The Hubble gets an update

[Justan]

I wasn’t sure if this has been commented upon but this mission, while very risky, provides an opportunity to once again advance the abilities of this awesome camera. Here’s an article in the local paper covering the progress of the Shuttle mission
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/busi...ttlehubble.html

Accordingly, the soon to be retired wide field camera is destined for the Smithsonian.

I've looked at hundreds of images from the Hubble and wish the Shuttle crew the best of luck on this mission.

[DarkPenguin]

$1.5B for this, right?

[situgrrl]

Puts a D3x into perspective!

[Geoff Wittig]

$1.5B for this, right?

Which is about one fifth of one percent of the current U.S. deficit.
Or, seen another way, about half the cost of another giant nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Except that, instead of providing the capacity to blow things up anywhere on earth within a few hundred miles of an ocean, it has provided us an astonishing glimpse into the make up of the universe we inhabit. Money well spent, I'd say.

[DarkPenguin]

That's super.

Any word on the actual cost?  I've heard "over $1B" and $1.5B.  Curious as to what it is.

[bill t.]

Think of all the top quality Smart Bombs that could buy!  And how much better off we would be for it!  Or you could buy every man, woman, and child in America a six-pack.  Or send Dick Cheney to charm school.

[DarkPenguin]

That's super.

Any word on the actual cost? I've heard "over $1B" and $1.5B. Curious as to what it is.

[DarkPenguin]

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/09051...ost-launch.html

$1.5B looks to have been incorrect.  According to the above it is $1.1B.

[Justan]

$1.5B for this, right?

By "this" do you mean the mission or the project?

[DarkPenguin]

The whole Hubble servicing project including the flight.

As an aside two ESA telescopes went up last week.  One is IR (with a HUGE mirror) and I'm not sure about the other.

[Justan]

I don’t know the exact figures and, of course it depends on how you want to frame the costs for the mission. According to a GAO report from 2004 (which includes data for the current servicing mission) http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0534.pdf the cost is about $361 million for parts and service. IIRC the cost for delivery and pickup is usually around $450 to $500 million.

Since NASA has prepped a backup shuttle due to the risks of this mission, you could reasonably add that under the category of "on-call" related fees.

Why do you ask the cost?

[DarkPenguin]

Just curious what such a mission costs.  They haven't been there for a while.  It is a long mission.  It is a fully loaded mission.  Obviously there are parts costs for the hubble.  And there is a second shuttle.  Seemed like it would be a lot of money.

The shuttle was supposed to be a cheaper way of doing these things.  Obviously it wasn't.  But has there been a plan to solve the cost issue without going back to apollo tech?  (Last I heard they chopped the Orion down to 4 seats.  Before it is over they'll be trying to fire a vw vanagon to the moon with a giant slingshot.)  The Orion can't even do this stuff.  So their attempt to head out farther also involves reducing capabilities.

The hubble is such a great success story and the shuttle is such a train wreck.  But they couldn't have done the hubble without the shuttle.  (Or they would have put it up there and left it as a tribute to glaucoma.)  I wish they could keep doing this but on the other hand I'd like to see $1.1B given to a company like Scaled Composites.  See if they can figure it out.

That's a pretty rambling response that probably doesn't make any sense.

[Geoff Wittig]

Just curious what such a mission costs.  They haven't been there for a while.  It is a long mission.  It is a fully loaded mission.  Obviously there are parts costs for the hubble.  And there is a second shuttle.  Seemed like it would be a lot of money.

The shuttle was supposed to be a cheaper way of doing these things.  Obviously it wasn't.  But has there been a plan to solve the cost issue without going back to apollo tech?  (Last I heard they chopped the Orion down to 4 seats.  Before it is over they'll be trying to fire a vw vanagon to the moon with a giant slingshot.)  The Orion can't even do this stuff.  So their attempt to head out farther also involves reducing capabilities.

The hubble is such a great success story and the shuttle is such a train wreck.  But they couldn't have done the hubble without the shuttle.  (Or they would have put it up there and left it as a tribute to glaucoma.)  I wish they could keep doing this but on the other hand I'd like to see $1.1B given to a company like Scaled Composites.  See if they can figure it out.

That's a pretty rambling response that probably doesn't make any sense.

The Shuttle gets a lot of bad press...I guess having two catastrophic failures will do that. But honestly, it's about the best you could do with circa 1969 technology. And that's what the Shuttle is using as its basis; its design was frozen at that time, based on a disastrously compromised "design to cost" philosophy to get the total program cost down below a nominal (but utterly fictitious) $5 billion ceiling for political reasons. That led to the sacrifice of a completely recoverable first stage, replacing it with cheap solid rocket boosters and a cheap disposable external tank. That design decision, made just to shave about 10% off the total program cost estimate, led directly to both catastrophic accidents; the fatal flaws were baked in as of 1969.

You could design and build something much, much better using circa 1980 technology, let alone 2009 technology. Yet mind-blowingly short-sighted penny-pinching by those responsible for NASA's budget have starved them of the resources necessary to even research something better. The national aerospace plane project for a single stage to orbit 'scramjet' design had immense promise, but the whole thing was funded at an absurdly low level. Consequently repeated structural failures of the composite fuel cell (never adequately developed) doomed the project and led to its cancellation.

The entire future of NASA's manned space flight program (Ares etc.) is even worse; the whole thing is a design-to-cost kludge attempting to minimize up-front investment by recycling technology that was out of date in the 1980s.

Yet we keep wasting billions in Iraq every month. The mind simply boggles at the idiocy.

[Justan]

Just curious what such a mission costs.  They haven't been there for a while.  It is a long mission.  It is a fully loaded mission.  Obviously there are parts costs for the hubble.  And there is a second shuttle.  Seemed like it would be a lot of money.

The shuttle was supposed to be a cheaper way of doing these things.  Obviously it wasn't.  But has there been a plan to solve the cost issue without going back to apollo tech?  (Last I heard they chopped the Orion down to 4 seats.  Before it is over they'll be trying to fire a vw vanagon to the moon with a giant slingshot.)  The Orion can't even do this stuff.  So their attempt to head out farther also involves reducing capabilities.

The hubble is such a great success story and the shuttle is such a train wreck.  But they couldn't have done the hubble without the shuttle.  (Or they would have put it up there and left it as a tribute to glaucoma.)  I wish they could keep doing this but on the other hand I'd like to see $1.1B given to a company like Scaled Composites.  See if they can figure it out.

That's a pretty rambling response that probably doesn't make any sense.

Your response wasn’t rambling at all, merely a concise overview in few paragraphs.

The cost for the shuttle (and Hubble) are both a lot of money. IMO it is well worth it, if only as a works project for a number of scientists. The kind of work helps to advance scientific and technological knowledge in a wide variety of areas

I expect that before too long private enterprise will step up to the plate and in some regards take the place of government based projects. At the time the shuttle was developed, there was no single or group of private enterprises that could do the work. It was all cost and no marketable benefit. Then there is the notable amount of work that is done largely in secret for the MIL. As a result, it had to be a government project

The complexities of space projects are often not understood. I'm no expert but consider only the tracking and radio needs. A number of global networks is *required* to permit this project.

Then as you pointed out, we would not have something such as the Hubble were it not for the shuttle. The shuttle amounts to a kind of public transport, which is a loser itself, but makes a number of things possible that would not be so without the expense.

Still I hope that private enterprise will be able to step up soon.