Robot lets down fans of telescope [Bye-bye Hubble...]

Columbia Daily Tribune ^ | December 12, 2004 | AP

[snopercod]

But NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe has stuck by his guns that regardless of what the academy or the Aerospace Corp. says, no people will risk their lives to fix Hubble.

But it's OK for people to risk their lives going to that white elephant in the sky - the ISS...

[Phocion]

Hopefully whoever replaces O'Keefe will make the right decision. The NAS has demonstrated pretty clearly that the emperor has no clothes on this issue. It's politics damning the Hubble, not science.

[KevinDavis]

Ha Ha!

[ElkGroveDan]

But NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe has stuck by his guns that regardless of what the academy or the Aerospace Corp. says, no people will risk their lives to fix Hubble.

If O'Keefe had been directing "exploration" in the late 1400s, we would still be pondering a "safe" route back to the New World.

[PokeyJoe]

Hmmm.... maybe they should auction the HST to the private sector.

[KevinDavis]

Not a bad idea...

[OXENinFLA]

I never thought this idea of sending a robot into space to dock with and "fix" Hubble has ever been feasible. There's just to many unknown factors that could pop-up during the mission to fix it.

(Assuming they're going to have a live camera) "What do you mean that's a torx head? It's supposed to be an allen head screw."

---

And O'keefe is leaving NASA won't it be up to the new head of NASA to decide on Hubble?

[greasepaint]

Nasa astronauts,
they were standing in line to go on a
joyride, but now, when asked to perform their
prime function...
chickens

[Reactionary]

Someone should replace the people at NASA with robots.

[68 grunt]

Dang fine idea! Dang fine!

[nightdriver]

Who owns the Hubble?

[zeugma]

In his defense, the reason they see ISS missions as more "safe" than a mission to Hubble, is that if, after getting into space, they discover they've lost critical tiles, they can stay on the station rather than risk a return trip in the shuttle.

That said, I happen to know that just about any astronaut would have no qualms mounting up tomorrow and flying to the Hubble to execute the mission to repair it. The bureaucracy at NASA is incredibly risk averse to the point of lunacy (no pun intended), given their mission.

The Hubble telescope has done an incredible job over the years, and I fully support any effort to keep the scope online. I can certainly think of worse places for the government to spend my money.

Take a look at the picture above. (my apologies for the huge size of it...) Each individual point of light you see there is a galaxy. This picture was imaged by attempting to find the most "empty" portion of the sky they could find, and they pointed the Hubble there for a while to see what they could find. The result is the incredible image above. Kinda puts our place in the universe into perspective eh?

[KevinDavis]

When one sees that picture, there is no way in heck that we are the only living beings in this universe. To think otherwise is wrong..

[OXENinFLA]

LOL!

That's funny.

And I never knew Russia sent a probe to Venus.

What did the Ruskies conclude?

"Ve have a major announcement as result of our test results from the Venus probe: The surface of Venus is made of plastic."

[Starrgaizr]

[OXENinFLA]

That's an incredible shot. I've seen it before. Kinda makes ya feel small.

[ScottM1968]

I'm mixed on saving Hubble. The pictures have been great, but there will be other space and land-based telescopes to either compliment its capabilities or take its place.

The telescope is fragile and doomed to die in a couple years regardless.

My thing is that the space shuttle missions must already be safer than ever before by now (in favor of going). However, the missions are truly expensive to the extreme.

On the whole, I may lean against fixing it.