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The purpose of NASA is not only to explore but inspire. In light of that, I'd be fully supportive of using a Starship launch to bring Hubble home.
by Causality1 5y ago
The purpose of NASA is not only to explore but inspire. In light of that, I'd be fully supportive of using a Starship launch to bring Hubble home.
- make3 5y agoAs far as I understand it, that sounds super useless though. Maybe we should inspire people by doing useful science instead.
- dwaltrip 5y agoI would find it very inspiring to see the Hubble up close at a museum once it can no longer carry out its mission.
- melling 5y agoTo service and relaunch for the next 50 years?
- pkaye 5y agoIf they could carry a larger payload, we could have a Hubble with a larger primary mirror. Some of the risks/costs of the JWST is all the folding mechanisms to fit the Ariane 5 payload enclosure.
- gotstad 5y agoThat does not strike me as the right direction of progression. We should become better at in-space assembly, not creating larger payload fairing.
- squeaky-clean 5y agoThere'd be no reason to take down the hubble just because a telescope with a larger mirror goes up. There's a lot of space to look at.
- headmelted 5y agoAlso a lot of really interesting science to be done by pointing Hubble and JWST at the same target. (NASA’s Curious Universe podcast is running a JWST series right now and this came up in a recent episode).
- NikolaeVarius 5y agoMuseum
- melling 5y agoBut the Hubble could be useful for another century. Talk about inspirational.
- rtkwe 5y agoIt's kind of limping along. It could gather images for a lot longer but it's hardware like gyroscopes are starting to fail. IMO the money to refurbish it would be better spent making a new instrument and cheaper too since you'd just need to build and launch not launch, capture, land, refurb, and relaunch.
- imglorp 5y agoWith telepresence and remote manipulators, we're at the point where a robotic service mission should be possible now.
- wolverine876 5y agoHubble has been accomplished completely without SpaceX, as is James Webb and almost all other amazing advances in space. What do you think about the organizations and people that actually accomplished these things?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Causality1 5y agoWith the retirement of the shuttle, Starship is the only vehicle in or near operation capable of bringing Hubble back to earth intact.
- wolverine876 5y agoLots of other capabilities are unique to lots of other systems (especially NASA - most of what they do is a unique capability!). What do you think of those?
- selectodude 5y agoSure, SpaceX doesn't have a Hubble Space Telescope in space and NASA doesn't have the capability to return it to Earth. I'm not sure where you're going with this.
- ChefboyOG 5y ago...they're also great? The parent comment was just that it would be cool to bring Hubble back eventually, and that Starship seems promising towards that end. It's not a diminishment of all other space-focused organizations.
- Causality1 5y agoI can't figure out what your point is. I'm saying Hubble is such an incredible achievement and pillar of the spirit of space exploration it's worth spending the money to bring it home even if doing so doesn't generate any scientific data in and of itself.
- _moof 5y agoI'm not sure I understand what you're getting at.
- Eelongate 5y agoI read his point to be something along the lines of 'Hubble is great, I'd love to see it one day.' I guess some people are offended because he suggested spacex might be used to retrieve Hubble instead of letting it become derelict in orbit.
- nuccy 5y agoTo add more, Spacex's Starship is the only viable option actually, no other company in the world can offer (or even has in plans) a vehicle capable of bringing back tons of payload (Hubble space telescope weights 11 tons). Space Shuttle, which was used to lunch Hubble (and in principle Buran) was the only options capable of doing that in the past.
- the__alchemist 5y agoRelevant Carl Sagan article. Also features as a chapter in Pale Blue Dot: https://parade.com/249407/carlsagan/the-gift-of-apollo/ https://parade.com/249407/carlsagan/the-gift-of-apollo/
- downWidOutaFite 5y agoHuh? That sounds very uninspiring.
- dvsfish 5y agoI ask what has inspired you in the past?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mjevans 5y agoIf Hubble were brought back, where would it go? I assume anything remotely still classified would be ripped out, so probably only the big (outer) shell would end up in a museum, maybe some of the outdated computer boards. It's still inspiring, but would it be more fair to go to Florida? Texas? Some state where it was built (if it weren't those)? The Smithsonian?
- justin66 5y agoOf course it would go to the Smithsonian. They sometimes loan stuff out temporarily, so it could be displayed in all those places (with difficulty). Nothing on it is modern enough to be classified, if it ever was classified. It is really old. DoD had better optics flying in space… by the time Hubble launched, maybe?
- rtkwe 5y agoNot sure there's anything left in Hubble that would be classified. Maybe the control software but the spy sat it was based off of is decades out of use by now.
- ianvorbach 5y agoThat's a fun idea! I don't see how you would execute that unfortunately though. Hubble wasn't meant to be re-mounted after deployment. Starship wouldn't be able to just gobble Hubble up and have it rattle around in its fairing during re-entry