I don’t think you’ll see this Florida Today editorial cartoon posted on too many cubicle walls and bulletin boards in NASA’s Office of Exploration Systems.
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Beware the exploration bullyI don’t think you’ll see this Florida Today editorial cartoon posted on too many cubicle walls and bulletin boards in NASA’s Office of Exploration Systems. 9 comments to Beware the exploration bully |
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Damned scientists. The Hubble astrophysics/astronomy cabal thinks NASA should be theirs and theirs only. There’s no clearer example of ivory tower thinking.
I still maintain the public would lose all interest in the Hubble if they knew the images they put on thier Windows wallpaper are doctored by scientists to make them look better. How many people in the general public crying over the Hubble have heard of flase color imaging?
Spitzer and other orbital observatories, as well as Earth based telescopes, produce pictures just as “pretty”. These others however don’t have nearly as good a PR department.
I have to say I’ve never been that impressed with NASA’s PR. I think their press releases have a wide circulation. That’s about it.
I’ve been wondering about those terrestrial scopes recently. Astronomers have been crowing about the advances in adaptive optics for a number of years, why are they crying so much about losing their space-based visible-wavelength capability?
If the astronomical community is realy so concerned about having that capability, let them step up to the plate with the ways and means of doing something about Hubble. By the same token, NASA needs to broadcast that it’s at least willing to entertain the notion of a private consortium of academia & alumni, industry, foundations and wealthy benefactors stepping in and taking control of Hubble. The biggest hurdle would be convincing NASA that you are installing the means to deorbit/boost it, but if they can do it, great!
Politically, the government has to wrest control of the Hubble from NASA so that real alternatives can be considered to free the cost from US taxpayers. I’d love to see the Hubble saved, but the shuttle is needed to finish the ISS, and all remaining flights need to be directed to that end.
The real lesson of Hubble is that human servicing of orbital assets is a phenomenally powerful capability that can allow us to derive greater value from those assets. Remember, without the first servicing mission the Hubble would have been essentially written off by the scientific community and we would have had adaptive optics five years earlier. By fixing it, with humans, we were able to make it one of the most sublime tools ever created by the hand of man.
>>> why are they crying so much about losing their space-based visible-wavelength capability?
Because they want their cake and eat it too.
If there were two Hubble class scopes in orbit right now, and a second generaion Super-Hubble ready to launch next year, there would still be a group who would scream bloody murder if NASA decided to de-orbit one of the two on orbit.
Ken Murphy wrote:
“Astronomers have been crowing about the advances in adaptive optics for a number of years, why are they crying so much about losing their space-based visible-wavelength capability?”
There seems to be a lot of ignorance about this subject, which is understandable because the subject is obscure.
Hubble has a UV capability that is unique. It is one of the big things that will be lost. In addition, as it has been explained to me, even if adaptive optics for ground telescopes were perfect (which they are not), they only work on point sources, NOT on wide field sources. In other words, you can get a sharp picture of a single star, but not a wider field showing many stars or galaxies. I believe that the next phase of Hubble research was going to be aimed at wider field surveys. As my astronomer friend (who is not very fond of Hubble) said, it is never going to be possible to do things on the ground with adaptive optics as well as they can be done with Hubble right now.
Also, keep in mind that the instruments that were planned on being installed on Hubble would have made it far more powerful than it currently is, and far more powerful than any ground-based telescopes. So although Hubble’s “lead” in astronomy is eroding, it would have regained much more of a lead if it was updated as planned.
That said, keep in mind that we are talking about niches here. Hubble is primarily a visible/UV telescope. There are many other areas of the spectrum that astronomy is interested in. In the past decade there has been a growing consensus within the astronomy community that much more attention needs to be devoted to infrared, which is why the next big telescope is an IR telescope, not a simple Hubble replacement.
The policy debate is actually pretty complicated. The astronomical community has established a priority list for their research. Hubble is part of the current priority. But they envisioned that it would eventually go away (early next decade) and that it would be replaced by other priorities, such as infrared research and planet-finding. Think of it this way–they anticipated having high quality telescopes in orbit for the next 15 years or so–Hubble until 2011 or longer, JWST around 2013, and then Terrestrial Planet Finder around 2015 or so (although TPF is of interest to a different group of astronomers). The problem is that Hubble will die around 2008, meaning that there will now be a gap of five years or longer between big orbiting telescopes (albeit with different capabilities). There are some significant drawbacks associated with gaps like this, such as the fact that people are driven out of the profession if they have nothing to do for half a decade.
The astronomers’ attitude now is that they would like to see Hubble continued. But NASA has indicated that continuing Hubble will cost a lot more than it previously said it would cost. (Previously NASA said that a shuttle mission to Hubble would cost perhaps $500 million. Now they claim that it will cost four times that amount.) This naturally poses a threat to the future priorities like the James Webb Space Telescope, the Terrestrial Planet Finder, and Constellation-X.
There are many responses to this. One is to say that NASA is being disingenuous and is now charging a lot more money than before in order to kill a program it no longer wants to do (like Hubble) by making it too painful. Another response is to say that the rules have changed post-Columbia. And another response is to say that the astronomy community has to decide whether to cut the baby in half or to give it up–in other words, to make painful choices.
Mr. Murphy also wrote:
“If the astronomical community is realy so concerned about having that capability, let them step up to the plate with the ways and means of doing something about Hubble. By the same token, NASA needs to broadcast that it’s at least willing to entertain the notion of a private consortium of academia & alumni, industry, foundations and wealthy benefactors stepping in and taking control of Hubble. The biggest hurdle would be convincing NASA that you are installing the means to deorbit/boost it, but if they can do it, great!”
This demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of how astronomy is funded in the world. There is very little “private” funding of professional astronomy, either in the US or elsewhere. The money comes from governments. In the US, most astronomy research is funded by the National Science Foundation, although NASA certainly pays for some big-ticket items like Hubble. So in order for them to “fund it themselves,” they have to get the money from someplace entirely new.
And of course, one could turn this argument right back at you–“If the space exploration community is realy so concerned about exploring the moon and Mars, let them step up to the plate with the ways and means of funding it themselves without government money.” Or substitute ISS for that. Why not insist that ISS be completed with private funding? Why say that the astronomers are the only ones who are complaining when other programs take their money?
Put another way, what is under discussion are government spending priorities. What should the government (NASA) fund and why? One cannot simply dismiss one group’s interests as unimportant. At least, that is not how the Congress, NASA, and the science community view these issues.
Dwayne – As usual, nicely articulated.
Well, there are probably a few things the astronomers could do to keep themselves busy, sorting through the existing data, collating, indexing with past data, that sort of thing. Who knows how many interesting discoveries await us in the voluminous amounts of data we’ve collected in recent years. A sort of pause to take a breather and reflect more fully on the data we’ve already collected, to help better direct future efforts.
Any misunderstanding on how astronomy is funded is based on your implication that the money can only come from government. Each of the sources I listed, “a private consortium of academia & alumni, industry, foundations and wealthy benefactors”, have each been sources of astronomical funding in the past. My point is that if the work of the Hubble is that important, and the constituency that broad, then that constituency will find the means of saving Hubble. If not, then perhaps the social priority of the Hubble is less than some would have us believe.
Or put another way, if astronomy can only get funding from governments, then they’ve got much bigger things to worry about than the Hubble.
Additionally, comparing the Hubble to the VSE is inapproriate, as the Hubble is but a tool, albeit a very sophisticated one, while the VSE is a strategy and blueprint for the development and deployment of future tools. This development strategy will likely be focused on NASA’s scientific ends, or this could be the one chance for the rest of the U.S.A. to go to space too. From what I’ve seen so far, though, I’m getting the distinctly malodorous impression of warmed over SEI.
Ken Murphy wrote:
“Well, there are probably a few things the astronomers could do to keep themselves busy, sorting through the existing data, collating, indexing with past data, that sort of thing.”
Actually, during a discussion with an astronomer friend of mine Tuesday night he raised exactly this issue. He is a non-Hubble astronomer, but the way he put it was essentially like this: “When my spacecraft dies, I will be out of a job. Now my plan was to go work on the _next_ spacecraft in my field. But that one is getting increasingly delayed due to funding cuts. If that situation continues, I will be forced to leave this field entirely, after gaining nearly two decades of highly-specialized experience in it. I don’t think that I could then come back after a period of 5-7 years.” (By the way, he could work in other fields, but it would be a major career blow.) Now if this happens to a whole class of experts, then their skill set is lost and cannot be easily recovered when NASA undertakes the next major project in this field a decade from now.
Now what he proposed is that one way to lessen the impact of this gap is essentially to pay these people to do archiving and data analysis during that gap, rather than kick them all out on the street. The astronomers with spacecraft-specific knowledge are in many ways less expendable than, say, aerospace engineers who can work on other spacecraft projects in the military, civilian or commercial sectors.
As he noted, the skilled astronomers are relatively cheap, it’s the hardware that is expensive. I imagine that this is not a perfect option, because it will become harder to recruit new people to the field if all they are doing is digging through old data. But at least you reduce the loss of the skilled workforce.
However, although I assume you know this, when you stated that there are “a few things the astronomers could do to keep themselves busy,” this of course requires that somebody _pay_ them to keep busy. Even in the private workforce bosses understand that they cannot tell their skilled employees to work without pay until the company wins its next contract–at least not if they expect to keep those employees around.
(And I would point out that these kinds of “industrial base” issues occur in many fields where the government is really the only customer. A great example is nuclear submarine construction. The United Kingdom stopped building nuclear submarines for a decade. When they decided to start building them again a couple of years ago they learned to their dismay that they had lost much of their capability. They are now paying American firms for engineering support that they once had themselves.)
Ken Murphy also wrote:
“Any misunderstanding on how astronomy is funded is based on your implication that the money can only come from government. Each of the sources I listed, “a private consortium of academia & alumni, industry, foundations and wealthy benefactors”, have each been sources of astronomical funding in the past. My point is that if the work of the Hubble is that important, and the constituency that broad, then that constituency will find the means of saving Hubble. If not, then perhaps the social priority of the Hubble is less than some would have us believe.”
This still demonstrates a tremendous misunderstanding of the relationships and the immense amounts of money involved. Do you honestly believe that a private consortium could be found to foot the $2 billion bill for Hubble servicing? Given the fact that a privately funded effort would have no access to the shuttle or the astronaut corps, such an effort would have to use a robotic servicing approach. This has already been ruled as highly risky and expensive in two reports produced at NASA/congressional request. See:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=310508
http://ww.space.com/news/ft_hubble_cost_041207.html
The Aerospace Corp. determined that a robotic repair mission would cost $2 billion and would likely fail. Can you cite any examples of groups that raised $2 billion for a risky, non-profit project?
Mr. Murphy also wrote:
“Or put another way, if astronomy can only get funding from governments, then they’ve got much bigger things to worry about than the Hubble.”
The _majority_ of their money comes from governments. Not all. But certainly the big ticket items require government funding and always have.
Mr. Murphy wrote:
“Additionally, comparing the Hubble to the VSE is inapproriate, as the Hubble is but a tool, albeit a very sophisticated one, while the VSE is a strategy and blueprint for the development and deployment of future tools.”
Not at all. As I pointed out in my previous posting, you were proposing changing the rules of the game. Both Hubble and the VSE (and lunar and Mars exploration, for that matter) have been funded by government. What you were suggesting was that if the “astronomers” really want to save Hubble, then they should do it with their own money. But why single out this group of people? Why not apply that same standard to everything that NASA does? Why not require entirely private funding for the space station or the space shuttle?
Note that I am only explaining here, not defending Hubble astronomers uber alles. What is currently under question are priorities for a _government_ space program. It is perfectly legit to argue that astronomers do not deserve the priority that they have been given. However, considering the public, press, and congressional uproar that accompanied the Hubble announcement, it is clear that there is considerable support for astronomical research.
But the way that it was being discussed here by you and others implied that for some reason you never explained, the astronomers should not be part of the government space program, rather than arguing about their ranking in the priorities list.