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If we can't stand the risk of getting to the Hubble, we're never going anywhere.

Sometimes you just have to stop throwing good money after bad.

If we don't start making real changes to the way we do things, we will never get anywhere in space. That doesn't mean there aren't great things like Hubble that will be left behind. It means that there are better things ahead if we can manage to switch paradigms and go for them.

hopespringseternal wrote: "Sometimes you just have to stop throwing good money after bad."

Amen. Hubble was a good telescope, but there is no satellite that is worth enough to send repeated shuttle missions to fix it. Especially when the shuttle is now counting up the final number of its future missions. Especially when the next fix-it mission was only to extend it BEYOND its original lifetime. Now they are just cutting it back to regular. How many would that be, the third or fourth fix-it-up mission to Hubble?

Its really a shame that Americans would settle for pretty pictures over real adventure, exploration, progress, and colonization.

Hubble represents the NASA liberals want. They don't want NASA to be something America can be proud of and use to show everybody else how great America is; they want to use NASA to show the world how "its a small world after all" and how we are exploiting the environment. Now, there's nothing wrong with these beliefs: they have their place and are perfectly legitimate, but people come to post on free republic because they believe in the opposite ideas: that the world and the cosmos are ours for the taking, and that a powerful America is the reality, and perhaps even a good reality.

Sometimes you just have to stop throwing good money after bad.

Sigh.

It's not that I'm so in love with the Hubble or the Shuttle. I am disheartened by the inability to assume a little risk. People are allowed to bungee-jump off a bridge, but astronauts who VOLUNTEER are not allowed to risk their lives. However, we can ORDER our soldiers to Iraq. (disclaimer: I am not opposed to the war in Iraq, just making an illustration!)

Bottom line: how can we reach for the stars when we have to put padding on the playgrounds?