Hypothetical Hubble Rescue

[Tex_NL]

19 hours ago, PB666 said:

Its one of the most productive scientific machines ever built/recovered/upgraded by man. Lets use its museum value as a sole justification to revive the shuttle program . . . .heh-heh.

Don't get me wrong. I totally understand WHY people would want it back. Why they want to see it, or even touch it. What I do not understand is why those same people want to spend/waste millions to do so. Those same millions could be better used to make even bigger breakthroughs.
In the end it always comes down to money. And space exploration is already on a very tight budget. If bringing Hubble home leads to scientific breakthroughs or if you can recuperate the costs by all means, bring her home. If not, let her go down in a final 'blaze of glory'.

Edited May 11, 2016 by Tex_NL

[cantab]

46 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

1. Launch a tug.
2. Catch the Hubble.
3. Raise the orbit.
4. Wait 100 years until somebody will fly there on a space yacht and take it back to the Earth..
 

This is the best option if we really don't want Hubble to burn, just boost it into an acceptable graveyard orbit. Problem is it would need quite a boost to get out of the busy parts of LKO.

If Hubble is still in working order but threatened by orbital decay, I *absolutely* feel it should be reboosted. Even once JWST is in service, Hubble still has unique capabilities and I'm confident it would be worth the relatively small cost of the reboost, compared to how much has been spent on the spacecraft over its life. I really hope NASA are already considering plans. And I think Hubble could last that long, in fact I wouldn't be hugely surprised if it outlives JWST (which after all can't be fixed if there's an unforseen problem).

[PB666]

7 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

Don't get me wrong. I totally understand WHY people would want it back. Why they want to see it, or even touch it. What I do not understand is why those same people want to spend/waste millions to do so. Those same millions could be better used to make even bigger breakthroughs.
In the end it always comes down to money. And space exploration is already on a very tight budget. If bringing Hubble home leads to scientific breakthroughs or if you can recuperate the costs by all means, bring her home. If not, let her go down in a final 'blaze of glory'.

I won't respond to this they way its needs to be responded  because of 2.2b, but there is a completely valid and intelligible response to this. It does not have to be the space shuttle per say, we threw away the capacity of the space shuttle with out either verifying that the capacity was obsolete or reproducible in some other platform. Some of the aspects, Shuttle can send 7 people to space, more if modified, the US's current capacity is ZERO, it cannot send a bay mounted device, it is appreciably difficult to launch the same payload of sensitive equipment, we have Zero repair capacity, we have Zero pick up and return home capacity for payloads over 5t. It really cannot launch devices into space that need astronaut assistance.

We lost all of this with the shuttle, sure, as a scientist I see the termination of the shuttle program as many steps backwards and very slow and all but uncertain steps forwards along the compromised technologies. If I want to go play with a shuttle, its only 20 miles away, but I don't;  that's not the point, the point is that it is foolish to terminate a program with a huge capacity loss. Money, truely, is not the issue, because we have afforded much/much greater outlays of money in relative dollars in the past, and these programs are payback programs. Just take a look at resupply, you got 6 different firms out now stumbling over their ineptness trying to resupply the ISS. Have actually considered all the cost of these failures? So far as yet the shuttle never failed a resupply after launch. It crashed after the resupply, but its mission was completed.

Saying money is the issue is like saying If we removed 90% of the trees from Europe, therefore the discovery of the Americas by Columbus is economically a bad idea. This is the ultimate in short term thinking, and really think about it what place does it have in this forum, isn't the forum about discovery and progress, its not about retreating ideologies. If Spain had given up exploration of the Earth, think about what they would have missed (all the trees they could ever imagine, all the spices, all the technologies, the political expansion, future economic trade, etc). Had 90% of the trees suddenly disappeared in Europe, they could simply ship their shipbuilders to Yucatan and start building all the ships they needed in America and haul lumber back.

Look just at SpaceX recycling, how that has energized the group, the shuttle was recycling back in the 1980 that was 36 years ago, lol. It not only recovered the two boosters it also recovered the core launch vehicle. So WTH are we cheering at SpaceX? Mainly because they are recapitulating past success and offer a valid opportunity to functions shipped overseas. Because they are cheaper, they still have not as yet launched anything like Hubble into space, have no crew capacity, and there is no commitment or plan to have a repair capability. The argument is why don't we replace, OK suppose the turn around time of JWST is 5-10 years, no suppose JWST get to its station and does not work, thats a scientific loss of 5 years, minimum, how many years did we lose with the hubble, 2 years? Its not just about cost, because time is money and we've lost alot of it since that capacity was terminated. 

Again it does not need to be the shuttle, but it needs to be about something tangible, and as long as you guys ignore that I'm inclined to poke the occasional fun at shuttle-haters.

 

[Tex_NL]

I am sorry you see it that way but in the end it IS all about money.
Why was the shuttle program cancelled? Not because it didn't work. In fact it did an excellent job. Or that it was not safe. It only failed through human error, oversight and complacency.  It became outdated and was too expensive to maintain.
Whit more money we would have a permanent base on the moon at least one or two decades ago and would be visiting Mars regularly. It's not because we don't know how to do it, we have the technology. It's because people are not willing to spend the money to actually do it.
As I said before. I am convinced we can bring Hubble home if we wanted to. And if somebody was willing to spend a crap load of money to do so. But there is no scientific or economic benefit. You will never earn back your investment.

Space Shuttles and Gemini/Apollo capsules on display are great attractions. They generate a nice revenue as the draw in a lot of tourists. But all they had to do to display those was to recover them from the ocean or runway. Only a tiny fraction of the cost of safely de-orbiting something as large as Hubble.

[insert_name]

I agree with the boost to a graveyard orbit and recover it in the future, also it can do more science, if I remember correctly orbital atk is developing a satilite repair kit, maybe use that.

[PB666]

Are you kidding me? By that very same logic we should have never gone to the moon. You're trying to dress up ignorant greed as social impoverishment; you can't expect me to buy this. Its not about the money, im sorry, tech pays back. Every single intellible economist says the same thing, invest in space, science and the tech industries. Every city that has laid out revenues for high tech development has got a payback. Here they simply donated the land for a medical center and now its the biggest med center in the world.  I don't live in the biggest manfacturing city in the US for dumb random luck. Invest in ports, Tech, space industries, it comes back. 

We can have an intelligent discussion about whether the shuttle program was efficient or could be made more efficient via outside contractors. Whether a 40 year old design need a major reworking and redesign, sure, what 40 year old design doesn't but to simply throw all the capacity out the window was short sighted and in my mind made poor economic sense? 

It took us 7 years to get to the moon the first time, we know how to do it, if it was just a tradeoff, why arent we there right now, if its mars why are we doing the unmmaned tests right now,myou been through almost 5 years without a shuttle and we are cheering at what, 20 year old deep space science missions, and relanding commercial satellite missions. Cutting the shuttle afforded nothing that you are talking about, not even a working capsule. 

Musk is moving forward because he sees a lack of will on the part of the West, he's right thats a problem. But he can't be the solution because his marginal revenue is insuufficient afford what the West should have already done and needs to be doing. If you took any agency director and got him drunk you'de hear the same thing. Avoiding 2.2b, but it is perfectly evident talking to people that there is a gross misunderstanging of science and what it has accomplished and what it does, even for people who take benefit from the tech/science economy. And this social dysfunctionality comes as they peck out messages to their kids on their low mass high tech cellphones,  while driving around in their hightech car with a GPS navigation system on the dash and radio playing a satellite music program of only the music they want to hear.  If you asked most of those people they could not give you the foggiest idea how the GPS works or got there, where the satellite signsl comes from, because frankly, they don't care thats someone elses problem, it used to be a collective problem that most willed to progress. 

 In 1970 90% of what we did inspace was about non-service  scientific cutting edge enegineering, space and planetary science, now its flipped, most of the money spent on space is for non-science related service industries. If you ask anyone in industry what is the future prospects and competitve status of cutting your research budget by 90% you will get the same answer, future competitive status and new product lines will suffer. Musk knows this, thats why hes taking risks, but he owns the company and his mind sees the future. And btw one of the major beneficiaries of the Shuttle's end is Musk, because he can feed in the capacity vacuum.

Even if you go the efficiency route, I simply asked the question,mwhy did we not put forth the resources to make a smaller more efficinet version of the shuttle 30 years ago when we started realizing it was too costly. Why was  there not a concern about its potential loss of capacity. The complete loos of a manned capacity is completely indicative of what the problem is. How is it that you can reach the moon and get back in 7years of dev, but in the 15 or so years when  we knew the program would end or has ended we don't have the capacity and are in a rushed dev thereof?  The only single credible answer, there is no other valid answer, is that  in 1962 we collectively had the will and in 2000s we collectively do not have the will, In 1960s we were willing to take the risks, and in 2000s we are not willing to take the risks. 

[Tex_NL]

You are obviously not getting my point. I never said going to the moon or going to space wasn't worth it. It was. If the rewards are high enough people are wiling to pay for anything. If there are no rewards at all people won't. And Musk knows this. At the moment he's losing money by the bucket load. But he knows that in the end he will get his reward. Either scientifically or financially. If there was no reward in the end, he would not invest.
The 1960's 1970's space race was indeed for a large part non-scientific. But that too had it's rewards: prestige and knowledge. If there was NOTHING to be gained by going to space. No prestige, no science, no resources, nothing. We would simply not have gone there.

By nature man is a selfish creature. Nobody will do anything if there is no reward. That reward can be financial, physical, emotional, anything. The reward can even be the lack of a negative. If there is absolutely nothing to be gained people won't move.
Deep down even the most altruistic person is an egoist. He will help others because it makes him feel better.

To get back on topic:
What do you think can be gained from bringing Hubble home? What can we learn from it? How much is it worth? And how much will it cost to bring Hubble home?
Is it really worth that much?

Edited May 11, 2016 by Tex_NL

[Buzz light fear]

6 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

Depends how you design your equipment bay. You could have a clamshell design that opens, docks, and closes. Ever seen James Bond ?

 

What movie is that from I might want to see it to see if I can mod a design like that ofr have a friend do that

[hugix]

23 hours ago, Gaarst said:

Please delete this post. Editor has gone haywire on me

Edited May 11, 2016 by hugix
HELP

[Tex_NL]

3 minutes ago, Buzz light fear said:

What movie is that from I might want to see it to see if I can mod a design like that ofr have a friend do that

You only live twice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FTB8TgvgUk

[hugix]

Maybe the only way to "rescue" Hubble is to send a repair crew to her. I don't know the specifics of how broken Hubble currently is. But maybe we could send a (or more) Soyuz missions to the telescope with a modified docking port to dock to the Hubble. (such a docking port would be far more simpeler than the current port on the soyuz since it doesn't need to transfer any resources or allow astronauts to pass) 

Then the crew could start replacing the faulty gyro modules and whatnot and prep her up for a good number of years of service. 

 

The biggest trouble with saving Hubble is getting her safe and sound on the ground. This way you don't need to figure all that out and it is a progress to science. 

[PB666]

5 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

You are obviously not getting my point. I never said going to the moon or going to space wasn't worth it. It was. If the rewards are high enough people are wiling to pay for anything. If there are no rewards at all people won't. And Musk knows this. At the moment he's losing money by the bucket load. But he knows that in the end he will get his reward. Either scientifically or financially. If there was no reward in the end, he would not invest.
The 1960's 1970's space race was indeed for a large part non-scientific. But that too had it's rewards: prestige and knowledge. If there was NOTHING to be gained by going to space. No prestige, no science, no resources, nothing. We would simply not have gone there.

By nature man is a selfish creature. Nobody will do anything if there is no reward. That reward can be financial, physical, emotional, anything. The reward can even be the lack of a negative. If there is absolutely nothing to be gained people won't move.
Deep down even the most altruistic person is an egoist. He will help others because it makes him feel better.

I completely get your point, its pre-1940s, Adam smith 'the invisible hand' of the market place, it was discredited in the great depression, and even Alan Greenspan basically said that "we got it wrong" thinking that the markets would manage themselves. You don't get mine. Your argument is a false dicotomy, we can either do this or that. We can do both and more, we did skylab and Apollo at the same time, and at the same time built out an interstate system, increased the capacity of our ports.

The resource base of the US is much greater than it was in the 70s, we have more oil production, our economy is more efficient, productivity has increased, we have more universities with more technology programs. There is no resource lacking.

The selfish creature is a cyclical beast, and the cause of the cyclicality is hunger/gluttony. And when I look around the words I hear are from the gluttonous talking about their wants, not the hungry talking about their needs. But the second statement is false, although the people may not move, money is still a motivator, and if they are moved to produce that which inspires them, they will be inspired and do better things. If they are motivated to buy four-wheelers and bust the neck in mud pits, that may be what moves them, but it will not move them forward.

If today the government said, NASA you can tell the treasury to print any money you need for any program with the condition that:

1. Every dollar had to be spent on developing or employing underdeveloped talent in required fields. That includes reimbursing underprivileged kids for college education if they are employed by NASA (that a certain percentage would be a requirement and that the selected should come from all over the country)
2. That they must educate the public about the cost and benefits of the programs.  That the education system must feed and distribute these to qualify for educational scholarships.
3. They could spend no more that the educational system can feed them qualified graduates.
4. That every dollar of personal income tax revenue that propagated as a result of that revenue was given back to the treasury to cover the printing and excess goes into the coffers.
5. That all future expansion would be dependent on successes. That they be also allowed to increase their outstanding money supply for expansion based on the total economy traced to NASAs involvement. 

There would be no tax burden of NASA in 15 years, it would be self-sustaining. Its hard for a non-economist to see this, but its an essential fact of progressive industries. You might not see the effect but then again the invisible hand was too invisible for most in the 1930s. The difference between the invisible hand and progressive public funding is that one completely failed and the second is a repeated  success. You would have to trace incomes from say few-life-choice impoverished that goes to college, works for NASA takes up a career earning 300$ per hour repairing high end equipment, but if you did look hard you would eventually find it. The only caveot to this thought experiment is that once private sector employment was full and inflation began, no expansion or new planned programs of NASA could occur.

The publics will is not connected to the monetary success of the program, its an illusion that is created by self-defeating greed not self-interest. A selfish person wants all who could possibly share his tax burden share it because that other person has life successes and marginal income. Funding only programs that keep folks  at or below the marginal taxable income does not share the tax burden it adds to that burden, the smart selfish person wants progressive industries he wants infrastrcuture, he wants social stability and safety. It is far better to be amoung the moderately poor  in an advanced society with good infrastructure, than to be amoung the moderately rich in a poor society with no infrastructure.
 

[cantab]

4 hours ago, hugix said:

I don't know the specifics of how broken Hubble currently is.

Hubble is currently in good working order. The last servicing mission, flown by the Shuttle, replaced all the gyros. (That mission was initially cancelled, because after Columbia NASA administration didn't want Shuttle flights that couldn't visit the ISS if required and the Shuttle can't visit both ISS and Hubble in one flight, but the mission was reinstated when the NASA administration changed.)

Recently it was announced that Hubble has observed the moon of dwarf planet Makemake.

[PB666]

18 minutes ago, WildLynx said:

Tug with Hall Effect ion drive (regular ion drive have a limited life), a hell of xenon tank, and uber-reliable electronics to keep Hubble from deorbiting for 100s of years until we can retrieve it? Well ok. Fine. It's working.

Next year stray debris smashes it to bits.

Attach the thuster have hubble traveling around use the barrel of the telescope to capture space trash, turn it into a big space trashcan.

 

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, WildLynx said:

Tug with Hall Effect ion drive (regular ion drive have a limited life), a hell of xenon tank, and uber-reliable electronics to keep Hubble from deorbiting for 100s of years until we can retrieve it? Well ok. Fine. It's working.

Why ion? Geostationaries are injected into their orbits with miserable chemicals.
Just raise its apoapsis up to, say, 100000 km, and it will spend most of time far from air drag, debries and madding crowd.

4 hours ago, PB666 said:

Attach the thuster have hubble traveling around use the barrel of the telescope to capture space trash, turn it into a big space trashcan.

Better use this on a retrograde orbit - this would dramatically decrease a collision rate.

Edited May 13, 2016 by kerbiloid

[PB666]

Not exactly on topic but relevant. 

http://phys.org/news/2016-06-nasa-hubble-space-telescope-science.html

 

[Rakaydos]

The MCT's BFS is designed to land 100 tons on mars, and bring 25 tons back to earth.

I doubt hubble is bigger that 25 tons of assorted cargo. If the situation called for it, in however many years it takes hubble to completely die, Elon can charge the smithsonian a finders fee to recover it.

[Emperor of the Titan Squid]

On 5/11/2016 at 1:55 PM, Tex_NL said:

In fact it did an excellent job.

i disagree. Everything it did could have been done just as well without it. that is, except orbital return and repair , which we now can't do, and that gives us this problem.

[PB666]

Its interesting that I revive this thread with a link to NASA renewing the hubble program for 5 more years, and a statement that it might last a decade more. But the posts that follow are all about what might happen after 2025, about a company that may not exist, probably would not have any interest in hubble and headed mars in its dream . . . . . . . . is there some kind disconnect from reality here, maybe prescriptions have expired?

[Shpaget]

I'm having trouble finding the cost of HST primary mirror.

Would bringing down the HST in order to reuse the mirror make economic sense? If the Space Shuttle was operational, what would be cheaper? A retrieval mission or a new mirror?

Sure, with modern adaptive optics and honeycomb mirrors, you don't need so large single ones, multiple small ones would probably be cheaper, but still....

[cantab]

1 minute ago, Shpaget said:

I'm having trouble finding the cost of HST primary mirror.

Would bringing down the HST in order to reuse the mirror make economic sense? If the Space Shuttle was operational, what would be cheaper? A retrieval mission or a new mirror?

Sure, with modern adaptive optics and honeycomb mirrors, you don't need so large single ones, multiple small ones would probably be cheaper, but still....

If the Space Shuttle was still operational what would be cheaper is what was already done - "reuse the mirror" by way of replacing the camera chips and other equipment on Hubble. All five of the Hubble's original instruments have been replaced, as well as the COSTAR corrective optics that fixed the problem in the main mirror because the new individual instruments have that correction built-in. In fact another Hubble servicing mission could hypothetically be done by any vehicle capable of supporting a complex EVA, or by a sophisticated robot.

[PB666]

23 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

I'm having trouble finding the cost of HST primary mirror.

Would bringing down the HST in order to reuse the mirror make economic sense? If the Space Shuttle was operational, what would be cheaper? A retrieval mission or a new mirror?

Sure, with modern adaptive optics and honeycomb mirrors, you don't need so large single ones, multiple small ones would probably be cheaper, but still....

 The primary mirror is defective, there are corrections, its useless. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Flawed_mirror

 

Edited June 25, 2016 by PB666

[Shpaget]

9 minutes ago, PB666 said:

 The primary mirror is defective, there are corrections, its useless. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Flawed_mirror

 

Oh, I know it's flawed. I even wrote it in my post, but in one of the multiple checks and edits I made before posting, I suppose that part got lost. I guess I should have made another check.

What I meant to ask was, if the mirror was not flawed, and if it was installed on a new platform, equiped with newer generation electronics, would it make sense? After all, the mirror of that size and precission is pretty expensive.

[Tex_NL]

15 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Oh, I know it's flawed. I even wrote it in my post, but in one of the multiple checks and edits I made before posting, I suppose that part got lost. I guess I should have made another check.

What I meant to ask was, if the mirror was not flawed, and if it was installed on a new platform, equiped with newer generation electronics, would it make sense? After all, the mirror of that size and precission is pretty expensive.

So you're suggesting to send up an new telescope, everything except the mirror. And then place Hubble's mirror in that new telescope.
Doing this you will indeed save weight and money by not launching the mirror. But you will need some very sophisticated equipment or a long EVA (most likely both) to move the mirror. The resources required for this will be more that the weight and money saved by not launching a mirror in the first place.
It's not worth it.

[cantab]

39 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

What I meant to ask was, if the mirror was not flawed, and if it was installed on a new platform, equiped with newer generation electronics, would it make sense? After all, the mirror of that size and precission is pretty expensive.

I think the mirror would still only be a small part of the cost, especially as making a 2.4m mirror now is probably a lot cheaper than it was in the 1980s.