Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure

> [Peter Flannigan, Nixon's assistant] also had become attuned to the reality that there was limited public support for ambitious post-Apollo space activities. On December 6, he sent a memorandum to the president reporting that “the October 6 issue of Newsweek took a poll of 1,321 Americans with household incomes ranging from $5,000 to $15,000 a year. This represents 61% of the white population of the United States and is obviously the heart of your constituency.” Of this group, Flanigan reported, “56% think the government should be spending less money on space exploration, and only 10% think the government should be spending more money” (Logsdon, 92).

Which is ridiculous, and grossly ignores the economic impacts of NASA's efforts (whether manned or unmanned). But no politicians have ever really bothered to make those arguments. During the FY1971 budget process, a robotic grand tour of the solar system[0] (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, possibly Pluto due to the alignment of the outer planets) was quasi-considered and rejected due to cost. The Voyager program came out of that debate, at least. But FY1971 was a nasty year for budgeting, and NASA's budgeting in particular:

> NASA had been caught up in a chaotic confrontation between budget choices and broader fiscal considerations, reinforced by a breakdown in the White House policy-making process. That chaos obscured a stark reality—that through its decisions on the FY1971 NASA budget, the Nixon White House and ultimately the president himself had significantly reduced the priority of the space program among the whole range of government activities. In the form of modest funds for continued study of the space station and space shuttle, NASA’s hopes for the future were still alive, but just barely (99).

That's from John Logsdon's After Apollo? Richard Nixon and the American Space Program,[1] which is a fascinating glimpse into some of the challenges NASA faced.

You're right that, had we aggressively pursued--and funded--unmanned space flight, we likely could have done more science. But realistically, that was never on the cards. The problem with counterfactual scenarios is that we're often comparing them to an idealized scenario that relies on hindsight bias. In 1971, nobody at NASA genuinely thought we'd be limited to LEO for decades afterwards. Likewise, it's easy to look at STS and how it shaped manned spaceflight, and then come up with a list of better policy alternatives that could have been pursued with the same money.

That ignores how the program's original approval was tied to specifics of the Space Shuttle. The program's approval was, in large part, due to NASA's acceptance of major engineering changes to gain support from the military and intelligence community though most of the capability they demanded was never actually used. Likewise, the expected cost savings of a reusable space plane were fundamental to its approval. Those cost savings never materialized, and in fact things went the opposite direction. We know that today, and there were clues even enough early on. But while there were probably better manned spaceflight options, STS--flaws and all--was able to build a wide enough base of political and institutional support to get approval. Other post-Apollo options didn't and couldn't.

But the biggest factor, I think, is that manned spaceflight has cultural meaning. Politicians might eye NASA's small fraction of the federal budget covetously as something they could probably get away with raiding, but to date no one has had the guts to kill our manned spaceflight program outright. Probably because nobody wants to play the bastard who tells kids "sorry, astronauts aren't an option now" or destroy those childhood dreams adult voters remember fondly. Even if those adults now think money could be better spend "here at home" (as if we're spending it "out there" at a Space-Walmart or something...sigh). Instead of crowding out unmanned opportunities, manned spaceflight served as a sort of umbrella to give them just enough political protection to make it.

Absent those perceptions, I think there's a damned good chance that the alternative to manned spaceflight wouldn't have been unmanned spaceflight. It'd have been no spaceflight. Maybe not right away, but eventually. Perhaps that could have changed had there been a president along the way willing to genuinely fight for NASA and was willing to spend the political capital needed to persuade enough voters to recognize the economic and scientific benefits offered. Unfortunately, the electorate was never interested in it enough and politicians never saw fit to try and change that. Particularly because the political benefits of successful space missions generally accrue years after the politicians who initially funded the program are out of office. Compared to that, a bridge with their name on it is practically an immediate win.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour_program

1. https://www.amazon.com/After-Apollo-American-Palgrave-Techno...

The will to do science originates in the urge to explore. Whether we're spending the money to send people or robots, it's not a rational pursuit. We explore because we want to. Why do we want to? No one knows for sure.

Human spaceflight is valuable because things are emotionally different when a human is doing them. That's why spaceflight is so much more expensive when humans are aboard: because we have higher standards for humans, despite the obvious evidence that human life is abundant and cheap. The value of a human to another human is primarily an emotional calculation, not economic.

Even when the mission remote asset is a robot, we focus on the human element. Coverage of robot missions always includes a lot of people cheering at the launch, reactions in the control room, interviews with project leads, etc.

So, I would not be so quick to dismiss human spaceflight based on metrics of efficiency. The whole thing of exploring space is inefficient, and serves no practical purpose. Spaceflight runs on inspiration, and that's something we haven't figured out how to automate (and IMO never will).

This instrument can resolve an angle change of < 0.3 millionths of a degree in one second.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.4828

Disclaimer -- am an author.

Edit: and this instrument, using the autocollimator above, can do the same thing for inertial sensing. Same disclaimer applies. https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4862816

Like saying "it just needs to work until Longhorn ships" ;)

In any case, JWST doesn't have UV capability, so it is not a straightforward replacement of what Hubble does. It just able to look at more distant objects because they've all been red shifted into the IR.

Basically it will be launched in March 2021, if at all.

By the way, every-time the launch year approaches they delay it by a good 2 - 3 years, and this has been the case almost forever.

Can Dragon 2 do what most capsules do and just cycle the capsule interior into vacuum then open the door? (With everyone in suits first, obviously).

Neither did the Apollo moon landers, or the Gemini missions where NASA first tested spacewalks. Instead they just depressurized the whole cabin, making it into one big airlock. Presumably this would work for the Dragon as well.

One of the first was this mission was the last one, it was a difficult repair—SC4 did the first in-orbit repair—to do at the time, especially outside of the telescope. Because when you leave the safety of the shuttle, you’re traveling at a rate of ~17,000MPH and where the hubble orbits, there is a much higher chance of debris floating around than as if they were lower in the atmosphere. So in laymen terms, you’re attached to a cord that is supplying you with O2 and spinning at 17,000 MPH while trying to avoid rocks and other dangerous floating objects.

One other danger was the O2 levels. He said the suits are heavy, all of your tools are attached to you via cords and you have limited time to be outside. If something where to happen in this situation, not only would you become unconscious within seconds from the lack of O2, you’d pretty much be a forever piece of debris floating around the galaxies as your body will never decompose or fall from orbit.

The latter part was one of his biggest worries. He knew that he’s on limited time, he also had to renter the shuttle slow because it’s similar to divers and decompression. If for some reason he went too fast or there was a leak somewhere, his suit would have instantly filled up and the pressure would have blew him apart inside the suit.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(spacecraft)#Main_ante...