Save the Hubble!
Well, the hubble might just get saved after all.
Apparently, since the Columbia disaster, the Hubble's repair mission using a space shuttle was cut and put back a couple of times. If I recall correctly, one of those times, the hubble was written off by the congress to make way for Bush's Grand Debacle of putting men on Mars. Don't get me wrong, it would be cool to put men on mars... but that's just it -- that IS the reason why W. wants to put men on mars: because it's cool and he want's so badly to have a legacy like Kennedy's "man on the moon." We aren't up against some cold war space race and it isn't like we can't send robots to do science for us on mars (the rover is still at it).
But I believe that if we, as a nation, are serious about the future of human spaceflight and exploration, we need to develop it organically by finding real economic motivators in the private sector such as the start of space tourism.
In my mind, it is ridiculous to spend billions of dollars to send people there just so we can pad the pockets of more aerospace contractors (admittedly, we would gain some new technologies as a byproduct, i.e. Tang) and to give little kids warm fuzzies to get them to do their math homework. And it is especially ridiculous when the entire science community was screaming bloody murder when congress couldn't spare a measly 1 billion to fix the hubble (and I believe that half of that would pay for just the shuttle trip itself).
So I was extremely elated to hear today that the political winds changed direction and blew the right way again. The hubble is delivering Real science... not just pretty pictures. It is peering back into time and space and quite literally unlocking the secrets of the universe. Two factoids from the website:
- Astronomers have published more than 6,300 scientific papers on Hubble results.
- In Hubble's 16-year lifetime, about 4,000 astronomers from all over the world have used the telescope to probe the universe.
Now, if the fixup is successful, it might remain in service until it's next-generation replacement comes online in 2013 where it will be able to look back further into the beginning of the universe and of time itself.
posted by BU @ 8:41 PM
0 comments
