Re: NASA Announces a New Servicing Mission to the Hubble Space Telescope

Eric Gisse wrote:
Sam Wormley wrote:

NASA Announces a New Servicing Mission to the Hubble Space Telescope
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html


I understand that the majority of the money is already spent [the new
equipment for the Hubble was built and ready to go long ago], but why
is it more cost-effective to launch a shuttle and repair it?

The servicing missions were originally terminated due to "safety considerations". If something goes wrong, the shuttle is unable to reach ISS ("safe harbor") from the Hubble orbit.

I honestly wonder why we can't launch a replacement for Hubble [the
Webb telescope is NOT a replacement] rather than continuing to maintain
what is about a 15 year old piece of hardware.

The detectors are not as old as the mirror, and the design of the telescope was to allow for these upgrades. Launching a 2-ton replacement detector is always cheaper than launching a 50-ton telescope.

Mabey I'm confused and it really does cost more to build another. I
figure since we already got the plans, there would a whole lot less R&D
time because that ground has already been traveled once.

The expense is not the hardware, the expense is the people/time and paperwork. The second telescope would still have to go through all the flight-qualification testing that the first one did. Plus, someone would undoubtably want to re-visit many of the original engineering trade-offs to determine if a more optimal solution could now be reached, taking advantage of technological advances. Which would probably escalate the cost well past the original price tag.



--
Andrew Resnick, Ph.D.
Department of Physiology and Biophysics
Case Western Reserve University
.

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