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NASA releases Hubble image taken in new pointing mode

science.nasa.gov

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Re: NASA releases Hubble image taken in new pointing mode

#141

Post by ajford »

tho23i43244244 wrote: post #102
tonetegeatinst wrote: post #7

NASA has such a tiny budget in comparison to other stuff....so they really have to stretch that money as far as they can, and especially considering spacecraft....its a very unforgiving production environment. Am I making a joke about deploying in production? Yes, yes I am. But I also know NASA really does the best they can and I am amazed at the insane work and effort that they do to make sure spacecraft they send a…

Imagine the leaps the humanity would see if the US spent a tenth on NASA as it does on "defense" (it'd likely still outspend the next 10 countries, combined, even then on the war-dept.). JFK, come back.

Used to do radio astronomy before switching to software, and we would joke that you could fund all of US science grants for a decade by driving to the local airforce base and stealing couple of jets and their loadouts. It wasn't that far off from accurate, sadly.

Re: NASA releases Hubble image taken in new pointing mode

#142

Post by nxobject »

gclawes wrote: post #134
pavon wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because this isn't the first time Hubble has been down to two working gyros. It happened before in 1999 (replaced a few months later), and they were worried it would happen again after 2003 when the Shuttles were grounded (actually got down to three/six working before replacement in 2009).

I wonder if after Polaris Dawn proves out spacewalking from Dragon, SpaceX will develop the capability to repair the Hubble once again. I doubt it'll be from spacewalks on Dragon, given they probably can't support something as big as an MMU (unless they pull a really cool hat trick), but maybe with Starship. I get that at some point it's more worthwhile to launch a new telescope (maybe one of those donated KENNENs fr…

Who would notice if they just quietly switched Hubble out with its military equivalent? /s

Re: NASA releases Hubble image taken in new pointing mode

#143

Post by andrewflnr »

gclawes wrote: post #134
pavon wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because this isn't the first time Hubble has been down to two working gyros. It happened before in 1999 (replaced a few months later), and they were worried it would happen again after 2003 when the Shuttles were grounded (actually got down to three/six working before replacement in 2009).

I wonder if after Polaris Dawn proves out spacewalking from Dragon, SpaceX will develop the capability to repair the Hubble once again. I doubt it'll be from spacewalks on Dragon, given they probably can't support something as big as an MMU (unless they pull a really cool hat trick), but maybe with Starship. I get that at some point it's more worthwhile to launch a new telescope (maybe one of those donated KENNENs fr…

As a symbol, I think the best thing to do with Hubble is boost it to a long term orbit until it can be properly preserved for history.

Re: NASA releases Hubble image taken in new pointing mode

#144

Post by dahart »

akira2501 wrote: post #136
dahart wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we both need to cite our sources. Mine is this one, which shows the federal budget revenue being comprised of 50% individual income tax in 2023: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59727 NASA’s budget comes from the the federal budget, managed by congress, not directly from the Treasury. I don’t necessarily think that matters, but I don’t know if the federal budget’s revenue differs from the Treasury’s for any re…

> so where did you get the 85% number?? From your own link. What's 52% + 34%? 86%. That's where it comes from. The money you pay in income taxes is divided between these two categories. So, 60% of what you pay as an individual in taxes goes to programs. They like to break this up so that it's harder for average people to apprehend that 86% of all government spending comes out of their pockets and very little from bus…

Are you adding in Social Security and Medicare taxes? Those don’t go to NASA.

Re: NASA releases Hubble image taken in new pointing mode

#145

Post by drivers99 »

xnorswap wrote: post #27
Freebytes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a hard time getting Doom to run on my 486. I only had something like 4MB of RAM if I recall correctly so I had to restart my computer, edit the AUTOEXEC.BAT to remove options that I would use to load Windows, and then boot back into DOS to launch DOOM each time I wanted to play it to get that last bit of memory I needed. Then, when I wanted to run Windows, I had to edit the HIMEM.SYS stuff to get it running aga…

My friend had a 486 (We only had a 386), but it would play doom really well. However, the first step of any gaming session was to reboot the machine with the boot floppy in, which had the right boot settings for gaming performance.

Starting with DOS 6.0 (which came out before DOOM), there was an option to create a menu where you could choose different CONFIG.SYS (and AUTOEXEC.BAT via a variable) options. No need to edit it every time or use a floppy just to get different settings![0]

[0] http://smallvoid.com/article/dos-multiple-configurations.htm...

Re: NASA releases Hubble image taken in new pointing mode

#146

Post by BurningFrog »

dahart wrote: post #113
BurningFrog wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NASA budget is $25B, or about $75 per American.

That’s an average for the year 2024, but as income taxpayers we only pay around half of that, or around $36.40 per American (using the $24.9B 2024 budget and 342M for the 2024 population), or maybe about one week’s morning Starbucks habit for some of us. :P The rest is paid by businesses and other sources. Of course, compared to the amount the military costs & spends, NASA’s really small.

> Of course, compared to the amount the military costs & spends, NASA’s really small.

Compared to the cost of the by far most powerful military organization in human history, which is the foundation for the security order of the planet, pretty much every cost is really small.

Re: NASA releases Hubble image taken in new pointing mode

#147

Post by ChrisBland »

gclawes wrote: post #134
pavon wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because this isn't the first time Hubble has been down to two working gyros. It happened before in 1999 (replaced a few months later), and they were worried it would happen again after 2003 when the Shuttles were grounded (actually got down to three/six working before replacement in 2009).

I wonder if after Polaris Dawn proves out spacewalking from Dragon, SpaceX will develop the capability to repair the Hubble once again. I doubt it'll be from spacewalks on Dragon, given they probably can't support something as big as an MMU (unless they pull a really cool hat trick), but maybe with Starship. I get that at some point it's more worthwhile to launch a new telescope (maybe one of those donated KENNENs fr…

The hardest part of this is actually grappling the satellite. Shuttle had the arm, how will spacex capture?

Re: NASA releases Hubble image taken in new pointing mode

#148

Post by tempnow987 »

akira2501 wrote: post #119
tempnow987 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you look at what they are spending on the entire SLS infrastructure vs what they are getting (vs other science options and/or space exploration options) and basically your mind is blown at how wasteful NASA is. SLS is a $2-$3 billion per launch DISPOSABLE rocket. The orion capsule is going to be something like $20 billion(!). I think things like launch abort and service module with all the propulsion etc are a…

> SLS is a $2-$3 billion per launch DISPOSABLE rocket. That's the estimated cost for the first four launches only. > The orion capsule is going to be something like $20 billion(!). We developed it from scratch and it took 20 years and it's capable of sending a crew to Mars. What do you think this _should_ have cost?

SLS as currently launched doesn't have enough delta-v to even really get to the moon with Orion.

That's why SpaceX is supposed to fly an absolute gargantuan amount of mass both into lunar orbit, then down to the moon, then back off the moon! They are supposedly going to do 5,000 tons out to the moon, orbit, land and take off the entire 5,000 ton starship. Payload may be 100 tons +. It's a big if, but if they can anything close to this it'll be crazy.

Orion is weirdly heavy for the SM, and the SM is weirdly weak (I don't think it got redesigned when SLS came along).

They are trying to fix this at $600m - $1B / year with the Block 1B upper stage.

But SLS after $20B (+ another $20B for orion) definitely CANNOT get folks to moon and back. Orion payload is truly tiny.

I think SLS will be good for maybe some flyby missions to the moon? One way to keep it going would be to do a one rocket mars sample return option / dump Orion totally... That actually seems like a useful approach.

But its not clear to me that old space can do a fixed price contract, they are so used to cost+ they really need to be able to overrun budget. All these projects had initial budgets that are fractions of what they are now but with cost+ that actually is a positive for the contractor. And the headaches on a mars accent and return vehicle would be high.

Re: NASA releases Hubble image taken in new pointing mode

#149

Post by aaronblohowiak »

mturmon wrote: post #120
jagger27 wrote: post #12

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

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

Re: NASA releases Hubble image taken in new pointing mode

#150

Post by jlarocco »

xwolfi wrote: post #130
jlarocco wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point being made is that NASA is wasteful because the people in charge (Congress) told them to be wasteful.

You are in charge. Congress is your employee.

Sure. It doesn't change anything, though.

NASA's doing what they're told, and Congress is doing what we asked them to.

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