Hubble's Benefit
12 May 2009 2:50:53 UTC
Topic 194340
(moderation:
With the launch of the Shuttle Mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. I think it is time to define its worth..
Hubble was designed with maintainability in mind. With this approach it cost ~ 10 Billion dollars to maintain over its life time.
Now when you determine what a project is worth you also have to determine what benefit it had has with future projects for NASA.
In other words human's in space repair an instrument is photo op a benefit when going to congress for more dough.
But how many Chandra's without maintainability in mind could you have launched for 10 Billion
Hmmmm...
There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold
Hubble's Benefit
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Well firstly, it's not my taxes ... :-)
HST is a civilian version of KeyHole, and the boner with the optics was management not scientific. Yes, in place testing IS a good thing but pre-launch is BETTER. By some $Billions I expect. This I think has haunted the project.
There has been repayment on some unique scores : deep field surprises, solar system object imaging ( Pluto/Charon ), practice for astronauts.
The faster/cheaper/better approach sort of fell over the get-what-you-pay-for hurdle ( foot-pounds for Newtons anyone? ). Mind you the Shuttle suffered early on and thus wound up an all purpose committee camel.
There is no doubt that human time in space is a horrendous cost compared with human-free. That's a bankable guideline for sure, and far less tragic. If humans don't need to go there, then don't take them ....
Maybe we should combine the invaluable US experience with the Russian keep-it-simple-and-keep-it-brute-force methodology.
My 0 cents worth.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
A billon here.. A billon
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A billon here.. A billon there... what the hell.. when you are the reserve currency.. its only money :-)
There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold