NASA Says 'No' To Hubble Reprieve

BBC ^ | 2-10-2004 | Dr David Whitehouse

[murdocj]

The Webb does not carry a visual light camera. We will not be able to see what the human eye can see through the Webb's systems.

The Webb is currently scheduled to go up in 2010 or 2011 at the earliest. Hubble will go down years before that. We will almost certainly miss something during that gap. Remember when that comet hit Jupiter?

In August, I noted a left-field idea involving equatorial-launched Soyuz missions to the Hubble. Obviously out there a ways, but maybe something a private organization might be willing to look into. Read my post at http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/000354.html if interested. It includes a link to the original story.

In related news, the equatorial launch plan made the news the other day at http://newsfromrussia.com/science/2004/02/05/52145.html .

I understand why NASA can't/won't make another servicing mission, but I believe that the Hubble is too valuable to just let die.

[TalonDJ]

But it is not to valuable to let die. Even if they do go fix it they would only extend the life a few more years. The cost of doing more safety modifications to the shuttle plus building the necessary repair hardware and launching a mission is very prohibitive. Now they could do it with a modified Soyuz mission but that would be horrible PR and they would never seriously consider it. Yeah the Hubble is an amazing piece of engineering but sooner or later it will come down on it’s own. Putting it in a parking orbit is just storing something that is obsolete. Once the gyros go several other systems will be destroyed due to solar heating and after that repairing it will be worse that building a new one. No, drop the thing and build the next big scope on the moon where it will never fall to earth and will not need flaky gyros.

[Phsstpok]

True, but do we have the launch capacity without the shuttle to put it in orbit?

Oh yeah. Deltas can do that. As I understand it we could have put up Hubble without the Shuttle at the time. It was a policy decision to use Hubble to deploy as part of giving the Shuttle a Mission. The only reason the STS exists is to bring things BACK from orbit, not to put them there or even to service the.

If we develop the CEV, for example the one Boeing is showing concept sketches of on their web site, we can do Hubble repair type missions with that. Better yet, if they develop the orbital tug that is also part of some of the proposals we could move something like that from orbit to orbit so that it could be brought to the vicinty of the ISS for future servicing missions.

[murdocj]

Build the next big scope on the moon? So no visible light spectrum space telescope for 20 years or more? Why is that a good idea?

I agree that NASA can't/won't service the Hubble. I agree that NASA servicing the Hubble with a Soyuz mission or two is almost totally out of the question.

But maybe NASA should put the Hubble on eBay and let the new owners decide what to do with it. Russia is always ready to sell space on Soyuz rides.

NASA didn't save Skylab primarily because the shuttle wasn't ready in time. What did the shuttle have to do with it? Nothing except it was supposed to be NASA's darling project.

The Bush plan shelves the shuttle and ISS, but doesn't make any replacements likely to arrive on time. Manned spaceflight by NASA is going to hit another low spot like the late 70s around 2010 or so and it will last for years.

I hope someone has the dollars and the know-how by then to pick up the slack.

[Quix]

sooooooooooo

LET BILL GATES FUND robotic refurbishing and orbit heightening effort. . . . or some such.

[hopespringseternal]

I hope someone has the dollars and the know-how by then to pick up the slack.

The problem with asking NASA to come up with another launcher is that they don't know how to do it economically. NASA is a bureaucracy, and as such it is incapable of imagining a system that pays for itself. In fact, by their reckoning a system that costs more to operate and takes more people is better because it grows the bureaucracy.

Similarly, the big aerospace companies won't gamble on a bigger market at reduced costs. They are afraid reducing the cost of getting to orbit will just mean less revenue for themselves.

If you look at the development of other technologies, you see a huge ramp up from the first prototypes. Aircraft, computers, etc. But nearly fifty years after we started going into space, we still aren't doing things remarkably different. Launcher development is a dead technology, has been since the seventies. Oh they keep slapping "new" and "improved" on the sides of their missiles, but they are still just missiles.

All the people who figured out how to launch things bought into a dead end paradigm with dead end economics. New people are just starting to look at the problem in the context of improvable technology and profitable economics.

If NASA gets back into launcher development, they will just sabotage those efforts.

[Cold Heat]

Hubble is old and outdated.

It is a risk assessment that must be made.

New tech might be cheaper in the long run. In other words, it has seen what it can see and perhaps a new platform would be much better and less risky to launch and maintain.

In view of everything else involved, it may be a good decision.

A sad one however.

[MikeD]

The question no one is asking is why was it safe to launch 6 Mercury missions, 10 Gemini missions, 12 Apollo missions, and untold Shuttle missions (including all of the HST missions) before February of last year? Suddenly, because of an accident, it's no longer safe to service HST? Huh?

Space travel is a risky business. I know that's easy to say since I'm on the ground, but I don't think any of the astronauts would disagree. I don't want people to needlessly die, but there's risk in everything. Personally, I'd rather risk a trip to keep HST alive than risk a trip for yet another crew rotation on ISS. Maybe that's just me.

[blam]

The Webb Telescope will replace the Hubble.

September 10,2002

"NASA ANNOUNCES CONTRACT FOR NEXT-GENERATION SPACE TELESCOPE NAMED AFTER SPACE PIONEER "

[libsrscum]

Right on, Mike!

Good thing there's a "space station" up there or we wouldn't be able to launch any shuttle at all for any reason!

SOMEBODY at NASA has got to grow up! Space travel IS dangerous. So was crossing the Atlantic in 1607, so was opening up the American West. Oh, and will there be a space station on the way to the moon or Mars in the future?

Crazy!

[MikeD]

True, the WST is coming but:

1. WST is an IR optimized telescope, so the images won't be as meaningful to the general public. For that matter, the images won't matter to anyone who doesn't care about IR stuff.

2. WST is scheduled for 2010. Do any NASA projects get off on time save the *really* critically timed ones? I don't expect it to launch for a year or two after that date.

3. Expensive as it was, we had the option to fix Hubble after we discovered an error in its surface figure. IIRC, WST will be at a LaGrange point, millions of miles from Earth. Kind of like SIRTF, or whatever they're calling it now.

Either way, my main question is why was it OK to repair Hubble and do all the other orbital missions before, but it's not OK now? Yeah, we know about falling foam, but there are a number of other critical things that could happen, too. That's just the one that got us last time.

MD