Space Watch: Backing a bad Hubble decision

[shireen]

Space Watch: Backing a bad Hubble decision
By Robert Zimmerman
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

Washington, DC, Mar. 3 (UPI) -- NASA officials have claimed they performed a risk analysis before deciding to cancel the last space-shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, but no such analysis was ever done.

Worse, sources told UPI's Space Watch that NASA also has ignored at least one proposal to reduce the risk of sending a shuttle crew to Hubble -- in order to justify its decision.

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050302-022955-3637r.htm

[AndyTiedye]

1. He's Acting On **'s Orders, ** Is Doing It for the Fundies

The Hubble shows us stuff that shouldn't exist
according to the Fundamentalist view of history.

[Bill McBlueState]

9. heh

Guess the fundies aren't smart enough to go after the observatories that have shown us *material evidence* of the Big Bang. I won't say what those are, in case any of them are reading.

:tinfoilhat:

:P

[Wilms]

2. O'Keefe slips out the back door.

This administration is a slum-lord.

[Johonny]

3. Not "true"

An analysis was done. However, NASA did decided before the analysis how they wanted to do a mission to Hubble. But an Analysis was done.

[shireen]

4. where?

is there something written somewhere about this analysis? I'd like to read about it.
thanks!
:)

[Johonny]

5. Quick search of web.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6776

[pmbryant]

6. That's from way after NASA made the decision

And that wasn't even performed by NASA, but by the National Research Council. And it's conclusion supported sending a repair mission to Hubble.

I don't see how that refutes the original story posted in this thread.

--Peter

[Johonny]

7. Didn;t say it did

I just said Analysis were done. NASA decided what mission it would like to do and then did a risk analysis. Several angencies did (not just NRC) seperate anaylsis and they came out against NASA's favorite plan. It's common to come up with an idea and then research if it's the best plan. The headline of the article is misleading.

[Orsino]

8. We don't need huge telescopes...

...capable of looking 15 billion years back in time because the Universe is only 5,000 years old. Those tax dollars could be better spent in carving reproductions of the Ten Commandments.

[rfkrfk]

10. the astronaut corp, is the problem

They don't want to spend money on anything
other than the International Space Station circus.
On the other hand, you might learn something when
spiders are put into orbit for the 247th time.

[VelvetMonkeyWrench]

11. I don't know about that risk analysis, but back in 1980...

...Rockwell's (prime shuttle contractor at the time) internal engineering SWAG's on the probability of total loss of vehicle and crew were running about 100:1 for any given launch. We had 2 "totals" so far, so I guess even the Rockwell engineers were being somewhat optimistic.

As much as people like to talk about it that way, the shuttle isn't a truck. Its a damn complicated system that operates at the ragged edges and its always under constant change for each launch. There's never a truly stable hardware platform you can certify against. Everything is a moving target, the hardware, the software, the materiels, electronics, etc.

There's more of a "comfort level" now than there was back in 1980, but IMO that has turned out to be a liability rather than an asset.

I'd reserve shuttle launches for stuff that a robotic flight simply can't accomplish, and only then when its a mission that's absolutely critical.

Keeping an aging telescope aloft doesn't seem worth the risk to vehicle and crew to me. I'd rather spend that "launch risk" on launching a next generation telescope that will last a lot longer and have much greater capability than a bandaided Hubble.

At well over a billion bucks a throw, it hurts a lot when we lose one of these birds.