NASA To Determine Hubble's Fate 192
clickclickdrone writes "According to the BBC NASA is debating whether or not to send astronauts in to space to service the Hubble telescope. Without intervention it is thought to be good for another 24-36months.
Given the quality of images and data it has produced since it's launch, it sounds like a no brainer to me but the people who hold the purse strings are rarely predictable when it comes to spending money."
Auction Hubble (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's no moon! (Score:5, Funny)
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So you could have the GoldenPalace telescope.
Re:Auction Hubble (Score:5, Insightful)
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FOR SALE: One Space Telescope, under warranty. w/ 3-year service contract. Ask for Tony.
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Potential sales shouldn't be an issue. "We need a bigger, cooler telescope" seems to be a good label.
Allow enough time for people get used to a it, they have no preferene except to have cool images to look at. NASA, however, wants the next generation picture toy.
Finding other potential planet, binary stars, etc. should to be less important when the local (our) neighborhood needs to be fully played with. Or, this planet. How much do we know about where we live (Earth)?
I can't see my tax money divert
Re:Auction Hubble (Score:5, Interesting)
Surprisingly not. Most astronomers I rub elbows with are not too supportive of the Hubble program. Sure, the pictures and deep field stuff is nice, but with recent advances in adaptive optics, we can build enormous ground-based scopes for much less money that outperform Hubble. And Hubble has diverted hundreds of millions of dollars away from other projects. I'm not a zealot for either side, but the professional astronomical community is certainly not of one mind on this.
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Interesting, which institution's astronomers are you "rubbing elbows" with? I'm a physicst, not an astronomer, but of all the astronomy faculty, post-docs, and grad students at my institution I know of only a single professional astronomer (out of dozens, maybe even approaching 100+) that favors phasing out Hubble, and that's only because he is a PI in a Hubble replacement proposal. And this includes astronomers that primaril
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Throw in a shuttle as part of the deal.
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Hopefuly they change their mind and go and fix one of the most important astronomical tools ever created.
Re:Auction Hubble (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm sure you're just being facetious, but I figured I'd note for anyone that finds this sort of thing interesting, the Hubble can't track the earth. It's moving too fast, any images taken would end up as a streaky blur. Earth slides beneath it at something like 4 miles per second, and the shutter on the Hubble is intended for long exposures.
The Hubble doesn't even have the resolution to pick out the lunar landin
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Which is exactly the crux of the NASA decision, for not too much more than the cost of maintenance, they could launch a newer, dramamtically more powerful scope.
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http://space.google.com/ [google.com]
adapt google maps and use celestia as a googlespace app
that'd rawk!
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Get their attention... (Score:5, Funny)
Tell them Hubble might have found oil on a distant planet, and that we need to take another look.
Actually... (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini-Huygens [wikipedia.org]
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Prey tell, how so?
-nB
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#Biogenic_t
Oil is the result of biomass getting compressed in the earth over a very long period of time.
Keyword being biomass
Says who? (Score:2)
And diamonds are the result of carbon being squished under heat and pressure in extinct volcanoes...except when their not. Many of the artificial diamonds talked about in the earlier article http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/2 6/0040204 [slashdot.org] use varients of the same processes used in the semiconductor industry to grow
The thing is, Titan is much colder than anything around here. Its "rocks" are likely w
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_o rigin [wikipedia.org]
Also do all complex hydrocarbons require bio-mass?
what about the methane on various moons of the solar system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon) [wikipedia.org]
So yes I agree this is all very interesting and a I'd love to investigate all these things in more detail- but to state as fact that that is where oil came from when there is no such proo
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No.
Since that is not the only way it can be made, we can not say or assume that the presence of oil proves the past or current presance of life.
It may well still be worth a second look, but it does not prove anything.
-nB
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It may well still be worth a second look, but it does not prove anything.
Of course the presence of oil on another body would show that life once existed there. What book have you read that said that oil can be created in any manner other than through decomposing biological material?
Let me guess, you probably think that oil is an infinite resource that magic
Re:Get their attention... (Score:5, Informative)
How about "Dissociation of Methane into Hydrocarbons at. Extreme (Planetary) Pressure and Temperature.", by F. Ancilotto, G. L. Chiarotti, S. Scandolo, and E. Tosatti, in the February 28, 1997 issue of Science? Their molecular dynamics simulations show that methane is likely to breakdown into a mixture including ethane, butane, and even alkanes (i.e. oil) at the high pressures and temperatures found deep within the interiors of Neptune and Uranus. No living organisms involved.
Let me guess, you probably think that oil is an infinite resource that magically renews itself.
Even when you feel certain that you're right, you should try to be more polite about it just in case you're wrong. Otherwise people may end up giving your opinions the same disdain you've shown to others.
It sounds like you saw the topic, immediately thought "abiotic oil nutjob", and hurried to wail on him. However, just because you recognize the biological history of oil on Earth doesn't mean you have to jump to the conclusion that no other processes operate elsewhere. Take that attitude too far and you'll end up trying to find the alien messages in pulsars.
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eh. You mean there isn't one?
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A breif except:
Evidence of abiogenic mechanisms
* Scaled particle theory for a simplified perturbed hard-chain, statistical mechanical model predicts that methane compressed to 30 or 40 kbar at 1000 C (conditions in the mantle) yields hydrocarbons having properties similar to petroleum [30][31]
* Experiments in diamond anvil high pressure cells have confirmed this theory[32]
Basically this says the long HC chains of oil can be mimicked with p
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Always happy to be proven wrong when it is educational.
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Oil is not a fossil fuel.
I'd enjoy someone proving otherwise beyond fiat, let alone ukase.
Oh, when will(or has already occured) the Hubbert Curve peaked?
Not Only Money (Score:4, Insightful)
it sounds like a no brainer to me but the people who hold the purse strings are rarely predictable when it comes to spending money.
There's way more than money at stake here. Maybe Hubble is worth the risk to the astronaut's lives, but you can't just ignore that issue.
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Re:Not Only Money (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not Only Money (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of the "save Hubble" defense seems to be more sentimental than practical. I'm not saying it should be tossed in the bin just because it's old, but it IS old, and technology has advanced tremendously since it was put into orbit. I'm not against being sentimental either, but if the money doesn't exist to maintain two space observatories, I know I'd choose to get an all new one.
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That really isn't the choice. There isn't a replacement waiting in the wings that we can choose to launch instead. According to the WP article on HST [wikipedia.org], there may be a newer telescope that would be ready to launch in 2010, but that project is currently unfunded and thus that launch date should be pushed back by the time it would take to get funding. The JWST
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I think it would be a shame to have no functioning space-based telescope.
If they don't fix it, it will be a whole lot of years before (or, indeed, if) they get around to putting up a replacement. I can envision them not repairing Hubble, and then ultimately not putting up a rep
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I'm not saying it should be tossed in the bin just because it's old, but it IS old, and technology has advanced tremendously since it was put into orbit.
This doesn't have any relation to the potential for valuable science. The fact of the matter is, there's still a huge amount of science that could be done with hubble. Even though it's not state of the art (and no satellite has state of the art components, because of the amount of testing that needs to be done to ensure they'll operate properly in space)
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On the other hand, as others have already stated technology has progressed to the point that ground telescopes are meeting and exceeding the Hubble's capabilities.
If for the cost of a servicing mission you can set up a ground observatory that can meet or exceed the hubble's capabilies and cost less to maintain, it makes no sense to keep the hubble operational.
Now, if you take those funds and dedicate them to replacing hubble with something that w
Re:Not Only Money (Score:5, Insightful)
There's way more than money at stake here. Maybe Hubble is worth the risk to the astronaut's lives, but you can't just ignore that issue.
Thats the core of the debate I'm sure, but its a ridiculous point. Space travel is always a risk to an astronaut. If astronauts have a problem with the risks involved then they should get a different job. I'm sure there is a whole line of would be astronauts ready to take their place. Its was a risk when they first put the Hubble in place, and when they serviced it the first time. The risk is unchanged since then, in fact it should be lower since they now have ideas of what problems they may encounter.
Many astronauts have spoken (Score:5, Interesting)
their lives are not their own (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm just saying that just because we have astronauts willing to go doesn't mean we can
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There is a world of difference between the would-be astronaut and the astronaut qualified for EVA and repair of the Hubble.
It is for NASA to decide when and where to put its people at risk.
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Re:Not Only Money (Score:5, Insightful)
You're kidding, right? Anyone who manages to become an astronaut knows full well about the risks, and chose it anyway. If we were having to conscript people to go fix Hubble it would be one thing, but since the line of people who would volunteer to do it would stretch all the way from the launchpad to the vehicle assembly building, I say we let them do it!
<flamebait>Besides, it's not any riskier than being a soldier in Iraq...</flamebait>
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Since I'm biting on the flamebait, I'm not going to waste the time crunching numbers, but I think if you did you would be supprised just how much safer you are in Iraq over being an astronaut (percentage wise that is).
-nB
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Yep, that's why I used the "flamebait" tags. I was speaking in hyperbole.
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but the view is much nicer from space (I imagine, anyway...there's not much chance that I'll ever go to either location...)
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This is going to sound cold - but its realistic.
The astronauts lives really aren't worth considering. They are volunteers and know the score - and there are hundreds if not thousands more where they came from. OTOH, the Orbiters are
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There's way more than money at stake here. Maybe Hubble is worth the risk to the astronaut's lives, but you can't just ignore that issue.
I don't see ignoring the issue as the problem here. Hubble or a replacement for it is worth the risk to astronauts' lives.Not so one-dimensional (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately for us, the current administration.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, our current president is (seemingly) not quite sharp enought to get most of what science discovers using the HST. He'd rather have "feet on the ground" as it were, telling him things like "We've landed and claimed Mars in the name of the USA" rather than "We've made a startling discovery regarding the dynamics of planetary formation within stellar nurseries".
That said, maybe it is time we went back to the true promise of space exploration - getting mankind out into the Galaxy. There is a certain attraction to the notion of manned space exploration versus robotic/remote methods. Certainly a kind of heroic appeal to the act itself; and all of our robotic/remote exploration was and is intended to ultimately pave the way for manned exploration anyhow. Perhaps we know enough now to take those first tenative steps into space.
Like most coins, this one appears to have two sides.
Make it Marketable. (Score:2)
So refit Hubble with a secondary camera/lens to be able to track the maned explorations and sell it as a new reality TV show. Really. The best part of The Space Race was that everyone actually cared. Imagine if people were as excited a
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The biggest benefit is all is the endless supply of resources and energy one could harvest, it certainly would change the dynamics of have vs. have not, there are enough resources out there to give everyone on earth a standard of living many times higher then it is now.
That and manned spaceflight would no doubt help enable us to learn to make better spacecraft overtime, and advance our knowledge on how to
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Consider that while the push to put a human on the moon was mostly a marketing campaign the end result was that the public was happy to see large sums of their money spent on it. The shuttle program had similar hype but
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Never mind whether the device is technilogically past its prime (and, BTW, we do have new hardware scheduled to go up - better than Hubble). But consider this: in just the last few years, the average cost per shuttle flight has gone down to a mere $750 million dollars [colorado.edu]. Per flight.
Don't you think that newer toys should be seriously considered, over servicing the ol
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No, my position is simply that it's NOT a no-brainer to spend close to a billion dollars to fix the HST. That's not to say it isn't worth something to do so, but there are other programs that arguably could make better use of the budget and possibly not even risk the lives of the crew that would have to go fix it.
NASA's budget is l
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Well, which is it? He's dumb if he's not, himself, able to process the cosmological cooln
Re:Unfortunately for us, the current administratio (Score:2)
> to get most of what science discovers using the HST.
"Seemingly" is quite appropriate here since Bush's grades were higher than Gore's [washingtonpost.com].
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Quite true. I remember after the first Bush-Kerry debate (in which Bush was trounced soundly by all accounts) my one consolation was someone's quote to the effect of "it's not much of a victory when you beat George Bush in a talking contest"
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The debate (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps they could take the space elevator...:b
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Why spend more money on it? (Score:2, Funny)
Astronauts or Hubble. Easy. (Score:2)
Yeah I know, the astronauts know the risks involved. Yet the risk is bigger to who manned space program should something go wrong, especially something going wrong on a mission that is "largely" optional.
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The only space missions that are not entirely optional are the ones that involve recovering crew from a space station.
If we can't afford the risk to service Hubble, then we can't afford the risk to do anything else in space and should just mothball the entire manned space program right now.
The shuttle is no
Abandonded property? (Score:2)
Mike broke the Hubble. (Score:3, Funny)
Replace it... (Score:3, Interesting)
already done (Score:3, Interesting)
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Benefit to mankind (Score:3, Interesting)
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Hubble may simply not be good enough (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hubble may simply not be good enough (Score:5, Interesting)
On top of that we've also sent up other spacecraft, or are building them, that dwarf Hubble's capabilities.
Hubble does have the rather unique ability to stay parked on a single target, continuously, for very long periods of time. No Earth based scope can do that. But again, there are smaller, faster, cheaper craft in service or coming on line soon that will have better imaging and better processing power.
I don't know that Hubble should be repaired and kept operating, but I do think it should be brought back to Earth for placement in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.
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You're talking rubbish. Where do you get your information? Star Trek episodes?
You can't "use a laser and either flexible mirrors or computers to remove the distortion of the atmosphere". Adaptive optics can compensate for the distortion to differing degrees at different frequencies. You don't get anything for free. You can't simply magically remove the atmosphere with techology and get exactly the same results. Also while our technology has mo
Outsource it to save money (Score:3, Insightful)
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So glad I have all the information in front of me. (Score:3, Insightful)
The real problem (Score:3, Informative)
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Why not make another? (Score:2)
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Also, along the lines of another poster a fleet of NOAA immaging satalites would rule. Think of a google earth type site getting a high res refresh of the whole earth each week.
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Honestly, if we were a rational species, we would first do everything we could to
But-- But-- (Score:2)
Sell it to the NSA. Get around the "don't point it at the ground" limitation. Sell it on the basis of our need to see down every cleavage in the world, in case they're carrying bombs in there.
Time to upgrade (Score:2)
Grammar for Fun and Profit (Score:3, Insightful)
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-Jar.
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