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Upgrades Space Science

Instead of Revamping Hubble, Replace It 440

Posted by timothy from the oh-what-the-heck-it's-free-right dept.
Neil Halelamien writes "Astronomy Magazine reports that an international team of astronomers has proposed an alternative to sending a robotic or human repair mission to the ailing Hubble Space Telescope. Their proposal is to build a new Hubble Origins Probe, reusing the Hubble design but using lighter and more cost-effective technologies. The probe would include instruments currently waiting to be installed on Hubble, as well as a Japanese-built imager which 'will allow scientists to map the heavens more than 20 times faster than even a refurbished Hubble Space Telescope could.' It would take an estimated 65 months and under $1 billion to build, less than the estimated cost of a service mission."
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Instead of Revamping Hubble, Replace It More

Instead of Revamping Hubble, Replace It

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  • A newer scope would likely have better resolution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ABeowulfCluster ( 854634 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:46PM (#11585730)
    .. than the hubble. And scientists would get more bang for the buck to replace the hubble than to send up a robot which would have a likelihood of failure.

    • rho-bawt (Score:5, Funny)

      by mnemonic_ ( 164550 ) <jamecNO@SPAMumich.edu> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @07:00PM (#11585838) Homepage Journal
      How about we send a robotic telescope instead? One with arms so that it could fix the Hubble, look at the stars and then hurl large rocks at the teeming citizens below...

    • Why can't we sell it? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by JPriest ( 547211 )
      Why can't we sell it or donate it to another country as a gift if they are willing to take over upkeep?
      • You mean, "We'll give you this worthless piece of junk if you'll give us several million in upkeep costs"? Rather like a 419 scam [secretservice.gov].
      • Excellent idea.

        I wondered whether the Bush administration's willingness to junk Hubble was a symptom of the same American retreat from Science as th pressure to give "Scientific Cretionism" equal support and prestige in America's schools.

        That retreat from knowledge is a crying shame.

        I had a buddy who always referred to it as "Scientific Cretinism -- I'm sorry Creationism".

        • I wondered whether the Bush administration's willingness to junk Hubble was a symptom of the same American retreat from Science as th pressure to give "Scientific Cretionism" equal support and prestige in America's schools.

          In fact, this has happened to a very small extent, if at all, in terms of "Creationism" getting equal time in public school curricula.

          Which is encouraging, since evolution is the only theory of biological diversification over time that has significant scientific backing...

          Regarding

          • Re:America's retreat from knowledge? (Score:4, Informative)

            by mbrother ( 739193 ) <mbrother@uwyoWELTY.edu minus author> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @09:52PM (#11586816) Homepage
            Hubble has some advantages that Keck with AO can't touch. For instance, the AO systems work in the infrared, not the optical, and for sure not in the ultraviolet (which is blocked by the atmosphere). There are some other technical issues, too, to consider (e.g. the specific shape of the point spread functions). Hubble also has a huge advantage in background light, and in platform stability (Keck cannot point and stare so fixedly at one patch of sky for ten days straight like Hubble).

            I'm not sure this is worth the money versus building ten Kecks, or a couple of new super-duper ground-based telescopes (e.g., 30 meters), but it is important to consider what unique capabilites are being lost.
        • How can you say that the Bush administration is retreating from knowledge when he:

          a) DOUBLED the budget for the National Science Foundation. That's right. DOUBLED the federal outlay for basic research in all matters from health to basic physics.

          b) Has FULLY funded NASA's plan to send a manned mission to the Moon and ultimately to Mars.

          c) Is FULLY funding the Prometheus project and the Jupiter Icey Moons orbiter.

          Thanks to the Bush administration, we are well on our way towards establishing that a baseline for life once existed on Mars, are on our way towards looking for life on Mars, and are taking the first steps towards looking for proof of liquid water not only on Europa but also on Callisto and the other of Jupiter's icey moons.

          Just because some idiots in Kentucky vote for Bush doesn't mean that Bush thinks like them, any more than crystal touting LSD gobbling 60's flower relics made Clinton an LSD gobbling cook. Sometimes you just take the vote and move on.

          • Has FULLY funded NASA's plan to send a manned mission to the Moon and ultimately to Mars.

            Horsepucky. He's provided a new direction from the executive offices, giving nasa new direction. This really just involves shifting where the research and planning is headed to. The actual issue of funding an actual mission, he's pushing off on some future administration, nasa will not be ready to start spending that money before he leaves office.

            It's a slick political gimmick. Grab the vote of space visionar

          • Re:America's retreat from knowledge? (Score:5, Informative)

            by Seenhere ( 90736 ) on Sunday February 06, 2005 @03:34AM (#11588361) Homepage
            How can you say that the Bush administration is retreating from knowledge when he: a) DOUBLED the budget for the National Science Foundation.

            For one thing, the doubling was supposed to happen over 5 years. It certainly hasn't doubled yet, and in fact it certainly won't.

            Quite the contrary. The FY 2005 NSF budget for research and related activities is being cut by .7% from its FY 2004 level, the first such cut in many years. The other main part of the NSF budget, that devoted to education, is being cut even more. The "doubling" bill is now very much no longer operative.

            The rational conclusion is that Bush just isn't serious about this.

    • A new Hubble with a primary mirror 2.4 meters in diameter will have the exact same angular resolution as the old Hubble with a primary mirror 2.4 meters in diameter.
  • This plan seems like a really good idea. Why hasn't anyone else... never mind.

  • $1 Billion (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jace of Fuse! ( 72042 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:47PM (#11585743) Homepage
    It would take an estimated 65 months and under $1 billion to build

    Yes, and for a limited time this baby can be yours for ONLY $999,999,999.99!
    • Or call within the next 20 minutes and get it on FlexPay for three easy payments of $333,333,333.33! Please include $10,000,000 for shipping & handling.

    • Re:$1 Billion (Score:2, Interesting)

      by failedlogic ( 627314 )
      Maybe, if Amazon sells it, they will offer free shipping.

      What I think would be cool, if they decide to 'scrap' the Hubble (figuratively speaking) would be to sort of Open-Source it to the public.

      For example:
      Bandwidth considerations aside, perhaps a university could control the telescope and fullfill amateur and public requests for hi-res pictures of a specific point in the sky.

      It would be of better use then to either allow the scope to burn up re-entry or let it sit up there unused.
        • It would be of better use then to either allow the scope to burn up re-entry or let it sit up there unused.
        Good idea, but eventually it'll fail without a service mission. It's already to the point if more than one gyroscope fails it'll no longer be able to orient itself. It's be nice to allow it to be used like you suggest until the end however. :)
        • Right... but even if the gyroscope fails, make it rotate slowly or make it at a fixed orientation to Earth, rotating with it, and just observe whatever it points at. Still a lot to see. And even if all the optics fail, still controlling a satellite would be cool. i.e. make it run Linux :)

          IMHO dropping MIR was a crime. It should have been lifted to a higher orbit and left there for further generations, as a museum piece.
          Yes, space junk, but a mapped one, so no problem. And there's a LOT of space in space :)

  • Disposable Science! (Score:4, Funny)

    by bigattichouse ( 527527 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:47PM (#11585745) Homepage
    Hey, Why build something you can repair when you could just buy a 10 pack of disposables. Sure, it might be *less* wasteful to build a new one from scratch, but it just seems such a sign of the times. Maybe they could get Gillette to sponsor the project.

  • Hubble (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drivinghighway61 ( 812488 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:48PM (#11585747) Homepage
    Of course we all want a new telescope. However, the Hubble scope is already in orbit. If it is not repaired, it will stop working. There's no guarantee that this new scope would be built any time soon. So, while we all would like a faster, better telescope, perhaps we should focus on the fact that we already have Hubble up there.

    • Re:Hubble (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bburdette ( 556965 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @07:14PM (#11585921)
      Bah. The hubble had to be hacked in the first place because they made the lens wrong and no one noticed before launch. Because of the initial screwups, the hubble has never been able to achieve its full potential anyway. It'd be better to have one that was built right from the start. Anyway, by your reasoning no one would ever build a new house, we'd all still be living in caves. "We've got this cave now, there's no guarantee your hut will get built, let's concentrate on this cave we've got already."

  • A problem (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:48PM (#11585748) Homepage
    The $1 billion cost is not just parts, it's mostly the money to launch the shuttle, pay for mission support, etc.

    Even if they can build a replacement for less then $1B, it would still be about one billion more than repairing it.

    These guys might be good astronomers, but their math ain't that super.

    • Re:A problem (Score:3, Insightful)

      by aardvarkjoe ( 156801 )
      Would the launch costs neccesarily be as high as for repairing the current Hubble? It would seem to me that we are perfectly capable of sticking things in orbit (relatively) cheaply; it's going up there and fixing stuff after the fact that is really expensive.

    • $1 billion includes launch costs (Score:4, Informative)

      by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:57PM (#11585821) Journal
      Oh damn, I really should have reworded that. The $1 billion includes the costs of not only construction, but of the launch as well. From the release:

      Norman told the committee that it would take an estimated 65 months and $1 billion to launch HOP, which he stated would continue and even expand upon the flow of science and discovery that has made the original Hubble Space Telescope a "national treasure."
      • Another advantage of the Hubble Origins Probe is that it can be launched and deployed on a multistage rocket instead of the shuttle, creating additional cost-effectiveness and also putting to rest any fears for astronauts' lives.
    • they can launch the replacement up via anything they happen to get for cheapest - it doesn't need to be the shuttle.

    • Re:A problem (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ip_fired ( 730445 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:59PM (#11585832) Homepage
      But, if you build a new one instead of repairing the old telescope, you get:

      1) New technology, which will help you take more pictures faster and observe more.

      2) Ability to send the satellite back to earth after it's life has passed, reducing the amount of junk orbiting earth

      3) Don't have to pay for a shuttle mission ($500 million), it is planned to use a cheaper Atlas 521 rocket to send it into orbit

      4) Don't have to risk human life to fix the telescope

      The plan to fix the telescope estimated cost is 1.5 billion. With the new telescope designed and built for less than a billion, an Atlas 521 launch costs much less than half a billion to launch.

      This is cheaper, and will provide better science.
    • Yeah, they should take lessons from random people on Slashdot that don't have the cost details.

      Perhaps you could explain your rather curious logic. The article states that they estimate it would cost $1 billion to launch the new probe. The language of the sentence suggests that this is building costs plus launching costs. The estimated cost of repairing the Hubble is about $2 billion. Hence for $1 billion less, we get something that is better. It would, however, cost significant amounts of time. (I've no i

  • By the way... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:48PM (#11585754) Homepage
    Can we get this lens right the first time, too? :)

  • Why not both? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by krin ( 519611 )
    Build a replacement and fix Hubble either around the same time or in the near future and have two working space telescopes for scientists to use.
    Yes, I know.. money.
    • I'm not so sure. Some estimates have put the cost of a Hubble repair mission at $2 billion. Let's say you had $3 billion to spend: Would you want to build 1 new telescope and repair 1 old telescope, or would you use the same money to buy 3 new telescopes?

  • Redirect government funding to purchase sky-time (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) * on Saturday February 05, 2005 @07:03PM (#11585858) Homepage Journal
    The solution is synthesis of a sky-time market from scientist demand. Scientist demand should derive money provided by their funding source to purchase required sky-time. If there is sufficient market demand for Hubble sky-time it will be profitable to repair or replace based on rational market calculations by investors.

    The willingness of private investors to put up capital to service such markets shouldn't be underestimated. This is an exciting area of endeavour, just as is space transportation as witnessed by the recent investments in that field by adventurous angel investors.

    Indeed, historically there has been a pattern of private financing of cutting edge telescopes without even a promise of any return at all. We can expect the private sector to step up to the plate if the government will stop pretending it is the source of innovation in technology and instead the source of funding for public-domain scientific research.

    From a brief history of private endowment of telescopes [queensu.ca]:

    In this stage, which lasted (roughly speaking) from the late 1800's to the middle of the 1900's, rich benefactors donated the money to establish observatories although they themselves were not practising astronomers. I gave some examples and anecdotal histories in class. For instance:

    (i) James Lick made his fortune by funding "gold rush" hopefuls in San Francisco. He provided them a grubstake by buying up their land cheaply, and wound up owning most of what is now downtown San Francisco. He wanted to build an enormous pyramid in the city to commemorate himself, but was persuaded by the Regents of the University of California to build an observatory instead: Lick Observatory, just east of San Jose.

    (ii) A man named Yerkes made his fortune building street car systems, and donated the money for the Yerkes 40-inch refractor, still the largest such telescope in the world. It is at Williams Bay, north of Chicago, and is operated by the University of Chicago. Yerkes was apparently quite an unscrupulous businessmen, by all accounts, and was never favoured with the respect which he hoped his endowment might buy for him.

    (iii) David Dunlap made his fortune in Ontario silver mines, and was interested in astronomy. After his death, his widow donated a lot of money to the University of Toronto, who built the David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill. When it opened in 1935, it was the second-largest telescope in the world.

    (iv) The Carnegie Foundation, established by the Scotsman Andrew Carnegie, funds many philanthropic endeavours, including public libraries. It provided the money for the famous 200-inch telescope on Mount Palomar, which saw first light in 1950.

    Amazingly, the days of such generosity are not completely gone: the new Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea are being provided by a Mr. Keck, the head of Standard Oil (I believe). The total cost is in the region of 200 million dollars; the telescopes are operated by the University of California.

  • 65 months (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jxyama ( 821091 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @07:04PM (#11585862)
    needless to say, 65 months is 5 1/2 years. that's roughly two generations of graduate students who will not see any "live" data but instead, will work on "re-analysis" of data taken years ago. much less exciting...

    on the other hand, some of those students will get to work on building the new scope itself - which is an opportunity rarely available.

    interesting dilemma for the future graduate students.

  • Astronomers have been fond of calling the Hubble as "the space telescope"...which is a mistake if you think about it. The word "the" implies that there will be only one space telescope at the present time.

    If you think about it, it's always better to have a fleet of space telescopes, instead of just one.

    I guess we were mentally stuck at the concept of "reusable" space missions (e.g., space shuttle orbiters) and made it difficult to design a mission "on the cheap" with disposable parts. There, we aime
    • Two in Earth orbit to provide immediate redundancy and a longer baseline for simultaneous observations (triangulation), then put one in an orbit perpendicular (or nearly so) to the ecliptic (with a planetary slingshot, might even have to send it around Jupiter to get enough delta-vee). This will give #3 a much longer baseline, a unique viewpoint and clearer seeing (less solar system junk between it and targets).

      Make them a bit more redundant, too, multiple independently steered comms links, multiple cross-
      • There has been an interesting resistence among rocket scientists to re-use some old technology to base a mission. I guess it has to do with no R&D funding being available and it is no longer attractive to the research lab rats type. NASA has not been very kind to that type of mission, either.

        But in essence, we could build a mission based on scraps on the cheap side. Maybe the community will start thinking about the possibility.

        PS. Multi-levels of redundancies in satellites already exist. Yet space ins

  • A much cheaper approach . . . (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dausha ( 546002 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @07:11PM (#11585906) Homepage
    Would it not be much cheaper to make the images it sends back using Photo Shop? I mean, think of the savings!

  • Hubble has been great, but.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by adeyadey ( 678765 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @07:13PM (#11585918) Journal
    It is time to say goodbye. been saying this for a while now. THere was a good article on spacedaily a while back too:

    http://www.spacedaily.com/news/hubble-04p.html [spacedaily.com]

    in fact they suggested even building 2. If Hubble keeps going a while longer, (it could go 2010 with luck) we would then have 2 scopes going!

    Dont get me wrong, its been fantastic, but it is in essence 70's tech with upgrades bolted on. I think some of the bits are still original - they have been going a long long time, so when they blow thats it. There are a lot of things that can be done better too..

    Tech has moved on - time to stop putting money into Hubble, great tho the old horse has been..

  • $1 billion is cost of both building and launching (Score:5, Informative)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @07:16PM (#11585938) Journal
    I submitted the story, and because of some sloppy wording on my part a number of people now think that the $1 billion doesn't include the cost of launching the rocket. In actuality, it does include this cost already.

    From their poster [jhu.edu], here are the figures which go into the cost estimate (written as low/high estimate):

    Spacecraft: $135M/$165M
    Observatory ATLO: $80M/$100M
    Deorbit Module: $5M/$10M
    Optical Telescope Assembly: $150M/$210M
    SI Mods: $20M/$30M
    SI Integration: $5M/$10M
    FGS: $30M/$55M
    Fee: $64M/$87M
    Contingency: $128M/$174M
    Launch Vehicle: $130M/$150M

    Total: $747M/$991M

    Again, my apologies for wording my submission poorly.
  • But that would mean NASA having to admit they were wrong. Remember when they first made the shuttle, and it was supposed to be the end of all their problems, with missions going up every other week and making space travel being really cheap. I think for some reason that if they would have kept with the old apollo or saturn rockets, that they would have done much more important stuff in space instead of worrying about doing complete overhauls after every trip on something that is supposed to be "reusable".
  • Wasn't this the original plan before people let their knee-jerk reactions get the best of them? This plan is obviously better than the one the save Hubble. There is no question Hubble is begining to show its age. Why risk 1.5 billion on a "rescue" mission, when there is no guarantee that some other aging system won't malfunction in another 6 months anyway? Would we be willing to spend another 1.5 billion fixing that? No, the answer is clear: Build a new Space telescope using newer, cheaper, smaller, more p
    • Why risk 1.5 billion on a "rescue" mission, when there is no guarantee that some other aging system won't malfunction in another 6 months anyway?

      This is an interesting question. We know we can shoot up an atlas rocket with a new telescope. And it's pretty clear this is cheaper than using NASA and one of the three shuttles. But what i'm not clear on is whether it would be more cost effective to hitch a ride on the Russian Soyuz and make repairs.

    • Re:James Webb... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Shag ( 3737 ) *
      What about it? Look at the wavelengths observed by each of NASA's first generation of orbital "great observatories," and you'll realize that James Webb isn't comparable to Hubble at all - it's much more a successor to Spitzer [caltech.edu].

  • Why is this news item under IT? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SeaDour ( 704727 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @08:11PM (#11586281) Homepage
    Since when is a new Hubble telescope an IT-related topic? Am I alone in asking, "WTF??"

  • We'd still have to visit the Hubble (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jridley ( 9305 ) on Sunday February 06, 2005 @12:42AM (#11587781)
    The Hubble has no boosters, so there's no provision for controlled deorbit. It has only reaction wheels for orientation. If no visit is paid to at least strap on a de-orbit pack, the Hubble will reenter in an uncontrolled fashion.
    The US is a signatory on a treaty which prohibits us from allowing dangerous space junk from entering in an uncontrolled fashion over populated areas. Therefore we have to visit the Hubble at least to deorbit it.
    If we're going there anyway, why not put on the de-orbit pack AND new batteries, instruments, gyros, etc?

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