harry Conover wrote:

"Mark Folsom" wrote in message ...
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, at what point in time would you decide that Hubble had completed
its mission and productive lifetime?

That decision has been made a long time ago - by NASA. The service
mission that has now been canceled was supposed to be the last one, to
prolong Hubble's life untill a replacement is in operation.
It is quite obvious that Bush' interest in space is not for scientific
exploration.

db

db wrote:

NASA was once doing ok. It got progressivly worse as the US government
became ever more right-wing since the late 60's/early 70's, while
NASA's budget was cut again and again.

Once it became clear that the late and unlamented Soviet Union was not
going to be able to establish a Moon base, from which they could throw
rocks at us, the manned program was defunded. What defense function is
there in sending men to the Moon?

Once NASA was defunded, the brighter bulbs that worked for NASA moved on
to greener pastures. The left mediocrities, deadwood, and managerial
parasites. The quality of NASA's work reflects this migration of
technical talent away from NASA. If excellence is required, then
excellence must be paid for.

Bob Kolker