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Originally posted by tritium
Nowhere in your quote or the Spitzer websites does it say ANYTHING about keeping all four telescopes operational concurrently. Moreover, the cryogenically cooled instruments on the Hubble would have run out of gas long before those of Spitzer. Ergo, it would be impossible to operate both the Hubble *and* the Spitzer -- to say nothing of the other 2 -- without further intervention to replenish the cryogen gas. When the coolant is depleted, the telescope is finished. That's all there is to it.
Coming back to my original point. Nowhere in your quote or subsequent link does it *say* that both projects were going to continue operating side-by-side.
In any case, MY original point was that there already was a more capable replacement in orbit and that the folks whining about NOT having a space telescope were completely unfounded.
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And nowhere at the site that you linked to was the Spitzer declared to be a replacement for the Hubble. Spitzer does not provide visible light imagery.
My quote, pulled from the site that you linked to (and thank you for that... it's a fascinating site!), is the concluding paragraph on the "About Spitzer" page and, I believe, demonstrates that NASA's intent was to maintain four platforms gathering significantly unique data.
If there is evidence that Spitzer was intended as a replacement, other than the inferences that can be drawn from NASA's decision to stop maintaining Hubble, I haven't seen it, but I would like to.
Meanwhile, in the initial link at the beginning of the thread:
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"This is a sad day," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's chief scientist and a four-time shuttle astronaut. The decision shook the astronomy world.
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Grunsfeld said NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe made the decision and broke the news to workers at Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland on Friday morning, saying a planned space shuttle mission to service the telescope would be canceled.
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I have been a fan of the Hubble and it's photographic exploration of the universe since its deployment, and I will be sad to see its mission abandoned.