BoneDaddy Posted September 30, 2008 Report Share Posted September 30, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Side A of HST's Science Data Formatter has failed. This happened Saturday. There is a side B, but transitioning over to it is about a 2-week process. The B-side has not been turned on since ground tests, at least 17 years ago. All science work with HST is suspended at this time. HST Service Mission 4, which was to have flown on October 14, is suspended while they see if the spacecraft will resume regular operations with the redundant data formatter B-side. Well dammit there goes my MERPS gaming group. About half of them maintain that darn thing, and they'll be so busy with that we'll never find out what's up in that tower. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted September 30, 2008 Report Share Posted September 30, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Meh. Time to replace Hubble with something better anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enforcer84 Posted September 30, 2008 Report Share Posted September 30, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Meh. Time to replace Hubble with something better anyway. Iubble? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted September 30, 2008 Report Share Posted September 30, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Bubble. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveZilla Posted October 1, 2008 Report Share Posted October 1, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Rubble. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 1, 2008 Report Share Posted October 1, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Meh. Time to replace Hubble with something better anyway. I tend to agree with you ... it's really been just limping along for several years now ... but it remains a truly great observatory, and capable of things no other instrument can do. Besides, with the current administration and the economic climate it's leaving behind, the chance of replacing it with something better is ... small. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveZilla Posted October 1, 2008 Report Share Posted October 1, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Side A of HST's Science Data Formatter has failed. This happened Saturday. There is a side B, but transitioning over to it is about a 2-week process. The B-side has not been turned on since ground tests, at least 17 years ago. All science work with HST is suspended at this time. HST Service Mission 4, which was to have flown on October 14, is suspended while they see if the spacecraft will resume regular operations with the redundant data formatter B-side. Crapcrapcrap! I had vacation time approved, alerted relatives that I was coming to visit, and tickets to the space center purchased for this launch. Now I have to decide whether to go ahead with a vacation sans-NASA, or postpone until mid=November for the next launch. Technology should just *work* dammit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveZilla Posted October 1, 2008 Report Share Posted October 1, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings I tend to agree with you ... it's really been just limping along for several years now ... but it remains a truly great observatory, and capable of things no other instrument can do. Besides, with the current administration and the economic climate it's leaving behind, the chance of replacing it with something better is ... small. What about The James Webb Space Telescope? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 1, 2008 Report Share Posted October 1, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Yeah, you've got more choices than we had ... and it's still no good. We went down to the Cape last December for a Shuttle launch, which was scrubbed literally as we got to the front of the line to get in. Eventually it went up in February. We still had a good trip, but there's no denying the fundamental disappointment of missing the launch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 1, 2008 Report Share Posted October 1, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings What about The James Webb Space Telescope? Different instrument, optimized for the medium to far infrared. HST was largely for the visual, ultraviolet, and near infrared. JWST too will be a Great Observatory, but it won't do the same stuff as HST. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted October 1, 2008 Report Share Posted October 1, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Meh. Time to replace Hubble with something better anyway. Iubble? Bubble. Rubble. Picard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveZilla Posted October 1, 2008 Report Share Posted October 1, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Klingon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveZilla Posted October 1, 2008 Report Share Posted October 1, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Different instrument' date=' optimized for the medium to far infrared. HST was largely for the visual, ultraviolet, and near infrared. JWST too will be a Great Observatory, but it won't do the same stuff as HST.[/quote'] Y'know, it strikes me as odd that they don't find a way to move the HST to be next to the ISS. That way, if there's any problems, you just call the station and they suit up, jet over, and fix it. NASA's very own on-call "Geek Squad". While this would lower the HST from ~589 km to the ISS's ~350 km, there are likely unavoidable ramifications of such a change in altitude (not to mention the change in orbit inclination). Changes like more radiative warming from the Earth, being "below" instead of "above" much of the space junk (conjecture), and not to mention the much shorter orbital period. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 1, 2008 Report Share Posted October 1, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings While this would lower the HST from ~589 km to the ISS's ~350 km' date=' there are likely unavoidable ramifications of such a change in altitude (not to mention the change in orbit inclination). Changes like more radiative warming from the Earth, being "below" instead of "above" much of the space junk (conjecture), and not to mention the much shorter orbital period. [/quote'] I think the orbital period is the killer, though the pointing jitter (you're coupled that much more strongly to nonspherical things on Earth) might be an even larger problem. While the fraction of the orbit when you can stay open (while looking at a target not near the pole) is the same, it means the longest exposure time is shorter by a factor of (350/589/^(3/2), more than a factor of two. For faint objects, that means you have that much more trouble beating the noise. Also, it commits you to more frequent servicing, because the orbit decay increases as you go lower, and messing with the telescope is always traumatic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
archermoo Posted October 1, 2008 Report Share Posted October 1, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings I think the orbital period is the killer' date=' though the pointing jitter (you're coupled that much more strongly to nonspherical things on Earth) might be an even larger problem. While the fraction of the orbit when you can stay open (while looking at a target not near the pole) is the same, it means the longest exposure time is shorter by a factor of (350/589/^(3/2), more than a factor of two. For faint objects, that means you have that much more trouble beating the noise. Also, it commits you to more frequent servicing, because the orbit decay increases as you go lower, and messing with the telescope is always traumatic.[/quote'] Obviously what we need is a telescope that is in solar orbit instead of earth orbit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted October 1, 2008 Report Share Posted October 1, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Why the smiley? That's exactly right. The astronomers I was working with back when HST was in development spent a lot of time wailing and gnashing their teeth because it was going to be launched on the shuttle, which meant it'd be in LEO. Exposure times would be shorter, there would be thermal, gravitational, and reflectivity interference issues with Earth, orbital decay, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria, etc. In my experience the only thing astronomers hated more than the shuttle was the ISS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
archermoo Posted October 1, 2008 Report Share Posted October 1, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Why the smiley? Because I felt sure that Cancer would MUCH prefer one in solar orbit, and that it was unlikely to actually happen anytime soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Posted October 1, 2008 Report Share Posted October 1, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Why don't they launch it to one of the Lagrange points? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
archermoo Posted October 1, 2008 Report Share Posted October 1, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Why don't they launch it to one of the Lagrange points? Much more expensive to get it there, and much harder to maintain it would be among the list of reasons I would guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted October 2, 2008 Report Share Posted October 2, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings A local boy' date=' Neil Boyd, just won America's Got Talent.[/quote'] Was he the opera singer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Posted October 2, 2008 Report Share Posted October 2, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Was he the opera singer? yep. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveZilla Posted October 2, 2008 Report Share Posted October 2, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Because I felt sure that Cancer would MUCH prefer one in solar orbit' date=' and that it was unlikely to actually happen anytime soon.[/quote'] The James Webb Space Telescope is to be in Solar orbit, or more precisely, to be stationed at the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrangian Point (1.5 million miles from Earth). So it's not going to go round-and-round the Earth. However, this makes non-robotic service missions effectively impossible for the foreseeable future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 2, 2008 Report Share Posted October 2, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings The Shuttle was designed around HST: the latter barely fits, in terms of both linear dimensions and mass, in Atlantis's cargo bay. That was a politically-imposed thing on both Shuttle and HST way back in the very early days. LEO is suboptimal, but an inherent part of the appeal of HST was that it was serviceable: you could go to it and swap instruments. That turned out to be absolutely essential, and there's no question it extended the lifetime of the telescope as well as magnified the scientific output (and would have done so even without the need for the corrective optics package due to the mis-ground primary mirror). Certainly back then, there was no place you could have a spacecraft that a human could get to UNLESS it was LEO. So LEO is suboptimal, but any instrument in space with HST's capacity in that era had to be in LEO. The astronomy community hated Space Station because the initial sales pitch to Congress and the public was that it would be a great place to do science, and that was never, ever true. It soaked up a lot dollars some people thought were benefiting us, and there is the near-unanimous opinion in the astronomy community that we got no such benefit whatsoever (and, by preempting money and emphasis from real science, it probably hurt us). Webb ST cannot be in LEO: it's an infrared instrument, and the IR background of Earth precludes the instrument being close to the planet. So it has to go somewhere else (and one of the "unstable" Lagrangian points seems optimal). But Webb is being launched with the Ariane 5, and will not be serviceable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted October 2, 2008 Report Share Posted October 2, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings An observation by an Australian friend:Alright so the Chinese call their spaceguys Taikonauts and the Americans label theirs Astronauts. Russia has the coolest name for them' date=' Cosmonauts. Can you imagine what they'd call Australian spacefarers? That's right, they'd be called Bruce. Anything else would just make it too complicated.[/quote'] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted October 2, 2008 Report Share Posted October 2, 2008 Re: Musings on Random Musings Oh please. The Aussies would come up with the best term ever, like "wangarangs" or "dooflidgerrididjerries". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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