News: Hubble plans and policy

Thus spake Dale on Sun, 27 Jul 2003 02:51:03 -0700,
as he held forth on " News: Hubble plans and policy"

OK, what am I missing here? Why is a recovery mission "exceedingly unlikely",
but future servicing missions are not?

Could a retrieval be accomplished by an unmanned shuttle mission?

JD
jdkbph at snet dot net

rk wrote in
:

Paul F. Dietz wrote:

The real justification for retrieval is to avoid dropping debris
on anyone when it reenters. This saves a certain number of lives
on average. If this number is less than the expected number of
lives lost in a shuttle mission, the recovery is not worth doing.

I believe they are required to deorbit the spacecraft safely, I think
JRF knows those regulations well, what the limits are, and exceptional
conditions.

Actually... I just know that they exist, plus a few details here and there.
:-)

One key issue here is if there will be a flight rule of "all flights to
ISS" for the near and perhaps mid-term. I would guess -- just a
personal guess -- that this will be a rule for the near term.

Right. The CAIB has recommended that NASA develop tile/RCC
inspection/repair capability. For return-to-flight, this capability can
depend on ISS. However, a "standalone" capability is recommended prior to
the first non-ISS (read: HST) flight.

--
JRF

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JD wrote in
:

Thus spake Dale on Sun, 27 Jul 2003 02:51:03 -0700,
as he held forth on " News: Hubble plans and policy"

OK, what am I missing here? Why is a recovery mission "exceedingly
unlikely", but future servicing missions are not?

Could a retrieval be accomplished by an unmanned shuttle mission?

The shuttle does not currently have the capability to fly unmanned. The
blatherings of Joe Barton aside, this capability is not likely to be
developed, either, except possibly unmanned deorbit capability.


--
JRF

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OK, what am I missing here? Why is a recovery mission "exceedingly unlikely",
but future servicing missions are not?

Though maybe there could be some scientific benefit from looking at a bird that
has been up there for what will be about 20 years by 2010...servicing HST is a
necessity...retrieval is not. It would be nice to get the HST down...but I
doubt NASA will take the risk now.

On a side note though, I am worried about how the media is portraying every
non-ISS flight as the riskiest endeavor NASA could undertake. The majority of
those 111 successful shuttle missions did not go to any space station...every
venture into Earth orbit isn't going to be to ISS...

-A.L.

In article ,
rk wrote:
If they could service it, then it could be retrieved...

Not necessarily. This is why the loss of Columbia, in particular, is a
problem for a retrieval mission: Columbia was the only remaining orbiter
with an unobstructed cargo bay. Hubble is (if I'm not mistaken) too big
to fit in the cargo bay together with the external airlock/docking-port
assembly that the other orbiters now have in there. They can fly a
servicing mission, but would need extensive reworking to fly a retrieval
(and then after the retrieval, you get to rework that orbiter again to put
things back the way they were).

An obvious option not explored by the NYT and something to at least
consider: If the HST is working better then ever and there is no budget
for it (moving on to the JWST), why not privatize operations and put the
whole HST enterprise up for public auction?

A private operator is going to want to see revenue from HST operations.
If you zero out NASA's HST-operations budget, then where, exactly, would
that revenue come from? (The astronomy community does not have hundreds
of millions to spend on buying data from such a venture.)
--
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first ground-station pass 1651, all nominal! |

In article ,
says...

snip

Yeah, and the Beeb (BBC) seems to be imploding too. I suppose
one day Fox News will be our most respected source of information.

Only if you're somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun, politically.

Arghhh.

Agreed.

--

It's not the pace of life I mind; | Doug Van Dorn
it's the sudden stop at the end... |

The risk is the same for the first two options. For the third option, you
are trading a certain amount of astronaut risk for a certain amount of
third-party risk. The astronauts sign up for the risks they take. Innocent
third parties don't get to either sign up, or opt out. The choice is
fairly clear to me.

It really depends on what NASA decides the public is more afraid of...letting
HST come down uncontrolled or losing a shuttle on a solo-Earth orbit mission.

If they let HST burn up, out of control we get days of media coverage to "watch
out because HST might hit you, the idiots at NASA didn't go get it!" and if one
screw survives re-entry we'll here how deadly it could have been from
"experts".

If NASA launches a shuttle to either bring HST home or boost it to a higher
orbit I guess the media will trump it up as a "risky" mission and either be
hard on NASA and state "oh, but the odds of Hubble landing on someone's head
are a billion to one" or call it a heroic endeavor.

And if we lose a shuttle on such a mission I'm sure we'll hear endless
ramblings along the lines of "they should have just let it burn up."

I hate the media...

-A.L.

OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org
wrote in :

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 04:45:52 -0500, "Kent Betts"
wrote:

Instead NASA is studying the possibility that a robotic rocket could
be sent to attach itself to the telescope and ease it out of orbit
safely into the ocean.

...Now *here's* where nobody's thinking over there. If they can launch
a de-orbit retro, why can't they simply use it to change the orbital
plane and allow a Shuttle to retrieve it *and* still retain ISS
capabilities?

A deorbit burn from HST's altitude requires a delta-V of around 150 m/s.

A plane change from HST to ISS requires a minimum delta-V of around 3,000
m/s.

Gah.

Gah to you, too.

--
JRF

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On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 05:11:47 -0600, Charles Buckley
wrote:

Recovery? That would mean loading a big heavy Hubble into the
payload bay of a shuttle and returning it to Earth, correct?

I suspect that Hubble would be pushing the return capability of
the Shuttle.

Er, Hubble was launched in the Orbiter and the Orbiter never carries
anything it can't land with safely. Otherwise the abort modes would
be impossible.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

"A MiG at your six is better than no MiG at all."
Anonymous US fighter pilot

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 04:45:52 -0500, "Kent Betts"
wrote:

Instead NASA is studying the possibility that a robotic rocket could be sent to
attach itself to the telescope and ease it out of orbit safely into the ocean.

....Now *here's* where nobody's thinking over there. If they can launch
a de-orbit retro, why can't they simply use it to change the orbital
plane and allow a Shuttle to retrieve it *and* still retain ISS
capabilities?

Gah.


OM

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