http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0401/16hubblesm4/



Although I can understand the motivation...

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-Jack Higgins
"Scientists discover huge nuclear fusion reaction in progress only 93 million miles from earth - visible to naked eye even during the day!"
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Treachery!

A few of us who have a blantantly obvious political interest in seeing Bush gone have been saying this for a week:

Because very little new money will be alotted, almost ALL other NASA projects will be frozen. If Bush wants to kill the space-agency and slow advances (much like with his decision on stem-cell research) then he's going about it the right way.

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Science--can't live without it, but it makes everything so much more boring.

While I still have mixed feelings about Bush's plan, I don't think you can lay all the blame of this at his feet.

The Columbia disaster, I'm sure, figured prominently in the making of this decision.

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"Ignorance has caused more calamity than malignity" H.G. Wells

"Getting lost is part of exploring." Uniqua in "Backyardigans-Heart of the Jungle"

"Trying to wrap my head around creationist astronomy is like trying to ride a unicycle around a Moebius strip: it’s off-balance, physically impossible, full of one-sided arguments, and in the end you don’t go anywhere." Phil Plait

Does this mean MESSENGER and JIMO might be canceled?

I hate to sound unpatriotic, and this is a long shot... but... what about petitioning NASA to scrap the Bush space plan? I think The Bad Astronomer summed it up pretty good on the front page of the site with "Also, with the amount being spent in Iraq, the timing seems odd to announce such an expensive endeavor" and "But going to the Moon will cost many tens or hundreds of billions of dollars. Where will it come from?"

I'm not saying it should be scrapped indefinitely, but long enough to sort out the nations other matters first. There has to be a way to make Bush and NASA see this is a bad idea at a bad time.

Keep the Hubble. The moon and Mars will still be there. We can wait, atleast I know I can.

Anywho, just my 2 cents worth.

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"On this ship you will refer to me as idiot not "you captian".....I mean....you know what I mean."

Be rather pointless to cancel MESSANGER at this point. The spacecraft has already been built.

There was much talk of this pending decision at the AAS meeting last week, with most people hoping that the preliminary indications they were receiving weren't true. But, alas it is. I am heartsick at this move and will forever link the name of George Bush to the death of one of the most productive telescopes ever produced. This shouldn't have to be a choice between Bush Rogers-style cowboy rides to Mars and trashing a telescope we've already spent a great deal of money on and gotten to to a productive state.

AS much as I want missions to Mars and the Moon, I also recognize the efficacy of NOT throwing babies out with the bathwater. At least the public should be made fully aware of the science sacrifice the community is being forced to make. And, when all is said and done and the war consumes more of our expenses, and Mars missions are cut, and JWST is scaled back or cancelled, the US and the world science community will have lost immeasurably, just so some frickin' cowboy could have his war AND his space wet dream...

Sorry... I'm just immeasurably sick over this, and not just because I wrote the book about HST. It's a huge loss...

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So what's the big deal? The mission wasn't planned to fly until 2006 and they said it could fail tomorrow. Would you rather see a moonbase and several telescopes on it's surface or even manufactured there and sent into libration orbits? If we can find a low cost launcher then the odds will be high that more science telescopes will end up in orbit even sooner. Let's examine our priorities here. Maybe some of you astronomers want a steady paycheck and this may ruin that. I sympathize. But I would rather postpone or cancel a mission with the hope of doing something even better a little later. The Deep Field, the new Ultra Deep Field, and the future Super Ultra-Mega Whammy Really, Really Deep Field will not help us get humans into space in a big way. Have patience. If you can wait 80 days to make an exposure, you can wait a few years to get a new camera.

I've written about the Starving Children excuse to avoid space exploration... I never thought I'd see it turn into a Starving Astronomer excuse.

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"Oh no no no I'm a rocket man Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone." -- Sir Elton John

J Pax

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'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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"Oh no no no I'm a rocket man Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone." -- Sir Elton John

J Pax

My understanding about this decision is that it has less to do with the new space exploration initiative, than with concerns about the safety of the Shuttle. The claim is that the Orbiter needs have the capability of docking with the ISS on all missions. Hubble maintenance missions would not allow the Orbiter to dock with the ISS if there was a problem.

With that being said, I consider Hubble to be the best thing that NASA has done in my lifetime. I remember the anticipation surrounding it when it was launched. The dissapointment when it didn't work right and the awe that the first clear pictures to come from it inspired.



Regardless of what you think about the plan, you have to realize that NASA cannot simply decide not to do what it is told. The President has the authority to charge NASA with a mission and NASA has to figure out how to implement it. The day after the announcement Sean O'Keefe held a NASA wide town-hall meeting to discuss the implications of the new plan. There were a few question along the lines of what happens if NASA decides to go in a different direction and the answer was an emphatic, we are going to carry out our orders.

Of course, that doesn't mean that you do not have options. If you feel strongly about this, by all means contact your Senator and Representative and let them know how you feel. The President proposes the budget, but Congress has to approve it. At the risk of creeping into politics I will add that there is nothing unpatriotic about offering up a disenting opinion-what is unpatriotic is someone suggesting that as a citizen you should not disagree with the current administration (whoever it is)

I beg your pardon. Who said I was lost? Not I.

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.

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The costs of these Hubble maintenance missions are pretty high, and I'm not sure how big the loss of Hubble really is given the current technology of Earth based telescopes. I may be wrong, but hasn't interferometry and adaptive optics allowed ground based telescopes to surpass Hubble in many ways? There are probably a few instruments (IR maybe?) that cannot be matched from the ground. Anyone know of any particular aspect of Hubble that cannot be replaced with modern technology of ground based telescopes?

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Do try not to take me too seriously.

No, I was paralleling your statement about science being lost. I pointed out that observations are not lost, they are merely postponed. The parallel is that a deep space discovery that Hubble might make is like the discovery you made when you found this board, having known the BA prior, as stated in your introductory post.

I was not singling you out. I was referring, in general, to many posters in this thread and other threads who have been venting frustration at the person of the president because his initiative has caused NASA to suggest a cutback in HST program. Per the article, it appears that NASA administration made the decision and that it was not a decree from the oval office. In other words I was trying to prevent a political discussion and avoid getting this thread locked and people banned. There is a long list of posters who are banned from this bulletin board for expressing their feelings improperly. I believe that our use of this forum is by the good graces of the BA and a privelage, not a right. I myself, have been reminded of this more than once. If I seemed to pick you out, it was not my intent.


I don't make the rules about staying away from political discussions. But I have been in threads that, while non-argumentative, were political in nature and were locked for that reason only. But to answer the basic points, yes pure science may have to take a back seat to pure exploration. One has immediate implications for humanity, the other does not. A massive space program may inspire the population to support space science. While the Hubble Deep Field is inspiring to astronomers and many laypeople, it is not particularly inspiring to most common people... and it is their money, after all. A massive boost in the space program could give dividends in jobs and spin-off technology which is directly applicable to the lives of those common people who have already paid for it.


Getting humanity into space will save everyone's rear, including politicians. Remember, the dinosaurs didn't have a space program. At least this politician is talking science and space. Consider the alternative. I, for one, have not seen anything leading to the assumption that the current administration does NOT have a plan in mind. I don't know what that plan may be and I accept the possibility that they may be full of hot air. Moreover, HST is not a working mission they would be sacrificing. It's a failing mission they could be salvaging. If HST were not expected to fail, it would not need servicing.

We need to take a step back. In military terms it's called regrouping or "soaking-off." In the past we sent men to the moon to plant a flag. This time we need to invade the moon. We need to occupy its landmass and exploit its resources. Maybe in the future they'll write a book called "The Rape of Luna" but it's what's got to be done. Then we need to invade Mars. I think that is bigger than HST and worth more than a few lost years of Hubble Imaging. In the distant future, when we are planning an invasion of a galaxy far, far away, the Hubble Deep Field may prove to be quaintly useful.

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"Oh no no no I'm a rocket man Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone." -- Sir Elton John

J Pax

::signs his name under JPax's::

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Wait a second... Wasn't NASA ALREADY planning to decommision the Hubble because of the new telescope being sent out? Isn't this old news?

Doesn't that also mean the fate of the Hubble was decided by NASA before Bush's Mars mission was even a thought since the development of this new telescope didn't just hit the drawing boards?

That was perfect.

Just an observation from Canada..

Really, what seems to be going on is Bush is attempting to engage in another whizzing contest which was cool back in the 60's space race but those were WAY different times. If we learned one thing from the space station, it's that multi-national collaborations seem to work rather well. Why can't a return to the Moon be the same? Bush seems to think otherwise. You can only wave your country's flag around so much before people turn their backs on you and do their own thing. I wouldn't be surprised if China eventually teams up with another couple countries, or Japan and the ESA, perhaps Russia as well. Who cares what nationality (or even gender) sets foot on the Moon again? Since when was science all about patriotism?

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No. A servicing mission from the shuttle was in the works, designed to keep Hubble working at least through 2010 and probably longer. Now that mission has been canceled, and with the state of the Hubble's gyros, it's anyone's guess as to how much longer it will last. Odds are very much against its being able to continue to do science until its successor goes up.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

I think people are reading waaaaaay too much politics into the decisions to end the missions of the HST and the Shuttle. Try to look at this from a more practical standpoint.

The Hubble was launched in 1990. It has been producing amazing images that have not only advanced our understanding of the Universe, but have also given people within and outside of the field of astronomy a newfound appreciation of the beauty of the Universe. As was mentioned earlier, the next Hubble service mission wasn't supposed to take place until 2006. If the Hubble lasts until then, this will mean that its mission will have lasted sixteen years. I would call that quite a success, and a job well done.

The Shuttle has always been a problem for NASA. While in many ways it is a great success story, the Shuttle (and its tempermental, fickle, and financially bottomless maintenance requirements) is the single largest expense that NASA has, drawing funds that might be used for actually advancing spaceflight into just keeping us in orbit. What if the money being burned year after year on the Shuttle could be put toward developing new heavy lift rockets, or research for better propulsion systems? I have read that a single launch of the Shuttle costs in the neighborhood of 500 million US dollars. How many better ways could anyone on this board, let alone the people at NASA, think of that this money could be spent? Combine this information with the safety record of the Shuttle and the years that it has spent out of commission due to catastrophic failure (and subsequent analysis and retrofitting), and cancelling the Shuttle is an idea whose time has come.

To sum up: The Hubble has served its purpose, and the Shuttle is a money pit and a dead end for spaceflight. It's time to change NASA's focus and move on to other things.

EDIT: Fixed the number of years the Hubble would be in use if it lasted until 2006. I never was good at math...

In many senses I agree with Weatherc's statements. But consider this: the party of fiscal responsibility wants to junk a functioning telescope, and a pair of instruments that were supposed to go into it in the next mission (and which are partially if not wholly built), all so we can try to build some unproven technologies to get people to the Moon. Shouldn't we be trying to save money elsewhere to pay for what will prove to be a HUGE money pit? Say, how about NOT spending it on a quagmire in Iraq? Oh, silly me... this is just like Viet Nam all over again... we had a war AND a trip to the Moon. Is this the limit of Bush's Vision Thang?

Let's examine this a bit more.

The HST was planned to be brought back (or deorbited) sometime after the next servicing mission. That would, theoretically, be when JWST is about ready to be put in orbit. Great. But, we have a small problem with shuttles, so now we can't service HST. The govmint wants to attach small rockets to it to boost it DOWN to earth, preferably into a convenient ocean. That's a bit ahead of schedule, and if we can't have shuttles, then that's the way it is. But why not boost it UP a bit further until we DO have a capability of getting folks up to refurbish it? I don't know the costs involved, but if we're going to put people back in space, we're going to have to have an Earth-to-LEO capability sooner rather than later.

Okay, but for the sake of argument, we' trash HST for political reasons (using the very real reason of safety as a guiding motive), and start working on getting folks to the Moon. Lots of pork barrel project contracts get let, which incidentally go mostly to Texas, Florida, and other Blue States. Three or four years go by, billions of dollars are spent on R&D, and we find out that we don't have enough folks rising through the ranks from the American public school system (mostly because "No Child Left Behind" initiatives have replaced math and science with religious indoctrination in the schools). We're in a world of hurt, the space program is getting broken faster than we can fix it, and why, well lookie here... remember back in the good ol' Dubya days? why yes, he let in all these immigrants. Some of them might be employable as engineers and what not. But, here's the bigger blow -- let's ship all them high-tech jobs over seas and let the lower-paid engineers in other countries do all the tech work for us. It works well -- they get good jobs, the companies get to rack up record profits (which they funnel into political contributions to keep the gravy train going), but a funny thing happens on the way to the Moon. Lots of money being spent on Earth, but we don't have a Moon base and Mars missions are still robotic.

Set against that scenario, I guess you're all right -- losing HST is a drop in the bucket. It's also a grim reminder that politics has no business defining science, but apparently business and politics trump science concerns.

I find this all so disheartening, even as I hope against hope that we really WILL get back to the Moon and Mars. As a long-ago member of the original Mars Underground, I used to think we'd be on the Moon by now and planning trips to Mars. Sadly, I think that by the time our children grow up, they won't have those two goals, or a chance to participate in such exciting ventures as HST or JWST.

On another topic, there IS certainly a challenge coming to the idea of space astronomy from the ground-based adaptive optics people, but even the highest, driest observatories with the most cutting-edge systems still have bad days far more often than an orbiting platform does. The systems are getting better all the time, and I fully expected that by the time HST was ready for its normal de-orbiting (rather than this politically-based manipulation of science for political gain), AO would have surpassed what it could do. It probably still will -- and the deorbit of HST will likely spur those efforts on. So, science won't totally lose -- but it's still a major disappointment to see a working observatory and the people who worked so hard on it be thrown around for one man's ambition to keep his throne.

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You know, this discussion really ought to be over in BABB, it just occurred to me that it's more appropriate there for the political content, although there's science mixed in. My main objections are to the politicization of science that appears to be SOP from D.C. and not necessarily to the idea of deorbiting HST -- it was going to happen sooner or later.

In an effort to get this back to astronomy though, I'd like to discuss more about what HST can still do in its time left on orbit.

Until the AO situation on the ground is improved to the point where it seriously challenges a 24-hour-a-day capability in space, there will be huge gaps left when HST goes out of commission, possibly as early as late next year (if what I heard about going to two-gyro mode comes true). I'm currently working on a project for an observatory that does do AO and it's pretty clear that the state of the art is "THIS" close to mounting that kind of challenge to HST. The limiting principles, even at the high, dry altitudes at which it works, are still humidity (i.e. atmospheric water vapor content) and plain ol' bad weather.

Last week at AAS we had a wonderful presentation of a deep field taken with the Gemini instruments, for example, and it was pretty clear to me that they are moving into HST's former territory. IN a few years they may well be where HST is today, if they get their added improvements. We also see similar efforts by ESO in Chile, and some of their work is stunning. So, in the natural order of things, HST will cede ground to AO systems. In the meantime, it will continue to probe as far as possible, as deep into time as possible, and also with high resolution. I expect to see further efforts at deepfield work, but I also think in the time that's left, we continuing monitoring planetary changes -- those long-term changes in atmosphere at Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, etc. that give us a much fuller picture of change over time.

Any other ideas?

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Political discussions have been deemed inappropriate anywhere on this board, even on the BABB. There are plenty of places on the internet where you can speculate about politics, I suggest you take this discussion to one of them.

I want to point out, again, that this decision was made by Sean O'Keefe not by the President, any claim to the contrary is purely speculation and I would ask you, even in a political discussion, to provide evidence.

i have to side with the folks wanting to can that 70's space-junk bus called hubble. it's been a black hole for big dollars ever since it's launch. sure, we get pretty pictures, and pretty pictures are the maven of the media. we also get some pretty limited science.

the shuttle is also a piece of 70's space junk, and it is killing way too many people. doesn't NASA have to answer to OSHA somewhere along the line? guess not.

it is clear that in order to truly establish a presence in space does not mean taking pictures, but building a sustainable infrastructure. after many years of relatively short missions (ok, some Mir and ISS missions were pretty long vis-a-vis folks on board), these were stepping stones to understanding what REALLY needed to be done to establish our presence off this pitiful little planet that's just about used up.

to think to the future often requires a dramatic churning. we see this in business all the time with mergers, reorganizations, layoffs, etc. these are "refittings" of the infrastructural cogs that make things change. the ONLY way to successfully change something is to decide that there is a problem, and get some other folks to agree. those other folks have to be the "right" folks - and be passionate about what they do. that's the role of pres. bush here. o'keefe is the agent of change. it makes zero sense to continue to throw good money to bad projects. that's not just business, it's life. i'll bet very few people on this board still use the same camera they bought in the 80's.

i would like to see ALL of NASA passionate about something, not just about their little project here or little project there. NASA right now is functioning like a radio shack electricity experiment kit... a bunch of pieces, minimal usefulness as a whole but work well in small bunches. and what do you get? a radio that can barely pick up AM

let's take a forward look here and fix the fundamentals. then, let's get back to the real passion of creating a permanent presence elsewhere in the universe.

It's tough to separate the politics out of the discussion when it comes to talking about which missions we fund and which we don't.

As for the uselessness of Hubble science -- it is doing science the same as any other observatory, and thus arguments that bash it for being only one kind of science could be applied to mars missions, ISS, etc.... the fragmentation of NASA was inevitable when it started to focus on many different missions. I suspect that, too, is inevitable in an organization that gets a mandate to do many things -- whether it is government or privately funded.

Now, I did ask about the "end times" astronomy Hubble can be doing while waiting for its gyros to fail.

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I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember when Prez. Kennedy made his dashing man on the moon speach. We were at the height of "The Cold War", we had our foot in the Viet Nam war, the foundations for the racial conflicts were cast and ready for use. Need I go on???

I will tell you that all of the problems being proffered as to why we shouldn't go now, were spoken then. Spoken more eloquently as people were better educated then. If we are going to worry about budget issues, let's cut the communistic handouts and other programs that are not described as duties of the government in the constitution.

Let's get back into space for real Mr. Bush!!!!

Let the flames begin!

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And yet, there they are over there in BABB, occurring whether one approves or not. Which is why I pointed this out.

I would point out that any claim that politics is NOT involved is also purely speculation...

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russ,

I'm not really going there, but I did stay up much of the night thinking through possible scenarios about why this mad dash to the Moon isn't going to work this time. If you like we can discuss them privately...

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Starry, starry night...

My site TheSpacewriter.com
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You know, if politics can be left out of the conversation there would be no reason to make it private. Spacewriter, political discussion is frowned upon here and saying it's occuring anyway is a lousy justification to violate the FAQ. The BA will address those examples you refer to.

It's a shame the Moon/Mars initiative can't be discussed on it's technical merits without people having to dip their pen into the political inkwell all the time.

Really now, "everybody else is doing it" never worked on my parents and it should not fly here.

I never claimed that politics was not involved, politics is pretty much always involved in government decisions to some extent. But to suggest that that the President was directly onvolved in the HST decision is speculation and so far there is no proof for your assertion.