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harbormasterextra
02-10-2004, 12:56 PM
Save The Hubble Space Telescope.

It would be a shame to lose this resource. They say they will put upi another but it would be a waste to abandon this one.

Go here to sign the petition to keep it.

http://www.savethehubble.org/petition.jsp

Marlin275
02-10-2004, 03:03 PM
My Dad said Hubble took some of the best photographs he had ever seen in his lifetime.
Keep it up!
Hubble !

Fish boy
02-10-2004, 04:38 PM
Done. Hope it helps.

Fish

Ed Donnelly
02-10-2004, 05:36 PM
I signed too,but I had to put Ohio. If you leave State blank, it won't accept it...Ed

gcarter
02-10-2004, 07:02 PM
Doesn't this have to do with NASA having to shed projects because of their smaller fleet? I remember in the early 70's when I was still working at JSC, my group had been instrumental for much of the hardware for Sky Lab, and we got to watch it burn up because there was no shuttle yet to service it.
Now we may get to watch Hubble burn up because of the lack of vehicles.
Go figure!

George Carter

mphatc
02-10-2004, 07:50 PM
I worked for 10 years developing technoloy for the NICMOS which is onboard Hubble . . It needs to stay . .

Unfortunately NASA has it's head up its butt and can't see the light . . .

manage the operation safely and the shuttles could fly . . someone just needs to make the hard decisions!

MPHATC

pmreed
02-10-2004, 08:28 PM
I watched the news conference when NASA Administrator, Sean O'Keefe, announced the decision to cancel the Hubble resupply mission :frown: . Naturally he was asked several questions about it, and he basically gave the same answer each time.

1. They plan on inspecting critical areas of the Shuttle, in space, after each launch. This can most efficiently be done by the Space Station remote manipulator and in a fly-by.
2. If a problem were to be uncovered, that couldn't be repaired, the space station could serve as a lifeboat.
3. When the shuttle enters orbit for a Hubble servicing mission, it doesn't have the fuel available to then change it's orbit and rendezvous with the space station in an emergency.

As a result of these considerations, NASA administration decided that maintaining Hubble didn't justify the admittedly small, but real, risk to the shuttle crew.

As an amateur astronomer, I'm more devastated than most over this decision. though I understand why they made it. I certainly support the mission, but I don't think we stand much of a chance to change their minds.

Phil

ToonaFish
02-10-2004, 09:01 PM
Petition signed.

Apparently, it takes quite a few rocket scientists to comprise a Donzi.net!

Bunches,

Celene 'decidedly unscientific'

mikev
02-14-2004, 12:21 PM
As an amateur astronomer I hate to see it go but they are already working on a replacemant for it here is a link with more info. next generation space telescope (http://ngst.nasa.gov/)

Marlin275
02-20-2004, 10:22 AM
Scot, here is some hope?

SCIENCE JOURNAL
By SHARON BEGLEY

Crews May Be Able to Rescue
Hubble With Little Safety Risk

When NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe announced that the space shuttle would make no more flights to the Hubble Space Telescope, he condemned Hubble to a lingering death from loss of battery power and failing gyroscopes, probably by 2007.

Because Mr. O'Keefe said his decision was based on safety, stunned Hubble fans were left in a bind. It's tough to argue that solving even the most profound mysteries of the cosmos is worth the lives of a shuttle crew.

The cost, however, may not be that high. Engineers inside and outside NASA, including former astronauts, have lit into the claim that Hubble-bound flights are riskier than those to the International Space Station, the only destination Mr. O'Keefe wants on the shuttle's itinerary.

His reasoning: Only the station can provide a "safe haven" where a shuttle crew could await rescue or repair potentially lethal damage incurred during launch, as happened to Columbia a year ago when foam tore into its skin.

That argument isn't washing in the tightknit community of former astronauts. "Give me a break," says one who is now in academia. "You're not going to launch the shuttle again unless you think you've fixed the problem that took out Columbia, so that one [requiring safe haven] won't happen again. What will get you next time is a problem that keeps you from reaching ISS at all. That makes a mission to Hubble no riskier than one to the ISS."

It might even be safer. NASA's own analyses show that a greater risk comes from impacts by micrometeor or orbital debris. The station's orbit is riskier on this score. Using NASA data, aeronautical engineer Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, calculates that on the last shuttle flight to the station the probability of a fatal collision with a micrometeor or space junk was 1 in 250; on the last mission to Hubble, it was 1 in 414.

Hubble-bound missions are also safer as measured by the risk of engine failure during launch. Hubble missions usually carry a lighter payload than most station missions. They, therefore, need less thrust to get anyplace, which affects their abort capability.

For a station-bound mission to execute an abort-to-orbit, in which the shuttle parks in orbit while a safe landing plan is worked out, all three main engines must fire for 282 seconds, calculates Dr. Zubrin. But for a Hubble mission to abort to orbit, the engines have to fire for only 188 seconds. That's 94 more seconds of safety.

Hubble missions look even better if your goal is a return-to-launch-site abort. Whatever its destination, the shuttle's main engines must fire for no more than 232 seconds if it is to glide back to Cape Canaveral. If its engines failed between 232 and 282 seconds, a station-bound flight could not execute either kind of abort (to orbit or to Florida), calculates Dr. Zubrin. That's a potentially deadly 50-second window. But Hubble missions have the window from 188 to 232 seconds in which either abort can be performed.

"Safety is a red herring for politics and money," says the ex-astronaut. "Engineers within NASA have let the agency down by not coming forward to point out the flaws in this decision."

Then there is risk of the Chicken Little variety. A shuttle mission to Hubble can attach booster rockets to allow a controlled descent at the end of its lifetime, or a nudge to a higher orbit where it could stay for decades. Without a shuttle visit, there are two possibilities. By 2013 Hubble could de-orbit willy-nilly, while earthlings pray they're not standing under 12 tons of plummeting glass and metal. Or -- the current plan -- NASA could dispatch a robotic mission to attach a propulsion system to permit a controlled descent into the sea.

"If we don't attach a booster during a shuttle mission, we'll have to do it robotically, and we don't know how," especially if Hubble's gyros have failed and it is spinning wildly, says another former astronaut turned academic.

Adds Steven Beckwith, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute: "It would be an incredibly expensive mission -- $500 million -- that does nothing but send Hubble into the ocean. Assuming it works."

One whispering campaign alleges that new ground-based telescopes can make equally impressive discoveries and that Hubble's best years are behind it.

But the new telescopes will not observe in the many wavelengths (especially ultraviolet) that Hubble does, and so will lack its breadth. It's hard to top Hubble's record of discovery, from helping to find a mysterious "dark energy" speeding up the universe's expansion to spying the raw materials for planets around stars. And with the spectrograph and camera the shuttle was supposed to deliver in mid-2006, "Hubble's best years were going to be ahead of it," says Dr. Beckwith.

There's one more oddity about Mr. O'Keefe's safety calculus. "If we're afraid to fly to Hubble, what does that say about missions to the moon and Mars that President Bush has called for?" asks Rep. Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado.

If we aren't going to be serious about those destinations, the rationale for shuttle flights to the space station -- learning how long-duration spaceflight affects human physiology -- is pointless.
•*You can e-mail me at sciencejournal@wsj.com.
*

Updated February 20, 2004
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107722482071334296,00.html?mod=todays%5Fus%5F marketplace%5Fhs