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Old 01-16-2004, 11:49 AM   #1 (permalink)
Superbelt
This vexes me. I am terribly vexed.
 
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Location: Grantville, Pa
Hubble to be scrapped

http://www.brucegarrett.com/brucelog_2004_1_1.htm#b22
This is a blog entry.

Quote:
No more servicing missions to Hubble, as per the directive of the current head of NASA, Sean O'Keefe.

Hubble has six guidance gyros. But they fail at fairly regular and now predictable rates. Nearly every servicing mission to Hubble has replaced gyros as part of the work done. It needs three to do most of the science it now does, although there is a scheme in the works to do a greatly attenuated kind of science with two. We currently have four working gyros. Expectations were that we would almost certainly be down to two by the time the next servicing mission occurred, and possibly even down to one. So, figure, at around the time of what would have been the next servicing mission, Hubble will probably be no more, or soon, very soon, to expire.

Haven't heard yet about their final plans to control dump it. Last I heard, the talk was that some sort of small retro would be fitted to it via a shuttle mission, so it's re-entry into earth's atmosphere could be controlled.

This is of a piece with Bush's directive, that anything that doesn't support his new moon and mars missions is to be cut. So likely Hubble won't be the only thing that does deep space science that goes, and quite possibly some of the stuff that does near earth science will also be trashcanned (like for instance, all the stuff that provides data about that pesky global warming that isn't supposed to be really happening...)

The end of an era in deep space exploration draws to a close. The era of the total militarization of space dawns.
I can support a mission to mars. I can do that enthusiastically. I can even support a mission to the moon again, even though we have already been there. But for Bush to propose these two programs while at the same time scrapping ALL the ancillary jobs that NASA does just to get his directive off the ground is just sad. It disheartens me to see the final glimmers of what was once a proud, visionary agency deadened.
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