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fpbIf you have any curiousity at all about science, you must have heard of the Hubble space telescope. Sent into orbit by Nasa over a decade ago, it has become, after a rocky start, a tremendous resource for astronomy and advanced physics research. It can see several times further than any telescope on Earth, not being hampered by atmosphere.
Now we hear that NASA, having too many other commitments and suffering from the after-effects of the last space shuttle disaster (I do not know how much one space shuttle costs, but evidently they cannot afford to build one or two to replace the destroyed ones), has decided not to repair it any longer and to condemn it to slow death. This is in my view very undesirable, especially since the missions to which it is being sacrificed are the building of the permanent space station, which already looks like an expensive white elephant, and a new moon landing project, which is utterly unnecessary. Neither of these projects is as important and promising as the Hubble.
NASA promises that a new and much improved space telescope will eventually replace it. But even if this new project is not itself delayed or destroyed, the earliest date in which it will come into commission is 2011. Even if it happens, and even accepting that big science projects such as space telescopes do take this sort of time, this is still several years in which the study of space will greatly slacken. And that is rather sad.
Now we hear that NASA, having too many other commitments and suffering from the after-effects of the last space shuttle disaster (I do not know how much one space shuttle costs, but evidently they cannot afford to build one or two to replace the destroyed ones), has decided not to repair it any longer and to condemn it to slow death. This is in my view very undesirable, especially since the missions to which it is being sacrificed are the building of the permanent space station, which already looks like an expensive white elephant, and a new moon landing project, which is utterly unnecessary. Neither of these projects is as important and promising as the Hubble.
NASA promises that a new and much improved space telescope will eventually replace it. But even if this new project is not itself delayed or destroyed, the earliest date in which it will come into commission is 2011. Even if it happens, and even accepting that big science projects such as space telescopes do take this sort of time, this is still several years in which the study of space will greatly slacken. And that is rather sad.
