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Posted on 05/01/2007 8:11:08 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
The space shuttle fleet will be retired about two years after Atlantis delivers the last scheduled Hubble repair crew in September 2008... Left to its own devices, the telescope's natural orbital decay will bring it back into the atmosphere sometime between 2022 and 2028, provided the upcoming servicing mission is a success. To keep its reentry from happening over a populated area, the crew of STS-125 will attach the passive half of the Low-Impact Docking System (LIDS) that NASA has baselined for the Orion crew exploration vehicle and other human spacecraft under development for the post-shuttle era. Plans call for a future robotic vehicle to use the LIDS ring and a retro-reflector homing target to be installed with it to attach a deorbit motor to the telescope for a controlled reentry over the Pacific Ocean. But a human crew also could use the ring, and in the next 15-20 years, Orion or some other human vehicle already on the drawing board might be made able to handle the extra hardware needed to service Hubble.
(Excerpt) Read more at aviationweek.com ...
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Should We Repair Hubble?
Popular Mechanics | May 2007 | Thomas D. Jones
Posted on 04/03/2007 10:49:37 PM EDT by KevinDavis
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1811616/posts
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I love the Hubbel but I think it’s time to start thinking about how to image extrasolar planets.
We need a variety of tools for a variety of jobs. :’)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=hubble
True, Hubbel is already way beyond it’s original capabilities.
spaceflightnow.com
A new breed of heavy-lift rockets developed privately by Space Exploration Technologies now has a launch pad at Cape Canaveral under a just-reached agreement with the Air Force that would see Falcon 9 boosters fly commercial missions to the International Space Station and deploy satellites from Florida.
Falcon, that is.
New glasses
Who (in private industry) would TOSS AWAY a billion dollar asset?
You use it until it FAILS and the cost to repair it outweighs the cost to replace it...
We might start to think about that, but hardware is already in acquisition phase. The date of launch seems to be kind of ghostly. 2012? 2021? There are several launch projects underway even while ground-based telescopes are advancing way beyond what the limits were supposed to be.
:’)
Aviation Leak is way off base here. The LIDS is being attached for one reason, and one reason only. There will be a de-orbit rocket sent up that will automatically de-orbit Hubble once it has failed.
Right now the Hubble mission is extended indefinitely but once JWST is launched, and reaches its L2 Halo orbit, there will be a redundancy. Hubble should have been out there in the first place, but the problem is that it was put where it is to give the Shuttle something to do while the ISS was being designed.
Not to mention that Orion isn’t designed for multiple EVAs and can not carry anything the size of a CMG that would be needed in case of a failure, or the mirror that was replaced on the first Shuttle mission to the telescope.
As far as Musk goes, he has his sights set higher than LEO. He will not (and legally can not) monkey around with Hubble. It is already to expensive to repair, when you consider that each mission to the telescope has cost half a billion dollars. So that’s over 2.5 BILLION dollars to service this telescope. Granted that it HAS given some wonderful scientific return during all of its years of operation, but it’s time to put it to bed.
Each mission to the telescope has cost half a billion dollars, because that’s the cost of a Shuttle mission.
You’re right! What does that tell us? Or not necessarily us, but the folks at NASA that blatantly lied to get their pet project through. There was no way that this system was EVER going to have 20+ launches a year, let alone 40+. The most has been 8 I think, and that was with 4 operational orbiters...and look what happened there...hubris got the best of the management and good astronauts died. Good concept that was poorly implemented.
I know “if ifs and buts were candy and nuts...” but (:D) had they ordered another production run of Saturn Vs, and followed through with the Apollo Applications Program, we wouldn’t be talking about going to Earth’s Moon by 2016 and Mars by 2030, we’d be talking about going to the Jovian moons by 2010. We’d have a 4th generation capsule (which is essentially what Orion is) and probably a decent re-usable space plane for LEO work.
What people forget is that Skylab had MORE internal volume than the ISS will have at completion. One, single launch, space station module with more volume than a station that has taken HOW MANY years to complete? The station project was created to give the Shuttle something to do, when it should have been the other way around, have a station first, service it with capsule flights until the re-usable space plane is ready. But then, NASA’s budget should be at least twice it’s current level too.
150 tons of Skylab, one launch. Gotta love the Saturn V. I *really* loved the pissing and moaning (even around here) regarding how the expendible launchers were a great leap backward. One simpleton around here even argued (with me) that the number one priority had to be reusability — y’know, rather than reliability, low cost to orbit, flexibility, etc etc.
The “reusability” that we are getting with Ares will be paid for in reductions to the Orion’s capabilities. The ATK Mafia have NASA backed into a corner here. I would have much preferred to see something along the lines of DIRECT for both crew and cargo launch. Uses the existing STS stack with the addition of some structure to the ET for payload attach and the thrust structure, and the existing 4-segment SRBs. Growth options include the addition of an upper stage, 5-segment SRBs and addition of RS-68s to the core stage.
We’re talking about ~90mT to LEO at a time with the basic STS stack with just the structure mods. That number climbs to over 130mT when you add the 5-segment SRBs and the upper stage.
Another thing I like about DIRECT is that it promotes use of LOR-only mission modes for the Moon. This is good because it means we can design a re-usable LSAM right off the bat, and we only need to send Orion to TLI.
I’m also a big proponent of mission modules. So that some science can be done away from the ISS. The use of mission module architecture would also allow the MPLMs to be used with Orion. With some slight modifications (i.e. a LIDS on the other side) the MPLMs could be launched with Orion, and then it could extract it from the upper stage and then deliver it to the ISS.
But NASA is stuck in this “No crew with cargo.” mentality that is really dumb as far as I’m concerned. That’s where the whole 2-launch Lunar EOR-LOR mission mode comes from (I refuse to call it 1.5 launch, 1.5 launch would include a sub-orbital launch). The LSAM is considered cargo. Never mind that when you’re launching a capsule at the top of a stack, you can always use the LAS. Sorry...I’m ranting about NASA’s political decisions.
:’)
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