Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Can the Hubble Be Saved?

Originally posted by mactastic
Too bad they can't bring it back down to earth. It would be a great addition to the Smithsonian.
Click to expand...

It does seem that after a lot of criticism NASA is reconsidering its decision to end support for Hubble. Before they make that decision, first they need to come up with a fix for the Shuttle fleet.

That would be a nice idea mactastic, but under current technology the Hubble will be destroyed when it enters Earth's atmosphere.
 
It's not necessarely a bad thing. Has'nt Hubble already worked for longer than it's original planned lifespan? (Can't remember what the original planned lifespan was) I think the actual deadline for the hubble project is 2010. With a little bit of luck, It might be able to function until then without further servicing missions. This money could go to other worthwile projects, like the next gen very large space telescopes. Sure it's sad but it's progress.
 
Originally posted by mactastic
Too bad they can't bring it back down to earth. It would be a great addition to the Smithsonian.
Click to expand...

What's to stop the Smithsonian from opening up the first Museum in Space? Give them a couple decades or more and they could go and collect all sorts of space junk and put it in a higher orbit and have people come see the history of humans in space.

Not only would it clean up the skies, it keeps a part of history from burning up.

D
 
They should save it. It's worth the time and money more than this Moon/Mars tripe is. It's idiocy to let the thing falter when we have no replacement planned and it's doing excellent science all the time. Replacing a couple of gyros on the Hubble should be the Space Shuttle's first business come next fall.

(Note: The James Webb telescope will only study the infra-red and near infra-red wavelengths, not the visible ones like the Hubble)
 
Well, really I was thinking that it's too bad it's not possible, for so many reasons, to bring it back down the way it went up - in the cargo bay of a space shuttle. Some day we will probably regret littering near-earth orbital paths. Plus I remember seeing pictures that my friend's dad took while he was part of the team assembling the Hubble back when I was a kid. Pretty neat stuff.
 
This is Nasa's philosophy use it and throw it away after all the american taxpayer is a endless supply of more money. this is the presidents mantra. anyways what if the new telescope has problems? what if a rock hits it? I think a better idea would be to boost its orbit and use it as a back up or let some colleges continue to use it. but to just walk away from it when they dont even have another machine up and working is Nasa being stupid again. Just as they were stupid for ignoring large chunks of Foam and ice hitting the shuttle. who the hell is running that agency? BOZO the clown? and while im on a rant what are they doing about incoming asteroids,comets and meteor's? didnt Jupiter just get slammed. instead of chasing rocks on mars and the moon a better idea would be to put in place a program to detect and divert the next incoming. If we saw something coming our way there is nothing that we could do at this moment. Bozo the clown is doing a fine job.
 
Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
and while im on a rant what are they doing about incoming asteroids,comets and meteor's? didnt Jupiter just get slammed. instead of chasing rocks on mars and the moon a better idea would be to put in place a program to detect and divert the next incoming. If we saw something coming our way there is nothing that we could do at this moment. Bozo the clown is doing a fine job.
Click to expand...

Truth is, we're very unlikely to notice any asteroid smaller than 6 miles across until it's just about to hit us. There could be dozens that pass between us and the moon every month. Unless you're looking right where they are, you're not going to see them. Even if we did find one, we have no ability whatsoever to change their course or destroy them...
 
This is why we should be looking at finding and chasing rocks in space rather then rocks on the moon and mars. all it will take is one good size rock. we are spending billions in Iraq, billions in space yet we pretend there is no threat. we will get hit again its just a matter of time. a Earth protection program to me would be a better investment then sending someone to mars only to come back with a bag full of rocks and a report that they didnt find no life.
 
the doomsday asteroid/comet is an issue - and there are many theories on how to prevent it - but its one of those things that until we need it, there won't be any funding for it.

And when we realize we need it, it will most likely be too late. We just have to hope that the time scales here that we're dealing with will make the 'big event' happen a few millennia from now when we'll be able to more adequately deal with it.

D
 
If you want to worry about something closer to home, consider that Yellowstone park is built upon a 120 mile wide volcano (caldera) that explodes roughly every 600,000 years and would immediately wipe out everything within 1000 miles of it as well as cause climactic shifts across the entire earth for years. The last eruption was roughly 650,000 years ago.

Boom, boom, boom...
 
once we need it it will be to late, a ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure? i would say that nasa should start working on a real machine and then practice pushing some rocks into the sun. get a good working machine. right now the human race has two big threats. ourselves destroying each other and a big fat rock with the planet Earths name on it.
 
Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
i would say that nas should start working on a real machine and then practice pushing some rocks into the sun. get a good working machine. right now
Click to expand...

How would you literally move a mountain? A modified RAM truck? Do you think 1000 Saturn V rockets strapped together would even budge a 6 mile wide chunk of rock?

You have an infinitely larger chance of getting shot by a stray bullet, hit by lightening, run over by a truck and gored by a bull (probably at the same time) then you would being killed by an asteroid hit. If you're seriously worrying about this, you should visit a therapist for anxiety problems. Besides, if we get wiped out, maybe something cooler will come along... :cool:
 
this is why they should be working on it. it is a big problem and the best thing they could do is to detect these things early. perhaps keeping hubble and using it for detection if possible might be good. dont just throw it away. lets use it. Hubble has been to great to science to simply let it burn up.
 
Strange I just saw a Discovery Channel show on this - shooting nukes at the thing don't work very well *unless* you blow the thing up next to it a decent distance, early enough that it changes its Velocity Vector by about 1 m/s - that's all and you can totally alter the orbit of the asteroid.

Also using a solar furnace like device (looks like a very large mirrored parachute) to focus a highly concentrated beam of solar energy on the surface of the asteroid - you change its mass and change its Velocity by burning off the surface - this requires a lot of time (years) to work. But its doable - we just haven't done it.

As for 'testing' - if we do this and alter the path of a asteroid incorrectly, what's to prevent us from making actually hit the Earth? Regardless, we probably should, its just a matter of getting some funding.

D
 
This just shows how Nasa is so blind by politics of who ever is in charge this 4 years. we just saw what that comet did to jupiter. one of those chunks explosions was the size of the Earth. Im glad that senator from MD is on Nasa's case for throwing away the hubble. and something that bothers me was the Nasa administrators comment that it was to risky to save the Hubble? what the ... going in space is risky you darn beauracratic political bean counter. Lets stop putting our heads in the sand and aknowledge this threat. Hubble can be used for a lot of things but the most important thing could be saving our planet from destruction.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back