I saw it on SpaceDaily .... here.

Hope is in the air.

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Barbara Mikulski, Senator from Maryland, really wants to save Hubble (I'm sure that having Goddard Space Flight Center and the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland helps too).

She issued this press release, which is encouraging.

Could the Russians do this with Soyuz? If it's technically feasible, I bet it would be much cheaper than refitting the shuttle.

No, Soyuz is not an option. First, you have to dock to the Hubble. The Shuttle relies on a large piece of equipment in the payload bay to hold the Hubble, and the robotic arm to grab and dock it. Soyuz would have no way to dock with Hubble. Once docked, the robotic arm is used extensively for moving crew and equipment (like large electronics boxes the size of telephone booths) to the appropriate location on Hubble. A spacewalking cosmonaut would have difficulty trying to move something like that to the work location and not bouncing it off the side of the telescope, to the detriment of both the telescope skin and the box in question.

Pardon my ignorance, but can you be more specific? Is there something that makes it practically impossible - like maybe the replacement batteries won't fit through the airlock or somesuch? I understand it would at the least require a lot of modifications and new techniques - but it seems like there could be ways to get around the problems you mentioned.

Haven't followed this thread a great deal but saw this news item on the BBC website

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3506016.stm

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Phil,

Back in the "bad old days" when SA was diagnosed on HST, I heard Mikulski say several times that the thing was a "techno-turkey" -- in fact that statement is enshrined in my first HST book and my thesis. However, she has come around admirably, and it was a pure delight to watch her defend HST as if it was her own turf (which it is, in a way). She's really remarkable.

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Hello!
Forgive my ignorance, may I ask a couple of questions?

First: The originally cited article states: My question is why is it more dangerous sending a shuttle to the HST, than to the ISS? I.E. what dangers would be present in an HST mission that wouldn't be present in an ISS flight?

Second - how, if one intends to save the Hubble - would one go about it? I see three options: 1) Send up shuttles to service the thing indefinitely; keeping it in orbit. 2) Go up, pack 'er up, and bring her back in the Shuttle. 3) Figure out some other way to soft-land the beast back on Earth.

My opinions: Option 1): If the thing has outlived its usefulness; sending up money to keep fixing it is a waste; kinda like those neverending trips to the garage to keep your $500 clunker on the road. 2) It might be possible to retrieve the thing; but can the shuttle bring it back? As I understand it; the HST is a bloody heavy piece of hardware - can the shuttle safely bring it back? 3)I have absolutely no clue how you'd soft-land a 12-ton tube.

Third - I understand the astronauts during the Columbia's last mission had no way of exiting the craft; since it was carrying that whatever-it-was (science module?) in the bay. The question is: There's nothing that makes a pilot - either of a dinky little C-172 like myself or a 747 - feel better than a good old-fashioned walkaround; where you can visually inspect your craft. Spacewalks are certainly possible; they've done plenty of 'em. (Including My Hero - Chris Hadfield - lives an hour from me!) Now; couldn't NASA set up future missions so that a)crew can exit the craft in orbit and b) conduct a bottom-to-top visual inspection of the machine?

I know - even if they were to spot something - like a huge chunk of tile missing - they'd be largely unable to fix it (unless someone came up with a repair kit), but had the Columbia people known; they could have done something, couldn't they?
Thanx!

The issue is not so much of danger as of a refuge. (There's evidence that an ISS mission is actually more dangerous than HST servicing due to the orbit required and the shuttle positioning needed to dock.) If something goes wrong on an ISS mission, there's the possibility of using the ISS to harbor the astronauts until a rescue can be mounted. That's not an option with HST.

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I've thought of this too- but no-one else has mentioned it...

It seems like a pretty good idea to use a net (or even just some type of cold-resistant strong plastic sheeting)... Anyone know what the problems with this are?

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Spaceflight now presented a NASA white paper on the subject: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n...hstwhitepaper/

I haven't looked, but I expect ToSeek or someone else has already posted this.

Anyway, it's not more dangerous to fly the shuttle to HST than ISS; if anything, it's less dangerous. However, ISS has better disaster recovery possibilities.

There's another possibility you haven't mentioned--launch some sort of maintenance platform into a nearby orbit--something that would allow HST to be serviced by a different (i.e., Russian) ship.
I believe that originally the HST was scheduled to be brought down periodically by shuttles and refurbished on the ground. This strategy appears to have been yet another victim of the Challenger disaster.
There's always a way of getting out--contingency spacewalks to close the cargo doors are always part of the manifest (ick. I'll add a caveat--i used to follow shuttle missions a lot more closely, and contingency spacewalks were always on the manifest. It's possible that things have changed, it just doesn't seem likely to me).

Visual inspections of the shuttle from in orbit are essentially not possible with the current setup. Keep in mind that the shuttle tiles are so fragile that workers are not allowed to wear jewelry in case it might scratch the tiles. What you want is a platform that the astronaut can board, equipped with lights and control jets, that will allow the astronaut to make an inch by inch inspection of the entire shuttle without touching (or having his reaction jets impinge upon) the tiles. Next best would be an unmanned camera platform to do the same. The worst would be to give the astronaut a flashlight, push him out the airlock, and let the shuttle maneuver around the astronaut.

This isn't a steel-clad spaceship of the 50's, where the astronauts can clunk around on the outside in their magnetic space shoes (unfortunate--I liked those. Maybe some of the metallic TPS systems they keep talking about would be robust enough to allow that).
The option would have been to go on short rations while the people on earth engage in a crash program to strip all the stuff out of the shuttle on the pad and launch it with minimum crew in order to attempt a rescue. The paper I referred to above doesn't think much of this idea.

Thanx for the info; Daver and ToSeek. I'm going to remain stubborn on my opinion - that a walkaround is always valuable; though given your info; how it would be accomplished is way over my head. The only reason I have for maintaining this is the old line 'if there is a will; there is a way'. If they want a walkaround bad enough; (i.e. if they found that it would be valuable) they'd find a way to do it. Ah, well.

They could have done it. The question is if it would have been worth it. The only way they could have done it with their setup would have been to kick the astronaut out and maneuver the shuttle around him. There are a few possibilities: the flyaround succeeds or fails (damaging the shuttle or the astronaut), the astronaut detects damage, the shuttle really had been damaged. To some extent, these are all independent (it is possible for the shuttle to be damaged and for the astronaut not to detect it, and it is possible for the astronaut to detect damage when the damage is only cosmetic).

I suppose we could analyze these one by one.

Case 0: The flyaround succeeds, the astronaut detects no damage, the shuttle indeed was not damaged. The best case: the shuttle picks up the astronaut and they proceed with the mission.

Case 1: The flyaround succeeds, the astronaut detects no damage, the shuttle however sustained damage. Bad--they proceed with the mission and die on reentry.

Case 2: The flyaround succeeds, the astronaut detects apparent damage, but the shuttle would have successfully reentered. Medium bad--they go on short rations while a rescue mission is mounted. If the rescue mission can be launched in time, they are rescued and abandon a useable shuttle. If the rescue mission could not be mounted in time, they reenter anyway and everyone is happy.

Case 3: The flyaround suceeds, the astronaut detects real damage. Somewhat worse than case 2: they go on short rations and await a rescue. If the rescue can be mounted, fine. If not, they reenter anyway and die.

Case 4-8: The flyaround fails, killing or injuring the astronaut or damaging the shuttle. If the astronaut is injured, they reenter immediately, regardless of the condition of the shuttle. Maybe they die on reentry. If the astronaut is uninjured but the shuttle is damaged, they go on short rations and wait for the rescue mission. If the rescue mission isn't ready in time, they reenter anyway.

As you can see, the payoff for implementing such a maneuver depends on the odds of successfully pulling off the walk around and the odds of successfully mounting a rescue mission. Keep in mind that the rescue mission has a high chance of suffering the same problem that crippled the original (unless they can get three or four Soyuz's launched from Kourou in time).

The rescue scenarios would benefit from having an autoland feature on the shuttle, so that once the crew has been rescued the stricken shuttle could be allowed to reenter unmanned. That way, if there turned out not to be a problem, they've managed to recover the shuttle. There's not likely to be much use in leaving the crippled shuttle in orbit--we don't have that much there yet that could use anything salvaged from it.

I may be wrong, but I thought there was already an autoland feature on the shuttle.

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Almost. To land, the shuttle needs two buttons pressed manually. One at the start of the reentry procedure to select the landing site, and one at the end to lower the landing gear. Everything else is automated.

The wrong stuff is tipping the scales at NASA

Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham comments on the Hubble decision:

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Possibly this is a stupid idea, but I'll propose it anyway. Could the shuttle be launched on automatic pilot (perhaps after a conversion) and placed near Hubble. Astronauts are launched on Soyuz craft, and then use the shuttle docking facilities to do the servicing. Astronauts return (relatively) safely by Soyuz, and the shuttle attempts to land itself.

Admittedly, you would risk losing a shuttle, but if they're too dangerous to carry people, they probably aren't a lot of use for much else.

I like it. A variation of this would be to launch Soyuz (unmanned) and park it a few miles from Hubble. It would serve as the "safe harbor" or as an emergency reentry vehicle. Astronauts (3) would launch on shuttle, do their thing on the Hubble, inspect tiles, and if ok return to earth in shuttle. If tile problems, scoot over to Soyuz in shuttle, suit up in their Russian spacesuits and board Soyuz and return to earth. Shuttle is returned on auto pilot.