Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hubble is back

nasa.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–128 of 128 posts

Re: Hubble is back

#121

Post by basementcat »

BurningFrog wrote: post #58
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…

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.

To better appreciate what NASA does, I think it helps to look at its achievements in a different way. Instead of (just) marveling at the big rockets or the rovers on other planets, consider the amount of paperwork that was needed to do these things. Someone had to get approval to move a large amount of high explosive across several state lines, obtain permission to detonate a large amount of this explosive material in a wildlife refuge, coordinate with foreign military agencies to ensure that "yeah that thing you see on your radar going on ballistic trajectory toward your homeland TOTALLY isn't WW3", and mate with a space station partially constructed by a foreign power with which you have sanctions that limit your ability to exchange technical information.

Even though SpaceX has to do some of this, they get to reuse quite a bit of NASA paperwork.

Re: Hubble is back

#122

Post by rrrttrrr »

superkuh wrote: post #53

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.

How is requiring javascript an accessibility problem?

Re: Hubble is back

#123

Post by TeMPOraL »

weinzierl wrote: post #113
cf498 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/percussive_maintenance ftw edit: I have to add, i just found out about the extent of the definition. >make a malfunctioning device or person work.

Packing a punch is not only useful to fix things, but often the best way to get you an answer. Or as my control theory professor used to say: If you want to know how an unknown system reacts, first thing you do is to hit it hard. What he meant was that applying the Heaviside function to the inputs of a system to determine the step response [1] is one of the first things we should do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…

I remember that thinking from control theory classes, but I thought you use a Dirac delta as a hard shove.

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

(Actually, our control classes told us to do both to get a basic view of a system.)

Re: Hubble is back

#124

Post by jsjohnst »

monocasa wrote: post #63
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'?

Wasn't hubble itself a refit of a Keyhole 11 beta?

To my knowledge, no. It’s believed the two satellites NRO gave to NASA were KH-11 though.

Re: Hubble is back

#125

Post by monocasa »

jsjohnst wrote: post #124
monocasa wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't hubble itself a refit of a Keyhole 11 beta?

To my knowledge, no. It’s believed the two satellites NRO gave to NASA were KH-11 though.

They're past KH-11. KH-11 has the solar panels on side like Hubble. WRIST has the solar panel on the top which blocks solar radiation which is a newer design.

Re: Hubble is back

#126

Post by deevolution »

deevolution wrote: post #95
HenryBemis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think its reasonable to assume AI will be able to fix these kinds of problems in the future. They could run simulations of all the possible failures and solutions ahead of time or during operation eventually

Wow lots of AI naysayers here. What kind of person downvotes this kind of comment? Reveal thyself!

Re: Hubble is back

#127

Post by SpikeDad »

ndnxhs wrote: post #94
dmix wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is assuming generational knowledge can be sufficently passed down to be useful in future missions. I'd assume this is quite a niche/specialized skillset they developed for this particular machine. The utility of the knowledge has a limited timeframe which may not justify education of the next generation of scientists. But regardless recording it would likely be helpful as most problems in engineerings seem to re…

We build on the knowledge of those before us. The people who invented the original programming languages are mostly gone and most of us probably don't know how to use the stuff created but future works were based off the findings of those before them and we all benefit from that.

Hubble has been around enough now that the next generation of stellar and space engineers are getting though university and into NASA and other space ventures.

Kids need to see the previous generation has set extraordinary goals to inspire them to set their own goals. What could be more inspiring than a middle school student seeing Hubble launch, being inspired to study and then after college get to participate in what inspired them in the first place.

Re: Hubble is back

#128

Post by mentalhealth »

wildmusings wrote: post #64
mentalhealth wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a profession as wealthy as medicine needs the taxpayer to fund its training is preposterous Most doctors already come from wealthy families (specifically, they have doctor parents) because in addition to the tuition of medical school, there are a variety of other expenses (board examination fees, the undergraduate requirement, interview expenses for both medical school and residency) that are difficult to fund withou…

The rest of us have to compete in a free market for our skills. Why not doctors? I agree that the undergrad requirement is absurd. But it is also just another part of the system that increases entry-barriers and leads to all of these problems, but makes the field more lucrative for a big segment of those who get through it.

Since I can't respond to my own child comment as it was flagged, I'll just note that when I made it, this comment said only:

   The rest of us have to compete in a free market for our skills. Why not doctors?
And the rest was added later.
Post reply on HN