First fruits of Bush's new Moon policy:

[Theophylact]

Hubble Servicing Mission Canceled.

[Toadman]

Uh huh

[whitebeard21]

If this wasn't so serious it would be funny. This is starting to read like a Marx Brothers script from the 40s. Or maby the three stooges.

It seems it has been reduced to [tell them anything they are too dumb to know any better after all deficits don't matter].

[J-Excel]

Credible link?

[J-Excel]

Google comes up short on news about this. The only article it found has to do with how great this'll be for the tech industry.

[Atomic Rooster]

Jeez. The Hubble was messed up from the beginning. The lenses were ground wrong making for a fuzzy picture, and now we find out the gyros don't last very long. Sounds like they should just let the thing die a slow death than to throw more money at it.

[Barney]

Originally posted by J-Excel
Google comes up short on news about this. The only article it found has to do with how great this'll be for the tech industry.

Try this: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ie...vicing+mission

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0401/16hubblesm4/

AR, despite its flaws, Hubble is still one of the best telescopes in the world. Well, I suppose technically it isn't, it's the best telescope in space. (As far as we know. )

[J-Excel]

Ah,

Also found this bit of news...

TOM BEARDEN: Those who worry about losing Hubble have even more immediate concerns. In the past, Hubble has depended on shuttle launched servicing missions to make fixes and install improved instruments.

The final planned servicing mission was to have occurred next year. It was supposed to install the cosmic origins spectrograph, an instrument designed by Shull's colleagues to help him to search for dark matter, the mysterious substance now thought to hold the whole universe together.

A distinguished panel of scientists has called for yet another servicing mission to extend Hubble's life to 2020, but the space shuttle Columbia accident has thrown everyone's plans into disarray. NASA officials say very clearly that in the future, shuttle flights must be planned to allow the vehicle to reach a safe haven at the international space station, or to be able to make repairs in space. The problem is, shuttles can't reach Hubble's orbit and still have enough fuel to reach the station. And astronauts can't yet repair the shuttle in orbit.

Ed Weiler is NASA's chief of space science.

The canceled maintenance doesn't have jack-crap to do with Bush's plans for the Moon and Mars. It's because it's not safe in the current views of NASA. This is just more liberal bitching based on emotion over reason. And they slam Bush for almost, possibly, kinda linking al Qaeda to Saddam. Bah!

BTW, the Webb Telescope will be launched in 2011.

[Gomer]

J-excel:
Do you actually think what the president has proposed are feasible options?

A. an all new space vehicle capable both of flying back and forth to the space station and of flying to the Moon tested by 2008 on a budget of 12 billion $$??

B. A moon base... WTF do we need a moon base for?

C. Wait, we need a moon base to support missions to Mars. If you did your homework you would find flying to Mars via the moon is idiotic.

D. Do you have any idea at how expensive a mission to mars would be?

IMO it is bad enough for Curious George to play cowboy in Iraq or Spaceman on Mars... but to think we have money for both??????

[Chuckiechan]

The issue has to do with the Chinese planning to land on the moon.

We don't want to cede the high ground to the commies! Plus if we have a base, they may want to cooperate with us for access to it.

Besides putting scientists and engineers to work in technologically challenging field always produces benefits for all of us.

Kennedy was only interested in the space program because of the Russian successes.