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Comment by jagger27 | Hacker News Reader

Hubble is such a productive piece of an equipment. What a shame there has been only one pointing outwards all these years.

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>What a shame there has been only one pointing outwards all these years.

Let's not forget that initially it was considered a massive failure. There simply was no way for NASA to build another in the 90s. What's truly remarkable is how the ROI went from unknown, to negative, and then was a massive long-term success.

Let's not forget that NRO donated multiple Hubble level satellites. NASA had no budget to utilize them, so they were not used. Of course there were other logistics involved that made the "gifts" not so practical. However, the thing that gets me is that if the NRO was willing to donate these satellites tells me that they have better than Hubble quality imaging looking inwards and absolutely have multiple of them.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is one of them. They still had to change the optics for astronomical purposes.

Aren't they using one right now? [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telesc...

I guess you can say "using right now", but from your link:

"October 2026 (contracted) – May 2027 (commitment)"

So more like, in the works to use one of them. It does appear that it is beyond the planning to use stage. I did not see the word Boeing once in that link, so maybe they have an actual shot of hitting those dates.

> Let's not forget that initially it was considered a massive failure

Why was that? Were fewer discoveries made than hoped?

Spherical aberration in its primary mirror (and other issues) discovered shortly after launch.

https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-missions/what-was-w...

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/observatory/design/o...

It initially was a massive failure? They made a preventable mistake that cost ~$1B.

It's not quite that bad.

Hubble is primarily optical wavelengths. The other Great [space-based] Observatories are in IR, X-rays, and gamma rays:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Observatories_program

The notion of grouping them as "Great Observatories", AFAIK, came circa the mid-1980s, after Hubble was already getting underway in earnest.

*were, for spitzer and Compton

It's a sad state of affairs that we as a society have only been able to prioritize sending up one single Hubble, while the US alone has sent up several dozen equivalent KH-9 and superior KH-11 satellites to look at Earth for classified military purposes.

I know there are other space-based telescopes (James Webb being larger and superior, others being much smaller and more specialized than Hubble) and lots of ground-based telescopes. I don't dispute that keeping an eye on Soviet missile development and other spy satellite tasks was and is an important mission that has significant, immediate consequences for our species than the informative and gorgeous photos of space that the Hubble mission produces. I'm just disappointed that the combination of human nature and politics makes this a reasonable outcome.

JWST took 20 years to build. Could be many more but still not bad at all.

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