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Technology Science

Farewell To Eyes Above And Below 136

Posted by timothy from the all-good-things dept.
LMCBoy writes "SpaceRef is reporting that the STIS Instrument on board HST has failed. The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph was HST's only spectrometer, and was responsible for several important discoveries, including the first detection of an exoplanet's atmosphere. The loss is believed to have been caused by a failure in the instrument's main electronics box, which led to a rapid increase in the input current of about 1 ampere, which caused the instrument to enter a "suspend" state. It is believed that this failure is not recoverable." No_Weak_Heart writes "Perhaps the world's most renowned submersible, Alvin of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, is slated for retirement. Alvin has helped scientists explore deep sea, find a lost Hydrogen bomb(oops!) and discover more than 300 new animal species, will be replaced by a newer version in 2008. Also available this audio clip from NPR." (Here's a glance at Alvin's replacement.) Update: 08/07 17:29 GMT by T : Note: "HST"="Hubble Space Telescope." Thanks to Chris Johansen for pointing out the overloaded acryonym.
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Farewell To Eyes Above And Below More

Farewell To Eyes Above And Below

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  • Hopefully this.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ProudClod ( 752352 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @09:55AM (#9908425)
    won't put an end to the planned rejuvenation of the Hubble Telescope.

    A friend of mine's dad has been pulled out of semi-retirement to help design a light receptor to be fitted to the hubble, which would be able to detect accurately induvidual photons of light.

    So if this failure leads to the collapse of the Hubble Reborn project, he'll be out of a job, and more importantly out of a damn interesting project.
    • The conspiracy lover in me wonders if the brass at NASA had this instrument overloaded on purpose.

      They want to kill the Hubble..the pretty picture loving public wants to save it...thus it's a PR nightmare for NASA.

      So they felt the need to tell us that something was wrong in an attempt to get us to say "oh well, it's broken now...go ahead and kill it".

      I for one am not buying it. I think that the Hubble is alive and well and functioning fine, just like Jim Morrison, Elvis and the second gunman.

      wbs.
      • The conspiracy lover in me wonders if the brass at NASA had this instrument overloaded on purpose.

        The sci-fi conspiracy lover in me figures that ALIENS BROKE IT so we wouldn't find their home planet.
    • The problem isn't if it could end, but who wants it to end. As long as HST is functional, it'll be more difficult to get the next gadget (name escapes me) off of the drawing board and into space. There will be questions as to why we need both[1]. If HST fails, its purpose has been demonstrated time & time again - so the next on the assembly line can easily be justified.

      Bottom line: I seriously doubt we'll see both toys in the sky working at the same time.



      [1] See George Carlin: "Flammable, infl

  • So long.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Grave ( 8234 ) <awalbert88.hotmail@com> on Saturday August 07, 2004 @09:55AM (#9908426)
    And thanks for all the awesome images.
    • I know you're trying to be funny, but this failure in no way prevents hubble from taking all those pretty pictures. All you need for those is a few filters and the wide field camera.
    • I believe "and thanks for all the gif's" would have flowed better in parallel with the original quote...I'll go back to the shadows now.

  • It's time to let the Hubble go (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HMA2000 ( 728266 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @09:56AM (#9908430)
    You don't spend $1000/year on maintaining an old lawnmower you buy a new one that is cheaper and requires less maintence. Likewise it's time to let the Hubble go.

    • Re:It's time to let the Hubble go (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @10:05AM (#9908476) Journal
      Yes, but until you have the replacement in place, you do not get rid of the old one. Once there is a good replacement for, and not just more empty promises, then you let it go.
      • Whats the worst thing that could happen if there is a period of time where we are without a space telescope? This isn't exactly a life-critical piece of machinery.

        The Hubble is done. Deal with it. If the geniuses in Congress decides that our hard earned tax dollars are better spent putting up a new scope up than feeding the poor, educating our children, or researching cures for deadly diseases, we can have another one.

        • Re:It's time to let the Hubble go (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Perhaps the geniusses in Congress should decide to stop invading other countries on knowingly false claims and save that money to send up ten new Hubbles and caring for the poor...

          But noooo, why do something good if there are still people to kill and oilfields to capture....

        • feeding the poor, educating our children, or researching cures for deadly diseases

          We need to spend money on important problems like a solution to the heat-death of the universe. Compared to that, everything else is small potatoes.

          • Until medical ability leaves me pretty confident my death will be a result of the heat death of the universe I'm not to worried about it.

            Hmm, just thought a a great life insurance scam to get people like you. For the low price of 5 dollars a month you can get 50 million dollars in protection against the heat death of the universe. Should the universe die of heat death we will pay your loved ones 50 million US dollars. I'll make millions.

        • Re:It's time to let the Hubble go (Score:5, Insightful)

          by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @11:57AM (#9908961) Journal
          Whats the worst thing that could happen if there is a period of time where we are without a space telescope? This isn't exactly a life-critical piece of machinery. [wikipedia.org]

          Uh, yeah

          The Hubble is done. Deal with it. If the geniuses in Congress decides that our hard earned tax dollars are better spent putting up a new scope up than feeding the poor, educating our children, or researching cures for deadly diseases, we can have another one.

          I am curious. At what time in our past history, or any societies history for that matter, have we been able to feed all, educate all, and have absolutely no disease? None that I am aware of. But I do note that in history, societies always do better when they persue science and technologies. Historically, that was when they where engaged in a war off their soil. When the war is on their soil, science and technology stop. So how do we increase our science. One approach is simply start worthless wars that do little for us. Hummmmmm. Rome did that for eons. Perhaps others have as well.

          But a better time was when a society sought something beyond their grasp. England migrating all over the world is a good example (interesting that they were not the original discover, but took advantage of it). The original Space shot did more us than any other war did. And it was a whole lot cheaper than any war that we engaged in.

          • I believe you completely missed the point. I, nor anyone else here, am advocating a complete halt to science and technology. What I am advocating is not giving agencies blank checks of taxpayer money to continue funding research programs that have already gone past their expected lifespan, especially when there are better alternatives worthy of funding even in the same field.

            And don't give me any crap about this being about 'science'. To think that is either naive or disingenuous. Imagine if a similar

            • While I agree that we should not be giving blank checks to science, just because a project is past its design lifetime doesn't mean we should stop funding it. Instead we need to weigh the expected gain by adding funding, to transferring to elsewhere. Hubble was built years ago, maintain it or not, and it will continue to orbit the earth. (Until it reenters, which is a situation to understand and deal with) If the value of the science from maintaining hubble is greater than the value of the science from

              • What you fail to realize is that the Hubble is in danger of reentering the Earth's atmosphere in the near future. Keeping it in operation is not a matter of just keeping the electric bill paid. In order to keep it operational we will have to send up a repair crew very soon (in a shuttle that has been grounded for good reason [wikipedia.org]), along with more and more whenever repairs are needed. These costs will quickly total in the billions, not to mention the risk of using the shuttle fleet in its current condition.
        • "If the geniuses in Congress decides that our hard earned tax dollars are better spent putting up a new scope up than feeding the poor, educating our children, or researching cures for deadly diseases, we can have another one."

          When will this stupid argument stop... "We can put a man on the moon but..."
          Did you know that the population of the US spend more money on potato chips last year than Nasa?
          Get over it. If you are so worried about the poor stop spending you money on consoles, cable tv, and Ipods and g
          • Ok, so I am justified spending $X of someone else's money as long as they spent more on potato chips? Give me a break.

            Keeping Hubble up there would cost billions of dollars, plus the risk involved in sending astronauts up in an old shuttle fleet. Maybe you think thats trivial, but NASA has determined that they have better uses of that money.

            The government (like any business or individual) has to make what we call decisions about what to spend their budget on. Some things get funded, some don't. Deal

          • When will this stupid argument stop... "We can put a man on the moon but..."

            Actually, that's a different and more valid than 'If we haven't ... yet, why are we spending money to ...'

            In fact,it would appear that if we give up our bombing habit, we can likely afford to feed the poor, educate the children, research deadly diseases, AND have another space telescope.

            A few hundred billion dollars goes a LONG way.

      • I agree with the OP. At this point, it's better to devote resources to the other Great Observatories [caltech.edu].

        We're already seeing wonderful results from Spitzer, and Chandra has been producing valuable data for years. Their biggest deficiency has been a lack of comparable PR campaign to Hubble's. (That and XRay data doesn't make such beautiful pictures.)

        Our next visible-light instrument needs to resolve objects two to four times fainter than Hubble, with finer resolution to answer the next round of big astroph
        • Ah you must be talking about JWST aka the James Webb Space Telescope. That is the HST replacement probably around 2010 if I recall the launch schedule right.It will be stationed at one of the LaGrange points (L-2) I think and supposedly is going to be a super-duper HST. There are also the SWIFT and GLAST missions coming up that are looking at high-energy sources such as Gamma-Ray Bursts. Of course all this could have changed since I was at NASA (6 months ago) but I doubt it. Sorry to see HST going downhill

    • Re:It's time to let the Hubble go (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Exatron ( 124633 ) <Exatron AT hotmail DOT com> on Saturday August 07, 2004 @10:11AM (#9908495) Homepage
      No, it's not time to let Hubble go. A lawnmower is completely different from an expensive and still potentially useful scientific instrument. Fixing Hubble is worthwhile because its replacement isn't operational yet, it won't be serviceable, and it's designed to detect different things.

    • Re:It's time to let the Hubble go (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @10:13AM (#9908504) Homepage
      You do if a new lawnmower costs $100,000 and has to be ordered five years before delivery.

      NASA and HSTSI have invested very large amounts of money and time in the HST program. Even if a new telescope was built and launched, it wouldn't make the instruments magically become 50% cheaper. With the way NASA is being funded, it may be decades before another optical telescope is put in space.

    • Re:It's time to let the Hubble go (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @10:54AM (#9908666)
      No, it's not and yes you do. Repairing hubble is much cheaper than designing/building/launching a new telescope. Hubble has a failure rate, yes, but so will any other space based telescope. Tell that to those people planning the next generation space telescope at earth-moon l3, an orbit which is NOT servicable. Your new telescope better require NO maintenence.

      Additionally, how exactly do you "let the Hubble go"? Ever wonder what an enormous 2.4 meter, aerodynamic chunk of glass will do if you let its orbit decay? SOMEONE is going to get hurt, because many parts of hubble will not burn up in re-entry. To "let the Hubble go" would require another servicing mission. Might as well fix the STIS anyway, eh?

      • Might as well fix the STIS anyway, eh?

        Even better, COS (Cosmic Origins Spectrograph) should be installed, as it was going to be on SM4. I find it particularly ironic that the fact sheet on COS [nasa.gov] has this sadly prescient quote in it (my emph):

        Although not possessing a wide variety of observing modes, COS will outperform STIS in the key areas for which it was designed, and in many others

        will provide limited back-up capabilities should the STIS Side 2 electronics (and hence the instrument itself) fail in t

    • Bad Analogy.

      If there was only one lawnmower in the entire world (like the Hubble) then you would spend whatever it takes to keep it working even if you could build 3 or 4 other mowers.

      Keep the Hubble AND build the others. There is enough research (or lawns to mow) for both.

  • Does "not recoverable" mean with or without sending astronauts up? If the latter, is it possible it'll be repaired in a few years?

  • Blind? No problem (Score:5, Funny)

    by Isopropyl ( 730365 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @10:00AM (#9908455)
    Now that the HST is effectively blind, it can look forward to a long and promising career as an NFL referee.

    • Re:Blind? No problem (Score:4, Funny)

      by NeoThermic ( 732100 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @10:30AM (#9908564) Homepage Journal
      >> Now that the HST is effectively blind, it can look forward to a long and promising career as an NFL referee.

      Or if FIFA get their hands on it, it can referee the next England match...

      NeoThermic
    • Note: Goodyear, the company that pionerred the blimp's-eye-view cam (credited by many to have led directly to the infinitely more obnoxious "webcam" revolution, has offered to buy the Hubble.....

      source: NY Times (all the news you should be allowed to know)
  • Maybe those extrasolar bodies were just electronic blur from the over powering. Is this possible? Does HST focus in on some spectographically known object as a periodic test?

  • Sea littler (Score:5, Funny)

    by ndavidg ( 680217 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @10:03AM (#9908465)
    Found a hydrogen bomb? The one that releases the power of the sun? Given the amount of earth the ground covers compared to dry land, it makes you wonder how many more of these little "lost treasures" are out there. Definitely puts one over on the guy and that T.V. commerical: "With the treasure hunter, my wife is proud of the weight I lost, and she's definitely proud of this!" [H-bomb twinkles]
    • "Found a hydrogen bomb? The one that releases the power of the sun?"

      As in "fell out of a B-52 off the coast of Spain in 1966 and the USAF really wanted to have it back."

    • There's still one off the coast of Georgia! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RogL ( 608926 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @11:13AM (#9908735)
      There's still one off the coast of Georgia!

      Heard about this only recently. Google for "Georgia coast bomb", you'll find some stories, such as http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/05/02/a5.bo mb.0502.html [registerguard.com].

      It's considered more risky to retrieve than to let it lie. Might spread contamination. I'm in Jacksonville, Florida; if it went off, I might hear the boom!
      • There's a big differnence between the one of the coast of Georgia and the one that was off the coast of Spain. The bomb is in US territorial waters, and the Navy can effectively guard that position. However, it was not certain that the bomb off the coast of Spain was in their territorial waters. By the international laws of the sea, the first person to tie a line to salvage is entitled to it. Both the US and the Soviets were desperately looking for that bomb. It represented an intelligence goldmine. T
        • Did you read the article he cited? I'm sure you can't trust the goverment on this (they've said 11 missing bombs and 4 missing bombs), but it appears they were looking in the wrong spot.

          Some guy wondering about the bomb, hired some salvagers and found it. It wasn't under guard from the Navy. The feds said it wasn't worth retrieving -- it'd cost $5 million. The guy offered to pick it up for $900,000 and the feds said no.

          So if you want a cheap h-bomb with bomb grade uranium, you can pick it up for $900,0
          • Yes, I did RTFA. The bomb is in US territorial waters. The Navy doesn't have to put it under a visable guard patrol. If a foreign vessle enters US territorial waters without permission, they will intercept it and sink it. Furthermore, I doubt very much the bomb has the detonation capsule on board. Without it, the bomb presents little intelligence value. Why would you ever fly a practice mission with an armed bomb? The Air Force is very careful with nuclear weapons, I see no reason that they would ex
            • You said you RTFA. It says the bombs' not armed. Some random guy found the bomb and offered to bring it back up without the Navy coming by and saying "get lost". What's to stop someone else from finding it?

              The Navy does a great job keeping out foreign vessels. There's hardly any drugs brought in that way.

              I think the panicked people in Georgia have a right be be panicky about a nuke sitting in the nearby ocean. They're not worried about the Russians learning anything from it. They're worried about bo
    • Too bad it only works underwater, or they could send it to Iraq to look for those weapons nobody seems to be able to find.

  • Alvin and Titanic (Score:5, Informative)

    by linuxdoctor ( 126962 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @10:04AM (#9908472) Homepage
    Don't forget that Alvin was also responsible for helping Dr. Robert Ballard to find the wreck of the Titanic.
    • So what you're saying is that Alvin should be blamed for that awful movie and accompanying Celine Dion song.
    • Well, it's high time for WHOI to phase out the Alvin and donate it to a museum.

      That submersible pioneered a lot of deep-sea research, to say the least.
    • To correct you: the Titanic was found in 1985 by a French/American team using unmanned visual and sonar packages trawled above the ocean floor. Alvin was there a year later, with the robot JJ (Jason Junior) to test Dr.Ballard's "telepresence" idea.

      • In these, our modern times of ours, I don't think you're allowed to credit the French with anything.
        • Yes, certainly, if you're a Merkan. How come this shit reply gets 2 points and I get 1? F**king USA-nians.

          • Free karma for anyone born in the USA. Sorry, I tend to yank off my American karma bonus. Just forgot this time.

            How do you pronounce USA-nians? Or is it just one of them there interweb doohickeys like MYSQL which ain't meant to be pronounced out loud? Unlike URL which we all know is pronounced "earl".
    • Don't forget that Alvin was also responsible for helping Dr. Robert Ballard to find the wreck of the Titanic.
      Actually, it wasn't. Dr. Ballard located Titanic using a camera sled towed from the surface. Alvin was used on Dr. Ballard's *2nd* expedition to Titanic.

  • Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the pickle ( 261584 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @10:15AM (#9908508) Homepage
    ...this will take some of the sting out of the planned retirement of the Hubble.

    I agree with another poster here that we need to get a suitable replacement up ASAP, but perhaps now that Hubble is truly showing its age, the public will accept its retirement as an eventuality. After all, Skylab was a pioneering space "device" (for lack of a better term) and we let that fall back down to Earth.

    I'm not saying we should necessarily write it off right now, but that maybe those folks at NASA who said six months ago that Hubble was getting near retirement age were right. Now, instead of lots of expensive repair missions, let's get a new and better 'scope up there ASAP!

    p

    • Replacements (Score:3, Informative)

      by Mr. Sketch ( 111112 )
      I believe there are already some possible Hubble replacements. The new telescope in Arizona is planned to produce visual images 10 times sharper than Hubble (according to cnn.com [cnn.com]) . Also, many scientists studying deep space are using X-rays, which has the Chandra X-ray observatory [harvard.edu]

      • Re:Replacements (Score:5, Informative)

        by wass ( 72082 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @11:40AM (#9908867)
        The new telescope in Arizona is planned to produce visual images 10 times sharper than Hubble

        for the bazillionth time, Hubble is more than just pictures. Ground-based scopes are limited to optical frequencies, Hubble can see from near IR to near UV.

        More importantly, though, imaging is only one small component of astronomy, it's the spectra where much of the 'real' science is done. Spectra need to be very clean, the atmosphere not only blocks certain frequencies out of optical, but adds its own absorption/emission spectra on top of that.

        So basically this telescope is NOT a replacement for Hubble, no matter what they're claiming to get funding. It will complement Hubble, that's for sure, but definitely not replace.

    • Re:Maybe... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by RobertFisher ( 21116 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @11:35AM (#9908840) Journal
      I think you are missing out on one major fact.

      The plan to decomission Hubble earlier this year came within days of the Bush plan to redirect NASA to explore Mars. If you really believe that the decision was based on good science and engineering, and not on political goals, then you are incredibly naive. The announcement came with only a nominal budgetary increase, so many NASA budgets were completely slashed, including the Hubble servicing mission. Several other very important missions, including the Dark Energy Probe, are now on permanent ice as well. It is not a matter of "expense," as you suggest, but rather one of priority. We have the money, but rather than devoting it to science, it is now going into the drain of a Mars mission which will never launch, because Congress will never approve the hundreds of billions required.

      The NGST (now named Webb) telescope has been in the works for years. It has a launch date of 2010. The Hubble reservicing mission was planned for 2006, and should have kept Hubble in operation until at least 2011 or 2012. That WAS a rational plan to keep the HST maintained, and to ensure than we have one optical space observatory in service at all times.

      --RF

      • Re:Maybe... (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I think you're missing a major fact; Columbia scattered seven astronauts in little pieces across Texas a year before the decision.

        Our response, should have been to ground the Shuttles entirely, ending both the HST and ISS as unfortunate side-effects of the final shutdown of the whole misbegotten Shuttle program. (We should have been getting a replacement on-line in the 1990s, but, hey, there was a budget to balance, and a space station to build as an international venture, and the best replacement candida

        • assholes like you suggesting we put even more wear-and-tear on these dangerous, antiquated experimental spacecraft so we can gather data now instead of in ten years

          Why not have ISS make itself useful? There have been several proposals for an automated craft to snag HST and tow it up to ISS for repair. The parts can go upon one of the progress flights.

          This is the sort of thing that is bound to come up eventually if we are ever going to have a real presence in space. Might as well develop the tugboat n

    • Firstly, it's not certain that STIS it out for good. It looks like a bad inductor MAY be the faulty component, but there's still a chance engineers can figure out how to save it. Actually, there has been no official comment on this yet anyway (at least as of yesterday), so this is just unofficial hearsay.

      Secondly, STIS is used in about 30% of Hubble scheduling. So this means that 70% of science can still be done even if STIS comes back online.

      As for putting a better scope up there ASAP, that ain't go


      • Secondly, STIS is used in about 30% of Hubble scheduling. So this means that 70% of science can still be done
        Only if there is a one-to-one correspondence between "time spent" and "science done". That seems highly unlikely.

        • For hubble , that ratio is pretty much one to one - apparently to get time on hubble requires a pretty rigourous review of merit.
          • Here are two things you said:
            1 - that ratio is pretty much one to one
            2 - to get time on hubble requires a pretty rigourous review of merit.

            You seem to be implying that (2) logically leads to (1). I don't see that. The way I see it, (2) only guarantees a minimum level of merit, not that all uses are exactly the same level of merit.

    • Re:Maybe... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Halvard ( 102061 )

      After all, Skylab was a pioneering space "device" (for lack of a better term) and we let that fall back down to Earth.

      We didn't "let" Skylab fall back to Earth, unless you consider orbital decay about 18 months early and a delayed space shuttle that was to push it back up letting.

  • More info on the STIS failure on Hubble (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jack Porter ( 310054 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @10:20AM (#9908530)

  • Geez guys, pay attention! (Score:5, Informative)

    by nbvb ( 32836 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @10:23AM (#9908546) Journal
    The spectrograph is what failed; the optics are fine and dandy.

    We're still going to get nice pretty pictures out of Hubble, just no UV/wavelength pictures ...

    Hubble's hobbled, but still alive and kicking.

  • ACS grism still works! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @10:38AM (#9908601)
    Hubble is NOT blind, although this is a major setback. There is still a working spectograph on the space telescope called the ACS grism. You can still do spectroscopy!

    Linkage [esa.int]

  • "Goodnight sweet Hubble. And a flight of angels sing thee to thy rest." - Crow T. Robot

  • Alvin and the romance of oceanography (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @12:07PM (#9909010) Homepage
    It's hard to believe it now, but there was a period in the 1960s when the ocean was talked about as a great frontier, as important as space. Undersea habitats were built, and undersea cities were discussed. Men went to the deepest place in the ocean and came back.

    Today, the romance of the ocean is dead. You can work on a containership or an oil rig, but nobody dreams of a career as an "aquanaut". Jacques Costeau seems dated.

    • Today, the romance of the ocean is dead.

      Maybe you don't hear about it as much, but it's still there! I heard an interview with some folks at Wood's Hole regarding Alvin's retirement (which they view as a logical step towards an upgrade, not necessarily a loss) and they sounded pretty fired up about it. And let's not forget these folks [wired.com], who are finding all kinds of cool stuff.

      I think it's a little less exciting now because it requires more infrastructure to do anything new. Unlike the days when you

    • The romance of the ocean isn't dead. If anything, it's just starting. In someways it was a little unfair to put these two articles together, since the implication for Alvin was all wrong. It's not being decommissioned, they have just announced plans to replace it.

      Woods hole, the makers of Alvin, are buliding a new a sub that can go about 5,000ft deeper, which means that crews can access 99% of the ocean floor as opposed to ~68% they have accessable with Alvin. They are also building a ROV that descend

    • And here I am, in the middle of freaking Kansas, trying to get enough dives under my belt to become a SCUBA instructor and singing Jimmy Buffet songs, while trying to scrape enough cash together to get an old catamaran.

      The old romance isn't dead. Go check out some of the online sailing(here [latitude38.com]) and SCUBA communities(here [scubaboard.com]) to find some.

    • Re:Alvin and the romance of oceanography (Score:5, Interesting)

      by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @11:58PM (#9911914) Journal
      It's hard to believe it now, but there was a period in the 1960s when space was talked about as a great frontier, as important as the ocean. Space stations (Skylab, Mir) were built, and space colonies were discussed. Men went to the MOON and came back.
      Today, the romance of space is dead. You can work the shuttle or in NASA, but almost nobody dreams of a career as an "astronaut".

      Unfortunately, after the edits it's still pretty much true.

      Mod +1 tragic.
  • How "important" in the grand Hubble scheme of things is this particular imaging device? I assume there are other tools on board Hubble that are still functional, i.e. Hubble isn't space junk yet.

  • Thanks to Chris Johansen for pointing out the overloaded acryonym.


    Actually, the word "overload" is kind of overloaded on subtley different definitions too.


    • Actually, the word "overload" is kind of overloaded on subtley different definitions too.
      I for one welcome our acronym overloads.
  • Maybe the orbital sensors were damaged by the increase in solar storm activity lately? Or maybe the misfires from Star Wars tests are being "measured" by other government devices...
  • 1. Why not put some big $$$ in robotics to repair HST?
    2. Why not put HST and International Space Station together? Compromise orbit.
    3. Why not send robots to the bottom of the sea?
    4. Why not send robots to our moon and Mars?
    5. Why do physical humans have to do everything?

    Give the automatons a chance at the actions

    . |
    • 1,3,4 get my vote. Prop 2 is not sensible, and I say "nay". But as for 5: This I say to you, "Cuz two good human scientist/observers, properly dressed and outfitted (Land's End, anyone?) would have done everything the two rovers dis in their 6 months, in one day. Plus, pulled out the right tool, aimed it in the exact right spot (in moments, not days of relayed instructions), and answered all our questions about "blueberries", and water signs, and ... and... Three decades hence, billions of $, and a dozen m
  • I still say Alvin should be painted yellow.
  • All forms of exploration have long since stagnated, since all have been done to a degree. It's boring to the masses because once you saw the same visit to a planetary body, you've seen them all. It's boring to the intellectuals because, honestly, they've done it already.

    How about everyone around the world move beyond "the first" and instead focus on being "the best"? Exploration, at least for our species, has always depended on competition. Competition, however, obviously does not depend on a series of "fi
  • Use the second mirror that was made for the origonal.
    And the instruments currently constructed to replace the ones up there now.
  • How will he shoot straight?

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"I've finally learned what `upward compatible' means. It means we get to keep all our old mistakes." -- Dennie van Tassel

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