The Hubble Should SPLASH!

All that money to save the Hubble will go
down the drain. A robotic mission will likely
take longer than planned, cost more than planned
and probably fail.

Even if completely successful, it only gives a couple
of years. For a couple of billion?

A couple of billion to keep a handful of scientists
on the gravy train for a ...couple of years.
We could hire half of Baghdad for that.


What we are looking for is life, Hubble cannot see it.



Jonathan

s

"Jonathan" wrote in news:rrKdnZLXK8ZS97zcRVn-
:

All that money to save the Hubble will go
down the drain. A robotic mission will likely
take longer than planned, cost more than planned
and probably fail.

agreed

Even if completely successful, it only gives a couple
of years. For a couple of billion?

say a couple thousand million... it will make you feel better.

A couple of billion to keep a handful of scientists
on the gravy train for a ...couple of years.
We could hire half of Baghdad for that.

Could half of Baghdad do the work of the Hubble?

What we are looking for is life, Hubble cannot see it.

Who said what we are looking for is life?

"Jonathan" wrote in message ...
All that money to save the Hubble will go
down the drain. A robotic mission will likely
take longer than planned, cost more than planned
and probably fail.


A robotic mission is more expensive than a manned mission and less
likely to succeed, so obviously it's the best way to do it.

I say we get some astronaut volunteers, send the shuttle, and the heck
with NASA bureaucrats who can't make tough decisions. How are we going
to send people to Mars if we're terrified of putting them into low
Earth orbit?

Kevin

"Jonathan" wrote in message
...

What we are looking for is life, Hubble cannot see it.

Johathan, life's only part of the equation. We have to find the *planets*
where life _might_ exist before we can actually _see_ life.

--
Alan Erskine
We can get people to the Moon in five years,
not the fifteen GWB proposes.
Give NASA a real challenge

"Alan Erskine" wrote in message
...
"Jonathan" wrote in message
...

What we are looking for is life, Hubble cannot see it.

Johathan, life's only part of the equation. We have to find the *planets*
where life _might_ exist before we can actually _see_ life.


What do you think the Webb and TPF are all about. But if you want
to see extraterrestrial life, just look below. It's staring us in the
face!

The Stromatolites of Stella Maris, Bahamas
http://www.theflyingcircus.com/stella_maris.html

Endurance Crater
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...9P1987R0M1.JPG
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P1986R0M1.HTML



And if pics aren't enough, how about some Mossebauer spectra....



A Bowl of Hematite-Rich 'Berries'
Mar 18, 2004

"This graph shows two spectra of outcrop regions near the
Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's landing site.
The blue line shows data for a region dubbed "Berry Bowl,"
which contains a handful of the sphere-like grains dubbed
"blueberries."

Blueberry chart
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/rove.../image-19.html




A Mossbauer investigation of iron-rich terrestrial
hydrothermal vent systems: Lessons for Mars exploration

Jack D. Farmer 2
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California

4. Siderite as a Component of an Ancient Stromatolite

"Mossbauer spectra at two temperatures of a freshly slabbed
portion of a 2.09 Ga (Early Proterozoic) hematic chert stro-
matolite from the Gunflint Iron Formation (PPRG 2443) are
shown in Figure 26. The high-velocity ferrous peak migrates
from its position at 100 K to overlap the fifth peak of hematite
at 19 K. This behavior and the agreement of the splitting pa-
rameters with those of siderite argue that this sample contains
a small fraction of siderite. (dominant siderite peak at -1090 cm-I).
The sample investigated was freshly slabbed for the Mossbauer
transmission measurement, so the iron carbonate is interior
to the native stromatolite rock. Its occurrence in this 2.09 Ga
old rock in- dicates that long (billion-year) survival times
for siderite are possible when preserved in silica."


(Fig 26 page 16, please compare with blueberry bowl
chart for siderite signature)
http://geology.asu.edu/jfarmer/pubs/pdfs/mossbauer.pdf



Dr. Jack D. Farmer
http://geology.asu.edu/jfarmer/biography/pro.html

"Currently, Jack is the Director and Principal Investigator of the NASA funded
Astrobiology
Program at Arizona State University, he leads the NASA Astrobiology Institute's Mars
Focus Group and is on the Executive Board of the NASA Astrobiology Institute.
He holds appointments on various NASA committees including the Space Science
Advisory Committee, Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group, Instrumentation
for Mars Exploration Working Group, Mars Ad hoc Science Team, Mars 2003
Landing Site Steering Committee, Mars 2005 Orbiter Mission Science
Definition Team......"




















--
Alan Erskine
We can get people to the Moon in five years,
not the fifteen GWB proposes.
Give NASA a real challenge

Some form of retro package is still be required to accurately deorbit the HST.

A robotic mission to attach a retro package is past the current demonstrated
state of the art in remote/autonomous prox-opps, but not dramatically so.
The more aggressive plans that involve robotic/teleoperated replacement of
components add additional layers of cost and complexity. While there would
be some additional science return from a repaired HST, one thing the robotic
missions do is give the "machines can do it all, humans need not apply" folks
a chance to put-up or shut-up.

My guess is that a robotic mission to attach a retro pack will happen. The
guidance and control techniques worked out will be useful for other missions
as well. It _might_ include new power and guidance components to extend the
life of the basic instruments, provided the appropriate connections can be
made. The more ambitious plans are not likely within the HST's remaining
expected lifetime.

An endowment to support HST's extended operations would make the life
extension options more palatable to the folks paying the bills.

A shuttle mission to simply attach a retro package is a waste of a mission.
NASA does not seem to want to continue paying for HST's daily care and
feeding, so a shuttle HST repair mission is off the boards at present.



Jonathan wrote:

All that money to save the Hubble will go
down the drain. A robotic mission will likely
take longer than planned, cost more than planned
and probably fail.

Even if completely successful, it only gives a couple
of years. For a couple of billion?

A couple of billion to keep a handful of scientists
on the gravy train for a ...couple of years.
We could hire half of Baghdad for that.

What we are looking for is life, Hubble cannot see it.

Jonathan

s

Jonathan is an idiot! The Hubble Telescope is the greatest invention
man could invent. Not a waste of money. It can see well into the stars
for information for future generations. It tells us that there is other
forms of energy out there, other than our own.....

Chuck
Mich

In article ,
says...


All that money to save the Hubble will go
down the drain. A robotic mission will likely
take longer than planned, cost more than planned
and probably fail.

Naturally, you provide zero evidence for your claims. The robotic
mission to repair Hubble will be ground breaking and the new technology
developed may one day make it the preferred method to service
satellites. It's worth the investment. It might cost a little more
than the average wasteful shuttle flight. But if nasa really cared
about saving money they wouldn't have built (1) the shuttle or (2) the
space station. If NASA wanted to save money then they could hire the
russians to service hubble, for example.

At least Hubble is producing loads of new science data, which is more
than can be said for most of the money spent on the shuttle or the ISS.


Even if completely successful, it only gives a couple
of years. For a couple of billion?

First off, a couple billion isn't that big a deal. Whether serviced by
human crew or not, there was going to be cost associated with repairing
it. But it's worth it. Hubble is still the only orbital, optical
telescope of its kind. If we dump hubble now and the next generation
space telescope is delayed then astronomers will have to do without for
many years. Hubble is a sunk cost and it's cheaper to maintain it, at
this point, than to build a whole new one.



A couple of billion to keep a handful of scientists
on the gravy train for a ...couple of years.

You can't be serious. Hubble has produced incredible results so far and
the world astronomical community relies upon it. Unlike much of the
manned space program, it does real science.

We could hire half of Baghdad for that.

What do you want them to do, all squint really hard at one part of the
sky?


What we are looking for is life, Hubble cannot see it.

That's not the only priority, nor is it a foregone conclusion that
Hubble would be unable to detect some large scale sign of life.


--
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins

quibbler wrote:

All that money to save the Hubble will go
down the drain. A robotic mission will likely
take longer than planned, cost more than planned
and probably fail.


Naturally, you provide zero evidence for your claims. The robotic
mission to repair Hubble will be ground breaking and the new technology
developed may one day make it the preferred method to service
satellites. It's worth the investment. It might cost a little more
than the average wasteful shuttle flight.

It will cost over three times as much, by NASA's own estimates. It has
a great deal of risk of making things worse, perhaps causing a premature
uncontrolled entry.

It's not a bad idea to develop the robotics, but this is a dangerous way
to test it.

quibbler wrote in
t:

Naturally, you provide zero evidence for your claims. The robotic
mission to repair Hubble will be ground breaking and the new technology
developed may one day make it the preferred method to service
satellites. It's worth the investment. It might cost a little more
than the average wasteful shuttle flight.

It will cost a *lot* more than a shuttle flight, on a marginal cost basis.

If NASA wanted to save money then they could hire the
russians to service hubble, for example.

The Russians are incapable of servicing HST.

But it's worth it. Hubble is still the only orbital, optical
telescope of its kind. If we dump hubble now and the next generation
space telescope is delayed then astronomers will have to do without for
many years.

That is an emotional argument, not a scientific one. JWST is scheduled for
launch around 2011, about four years after HST will die if not serviced.
Even if delayed, by the time JWST (or HST2) is launched, the stars and
galaxies will still be there, and there will still be astronomers to study
them, though they may not be the same astronomers studying them now. The
science will still get done.

Hubble is a sunk cost and it's cheaper to maintain it, at
this point, than to build a whole new one.

Nope, much of the hardware required for a replacement HST already exists
(spare mirror blank at Kodak, all the instruments scheduled for
installation on SM-04, new gyros and batteries, etc). Building a
replacement HST and launching it on an ELV would be far cheaper than
servicing it robotically, though not cheaper than servicing it with the
shuttle.

--
JRF

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