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Yup. Though--- I do wonder about the desire to keep it functioning at all costs. Servicing is expensive: humans and their consumables aren't cheap. I wonder
by mlyle 4y ago
Yup. Though--- I do wonder about the desire to keep it functioning at all costs. Servicing is expensive: humans and their consumables aren't cheap.
I wonder what we'd get instead if we dumped equivalent or slightly more resources into a new telescope, instead.
- kijin 4y agoPerhaps if we keep it in orbit long enough, robot technology will improve to a point where we don't need to send any humans to service the Hubble anymore. Also, servicing the Hubble is exactly the kind of mission that commercial space ventures can use to showcase their tech. Relatively low risk, high media exposure. A pretty good practice ground, really.
- sgtnoodle 4y agoBy the time robotics advances to that point, it would most certainly be economical to manufacture a significantly more capable replacement telescope, wouldn't it? As far as I know, there isn't any particularly exotic materials in Hubble, it's just a big heavy precision manufactured (lol) object. Even right now, it seems like the real cost of a falcon heavy launch is relatively low. We would get more science for the money by mass producing several higher performance telescopes with fewer reliability requirements.
- rlt 4y agoTrue for now, but Starship, if full and rapid reusability is achieved, will radically change the economics of space missions.
- dylan604 4y agoThe next gen space telescopes are already being planned. It just takes a long time to get them completed. In the mean time, we have a working telescope. We should just let it die and not be used while we wait for the next to come about?
- mlyle 4y agoBecause servicing it (beyond reboost) may be the same cost as launching something new that offers better performance.
- roywiggins 4y agoThe proposed "better Hubble" that would launch in the 2040s is projected to cost $11 billion. That's a fair few servicing missions; it sounds like we can probably afford to do both, and if so, why not? Keeping Hubble around doing science longer is still useful even with a successor planned. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/science/astronomy-decadal-survey-telescope.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/science/astronomy-decadal...
- micromacrofoot 4y agoNot to mention that NASA doesn't have the kind of blank check budget that the military has (by a longshot) — in a budget overview they may have to cut service for old projects to even get research on new projects funded.
- smegger001 4y agowhen it comes to something like this you are forgetting the government redtape involved in building a new one is likely a bigger cost than the actual engineering building and launching.
- dylan604 4y agoSince Hubble is at the upper range of LEO which made shuttle missions difficult, I've always wondered if they could make it slow down enough to lower its orbit more easily accessible for orbiters where part of the refurb is to refuel it so that it could get back to operating orbit. Maybe not Hubble, but maybe the next gen?
- ericbarrett 4y agoOlder telescopes can still contribute to science in parallel, too. Even terrestrial telescope time is booked years in advance. More scopes means more time for secondary pursuits, hands-on time for more junior astronomers, observations for more speculative theories, etc.
- dwheeler 4y agoI expect NASA to do the calculations, but I would expect boosting the orbit of an existing working telescope would be much cheaper than building a new one AND ALSO putting it in orbit. There are relatively few telescopes outside Earth's atmosphere; keeping Hubble running seems like a good idea.
- mlyle 4y agoIt's not just orbital boosting. It's also doing things like swapping out reaction wheels and dying hardware of various kinds. And as soon as you're doing that, you're probably using humans. And then because the cost is already so big, you might as well replace some instruments, too...
- deelowe 4y agoDo they plan to do more manned missions to Hubble?
- mlyle 4y agoHubble re-enters in 2037, and is useless because of orbital mechanics a few years before that. I think it's unlikely the current reaction wheel system lasts to that ~2032 timeframe, let alone significantly beyond. Of 6 wheels, 2 are working well, 1 is dodgy, and 3 have failed. 3 are required to keep orientation.
- mkw5053 4y agoI thought they could now control it with only 2 reaction wheels [1] [1] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/10543974.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/10543974.pdf
- gs17 4y agoThis proposal (by being part of Polaris) is implied to be manned as far as I can tell.
- pkaye 4y agoThe next space telescope will be the Nancy Grace Roman telescope which is a wide angle telescope so not an exact replacement. https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/ https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/ The longer term goal is the Luvoir telescope but its not yet been approved and will probably require significant R&D like JWST. https://www.luvoirtelescope.org/ https://www.luvoirtelescope.org/
- mlyle 4y agoSure. I'm not talking about the timelines of existing plans for new telescopes. I'm comparing ROI vs: - mission to reboost and service Hubble in various ways - launching a new space telescope mission
- Sharlin 4y agoIt takes about fifteen years from concept studies to launch for a Hubble-class space telescope. I guess you could make it in ten if you just chose to replicate Hubble's instruments and if NRO had another spare Keyhole stashed somewhere...
- MichaelCollins 4y agoThe NRO donated two and parts for a third to NASA in 2012. One is apparently being used for the Roman Space Telescope, which would seem to leave another and a primary mirror of a third still unused.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Sharlin 4y agoWe're going to have another Hubble up in 2027 if all goes well: the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, or Roman for short. Originally known as WFIRST, it's a 1.6m-primary-mirror declassified Keyhole spy sat similar to Hubble, but with a shorter focal length and thus a much wider field of view (around 1/4 square degrees, roughly the area of a full moon). Still, its angular resolution will be comparable to Hubble thanks to a much higher-resolution, 300 megapixel imager. It's a visible/near IR instrument, so won't replace Hubble's near UV capabilities. Also, Roman won't have a traditional spectrograph on board. What it will have, however, is a novel coronagraphic instrument for imaging and spectrography of companions of nearby stars (brown dwarfs and gas giants in wide orbits -- still no imaging exo-Earths or even exo-Jupiters, alas). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telesc... https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/why_Roman_Space_Telescope.html https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/why_Roman_Space_Telescope.html
- causi 4y agoWhy do they call it an infrared telescope when it doesn't see in the infrared spectrum?
- Sharlin 4y agoIt does in near IR, but yeah, it’s as much a visible light telescope as an IR one.
- Someone 4y agoIt sees the near infrared. I expect they got that for free from the camera sensor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_photography#Digital_cameras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_photography#Digital_c...: “Digital camera sensors are inherently sensitive to infrared light, which would interfere with the normal photography by confusing the autofocus calculations or softening the image (because infrared light is focused differently from visible light), or oversaturating the red channel. Also, some clothing is transparent in the infrared, leading to unintended (at least to the manufacturer) uses of video cameras”
- jjk166 4y agoA new hubble-scale space telescope is a multibillion dollar project - Hubble cost about $7 billion in 2022 dollars at the time of launch, JWST cost $10 billion. By comparison, a manned servicing mission would likely cost in the mid hundreds of millions, or about 1-10% of the cost of a new telescope. It's unlikely that a one time injection of cash would buy much additional functionality for future satellites. By comparison, buying an extra few years before you need a proper replacement satellite would allow you to build a substantially better telescope at the same annual funding rate, or build the same telescope at a lower annual funding rate.
- WalterBright 4y agoThings only cost that much per unit because they are one-offs. The trick to saving pots of money is to build duplicates, which will not incur research, design, tooling, test rig, etc., costs.
- WWLink 4y agoThe other problem with these is the big super high quality optical mirrors. Going to a production line with those would be really interesting! I don't think you'd get a big enough economy of scale to mass produce them in a just-in-time pipeline though.
- WalterBright 4y agoOnce you've designed and built the grinding machine (I saw a picture of it, it fills a special room) you've done most of it. Same for the custom test rig. SpaceX shows what happens to costs when you re-use designs and tooling.
- zopa 4y agoTrue but there's also decreasing marginal utility for each duplicate. A second telescope in any given class would be awesome but it's always going to be less groundbreaking and useful than the first one.