Scathing report on NBC news today about NASA

[askold]

Said that Hubble is being scrapped because NASA won’t take the risk to fly to it – even though Hubble is doing real good science. The astronauts said they would do the mission in a heartbeat. <br /><br />Instead, NASA’s saving the shuttle to service the space station – which has no serious mission and is only doing long-duration space flight studies: the ISS crew members are taking each other’s blood samples.<br /><br />That’s what NBC said.

 

[Leovinus]

I have to agree. NASA says it can risk sending people to Mars but it can't risk flying to Hubble. Go figure. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[wvbraun]

NBC is wrong. The Hubble mission would be extremely expensive ($1-2 billion, Hubble's planned successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, will be less expensive to build and launch) and would only extend Hubble's mission for two or three years. <br /><br />The ISS has no real mission (at least no mission that would justify the enormous costs), yes, but it has to be finished because the US has an obligation to its inernational partners to do so.<br /><br />Things are a bit more complicated than NBC would have you believe.

 

[shuttle_rtf]

If anyone seems an on-line version of this, I'd be greatful. Thanks.

 

[askold]

It's on tonight's news page - video #4.<br /><br />http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/

 

[crix]

wvbraun is right. there are bigger and better things to come than Hubble.

 

[pocket_rocket]

Actually, there is some pretty important science going on at ISS also. If we are to ever get to Mars the information from ISS is neccesary to accomplish that. Going to Mars will require a pretty lengthy exposure to space conditions. The ISS is pretty important for learning how to protect astronauts from radiation and other medical problems inherrent to space travel and colonization.

 

[grooble]

What did they learn on MIR then? If there is radiation in space, why arn't the guys on the ISS already contaminated?

 

[no_way]

" The ISS is pretty important for learning how to protect astronauts from radiation and other medical problems inherrent to space travel and colonization"<br /><br />The glitch is, that radiation conditions on ISS are nothing like in interplanetary space, coz its inside the van Allen belts, and far from being similar to martian or lunar conditions.<br />Working and living on ISS will teach you only that : to work and live on ISS ( and to some extent, LEO in general ) but not much else.

 

[yurkin]

Askold<br />I thought that piece was terribly one sided.<br /><br />There is a lot riding on each STS mission. What’s the probability of a lost orbiter, 0.5% maybe? If there is another loss, the rest of the fleet will be grounded permanently and won’t be used to finish ISS. That means that the money already spent on ISS is lost, or the remainder of the station will be radically re-engineered to be launched on EELVs and other LVs. Take the probability of a catastrophic failure and multiply it by the cost of having to redo ISS and you see the financial risk on each mission. This is why the shuttle will only be going to the ISS until it’s finished. It’s not just economics but not being able to finish the ISS would be a disaster for the space program.<br /><br />It makes sense but I still disagree. There should be one more Hubble mission, performed by the Shuttle. Sometimes you just have to take a chance. Another Hubble mission would really inspire people. But it doesn’t look like this is going to happen.<br />

 

[askold]

I'm not as knowledgable about space missions as most posters here seem to be, but here's my two cents anyway:<br /><br />I'm old enough to remember the early days of the space program (and the original Star Trek!) when people boldly went where no man had gone before. Now, it seems that things have flipped 180 degrees - a shuttle flight needs to be as safe as a flight on a 747.<br /><br />That sort of caution seems to be holding the space program back.<br /><br />I know, I know - it's easy for me to say: I'm not the one sitting on top of several million pounds of rocket fuel. But, advances are not going to happen without taking risks.

 

[kdavis007]

I would rather have NASA send people to Mars than fix the Hubble space telescope..

 

[nacnud]

I wouldn't. I would perfer to see a roughly even split of the money between manned and unmanned programs, I wouldn't want to see any one program get to much of a share. If you can get to Mars on that budget great, if not keep invensting in the technology untill we can.

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">That sort of caution seems to be holding the space program back.</font>/i><br /><br />Another <b><i>speculative</i></b> reason for caution (originally proposed by someone else) is that if a shuttle is lost while servicing the Hubble, NASA would probably shutdown shuttle operations. This in turn would probably shutdown ISS - a near $100-billion effort. This in turn may put NASA itself at risk (after all, the shuttle and ISS has been NASA's manned-space focus for three decades).<br /><br />So the caution may be for more than just the lives of the astronauts but for lives of the ISS and NASA.</i>

 

[the_ten]

I thought the occupants on the ISS were too busy fixing all the leaks and broken equipment to have any time to conduct any real science.

 

[najab]

Only on MSNBC's version of the Station...

 

[alokmohan]

Yes that will usher in a new age.

 

[CalliArcale]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>There should be one more Hubble mission, performed by the Shuttle. Sometimes you just have to take a chance. Another Hubble mission would really inspire people. But it doesn’t look like this is going to happen. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />I believe there should be one more Hubble mission. I think it will be pretty much a wash as to whether a robotic or manned mission to attach a deorbit module will be cheaper (sure, the actual MISSION will be cheaper if it's robotic, but designing the thing in the limited timeframe will be very expensive), and so I personally think they ought to roll in both the attachment of the propulsion module and the last servicing mission and do it all in one go. After all, there's no reason they can't attach a deorbit module and then wait three or four years to actually use it. Most (if not all) of the parts for the Hubble servicing mission are already completed. Without a need for automated rendezvous, capture, and mating, the deorbit module will be relatively simple and composed entirely of common, commercially-available technologies. If they choose to use solids or hypergolics, it can sit up there for years before they ditch. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[mrmorris]

<font color="yellow">"I personally think they ought to roll in both the attachment of the propulsion module and the last servicing mission and do it all in one go."</font><br /><br />S_G has already said that the shuttle does not have enough dv to take the DO module on a serviceing mission. The robotic DO mission is a requirement, not an option.

 

[CalliArcale]

Drat. I suppose that means the DO module weighs a lot, then. Enough that it would push out the gyro, which is pretty massive too.<br /><br />And no, the robotic DO mission is NOT a requirement, except in the purely political sense, and those requirements change frequently. This one is not a done deal yet, and the deorbit module's requirements are not set in stone. There are those who would want you to believe it is the only conceiveable way of doing it, but frankly, I'm very skeptical of it. We're talking new technology here. I'm a fan of developing new tech, but the fact that Hubble is in LEO with slowly degrading gyros gives us a serious deadline. If that deadline is passed, they'll have to go with the option of crossing their fingers and hoping it doesn't hit anything important.... <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[nacnud]

sorta sounds like skylab....

 

[adzel_3000]

"...there are bigger and better things to come than Hubble."<br /><br />Wasn't that the general philosophy that led to the dismantling of Apollo-era hardware?? <br /><br />IMO (only): JWST will be a fabulous observatory. However, if Hubble is delivering solid science, and is available, and can be maintained, then that system has a higher "value" than a system that is in the early development phases.<br /><br />---A3K

 

[wvbraun]

The Hubble servicing mission would be way too expensive. Why spend $1-2 billion on it when there is a new telescope already being build and the money is needed elsewhere (CEV development)? It's just not rational.

 

[wvbraun]

BTW: I would support a servicing mission if congress would add the required money to NASA's budget. But of course that won't happen. Instead something else will have to be cut.

 

[radarredux]

To put a positive spin on things...<br /><br /> /> <i><font color="yellow">I thought the occupants on the ISS were too busy fixing all the leaks and broken equipment to have any time to conduct any real science.</font>/i><br /><br />Think how much they are learning about how not to do things. Can you imagine if the ISS oxygen generators were onboard a mission to Mars? You can't exactly rush a new set of canisters to the mission when it left four months earlier.<br /><br />So the ISS is helping to get the kinks out of oxygen generators, space suits, gyros, and all those other things that have had problem over the last few years. I just hope all the lessons learned are still remembered when we launch on long-duration remote missions.<br /><br /><img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /></i>