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Originally Posted by Jpax2003
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Originally Posted by Spacewriter
If all you see is starving astronomers begging for a chance to get work, then I can't help you. The science that will be lost is tremendous...
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How do you know it will be lost? It will just be postponed. Maybe a supernova will occur that Hubble might otherwise have imaged. That would be a great loss. But that is not predictable. Andromeda Galaxy will still be there when we get the new Telescope up and running. If it's not then we have bigger things to worry about.
Spacewriter, you just joined this board. Do you consider that time spent wondering aimlessly around the net lost? Or did you find something productive to do in the meantime? |
I beg your pardon. Who said I was lost? Not I.
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I'm glad you're here now and I hope you are too. Decommisioning the HST is a temporary setback to be sure. I'd love to be able to have my cake and eat it too. Let them [astronomers] eat cake, I say.
Sometimes we have to take a step backwards in order to take a step forwards. What if a low cost launcher could send two or more smaller disposable non-servicable telescopes into Libration orbits for VLBI imaging by 2008. Would that make up for the retirement of Hubble? Let's think of new ideas. Think of the new plan as a challenge, not an obstacle. Necessity is the mother of invention. Let's see some inventiveness, and not invectives.
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Excuse me. I do have a right to my feelings on this matter and don't care to be upbraided for expressing them. To be sure, I toned down my rhetoric considerably in my posting -- what I said verbally when I heard the news was NOT postable here. I speak as a long-time supporter of both manned and robotic exploration, so do not presume that I am FOR one and against the other.
AS it happens, I think that future telescope developments will be needed. I am solely questioning the timing and political maneuvering behind this particular move. At any other time, we'd be treated to a sober discussion of fiscal responsibility and prudence in spending our space money, but that is not the case this time. We're instead being told to choose between questionable missions for which technologies aren't in place and may never be and told at the same time we'll be sacrificing a working observatory to get these things we don't have and haven't got designed yet. And on top of that we're paying for a questionable war. The tail is wagging the dog here, and aside from the very valid issue of safety (which the NASA people are right to be concerned about) the science justification for these new missions is taking a secondary seat to saving Bush's *** as he contemplates cutting his losses (politically and financially) in Iraq.
I am no simple school child contemplating a lost toy, but am quite capable of seeing the big picture. Big steps require big ideas -- but any sensible person will NOT take a big step without considering what's already available and on the table to be used. And I'm not used to squandering working missions in order to salvage a politician's arse. I never will be and I don't have to like it.