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Hubble is back

nasa.gov

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Re: Hubble is back

#51

Post by ambicapter »

ourmandave wrote: post #35

From this link... http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/team_hubble/#hubbletime Each year astronomers from dozens of countries vie for precious minutes of Hubble's unrivaled view of the cosmos. A review committee made up of experts from the astronomical community determines which proposed observations address pressing scientific questions and make the best use of the telescope's capabilities. Each year more than 1,000…

Some of them might not actually need Hubble specifically. There are a fair amount of observation platforms, maybe they can get their work done on another satellite.

Re: Hubble is back

#52

Post by FireForce »

vkou wrote: post #46
seibelj wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, the American Medical Association is run by doctors and they artificially limit the supply new doctors by capping the number of medical schools. So sometimes having the fox guard the henhouse is not the best way to save money.

It doesn't matter how many medical schools or students exist, if there aren't enough residency positions for them. And the AMA does not control the number of residency positions.

Podiatry in the US has this problem in a big way.

Re: Hubble is back

#53

Post by superkuh »

Hubble is back but nasa.gov is black. A blank black page. All because their web devs wanted (or were pushed into using) some crap front-end lib that has no fall-back for no javascript.

nasa.gov's accessibility is absolutely terrible for a government website.

Re: Hubble is back

#54

Post by jldugger »

Didn't the NSA gift NASA two hubble class telescopes with a note along the lines 'bought a ton on bulk discount and never ending up using these two before the new model was released'?

Re: Hubble is back

#55

Post by planteen »

mushufasa wrote: post #43
planteen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I love space and science, but after working with NASA for a while, you see some of the problems. NIH syndrome is a huge problem, especially between GSFC and JPL. There are incompetent engineers who will have a well paying job at NASA for life. And then there the passionate, brilliant scientists and engineers the that dream and make it all work. A reduction in force of dead weight would go a long way but it will…

i think that's true generally of any organization. pareto -- 80% of work done by 20% of workers. there's also some other law about the work being done by the square root of the total workers.

I agree the 80/20 is true of most organizations. But producing nothing and keep your job for life as long as you show up for work is not common in private industry. On the private side, I see developers get let go all the time for inadequate work.

Re: Hubble is back

#56

Post by wongarsu »

jldugger wrote: post #54

Didn't the NSA gift NASA two hubble class telescopes with a note along the lines 'bought a ton on bulk discount and never ending up using these two before the new model was released'?

Yes, but it was the NRO (I doubt the NSA owns any telescopes).

NASA has plans to maybe use one of them sometime, but because of how expensive the James Webb Telescope turned out to be doesn't have money to do anything with the second.

The wikipedia article gives some more context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...

Re: Hubble is back

#57

Post by yellowapple »

wongarsu wrote: post #56
jldugger wrote: post #54

Didn't the NSA gift NASA two hubble class telescopes with a note along the lines 'bought a ton on bulk discount and never ending up using these two before the new model was released'?

Yes, but it was the NRO (I doubt the NSA owns any telescopes). NASA has plans to maybe use one of them sometime, but because of how expensive the James Webb Telescope turned out to be doesn't have money to do anything with the second. The wikipedia article gives some more context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...

NASA has gotten out of quite a few pickles by using Earthside clones/spares of spacecraft to troubleshoot issues with the ones actually in space. Even if NASA had the money to launch the spare telescope, they'd be wise not to.

Re: Hubble is back

#58

Post by BurningFrog »

planteen wrote: post #40
pmorici wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can achieve impressive results and still be "wasting money" if there were more cost efficient ways to achieve an equivalent result. I don't have an opinion on NASA but that could be the point of view those people are coming from.

Yep. I love space and science, but after working with NASA for a while, you see some of the problems. NIH syndrome is a huge problem, especially between GSFC and JPL. There are incompetent engineers who will have a well paying job at NASA for life. And then there the passionate, brilliant scientists and engineers the that dream and make it all work. A reduction in force of dead weight would go a long way but it will…

From what I hear the original "startup" NASA from the 60s was a no deadweight organization that efficiently cranked out world class space flight.

That it since followed the path of every other monopoly bureaucracy was of course unavoidable.

Re: Hubble is back

#59

Post by ByThyGrace »

rzzzt wrote: post #5
gdubs wrote: post #2

“Last week the operations team commanded Hubble to perform numerous maneuvers, or turns, and switched the gyro between different operational modes, which successfully cleared what was believed to be blockage between components inside the gyro” And here I am on Earth, barely capable of debugging JavaScript code.

I shake my phone vigorously if the small motor gets stuck and stops buzzing.

And it works, doesn't it?

Re: Hubble is back

#60

Post by HenryBemis »

SpikeDad wrote: post #18

Reading about the specs and the planned degradation of the gyros is a very interesting exercise in planned reduction of a service. They know the gyros will eventually give out and they have contingency plans around what kinds of science they can continue to do even when they're down to 1 gyro. Very impressive. I'm always discouraged hearing people say NASA is wasting money and science and that's just not true IMHO.

While people may think that this is wasting money, I see that this these teams gain unieque knowledge and experience on how to resolve issues on "machines far far away", and if we are ever to explore/move humans to a new planet, you want THOSE exact teams as 'helpdesk' that use anything and everything to bring things back to life and operation.
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