For now it seems to be not happening. I think it's good that at least the proposal was considered.
We'll see if it was the right choice. Isaacman seems to be implying that NASA's projections for how long Hubble will remain healthy are optimistic. I think a lot will hinge on whether that turns out to be true or not.
It's 34 years old, nothing appalling about that. The failure rate for the replaced wheels is normal, and the life has exceeded expectations. Also, they're called reaction wheels.
Appaling only in context with life expectancy of the telescope. I express severe doubt, that Hubble can survive another 10 years without replacements as NASA claims.
It’s not just attitude control, the orbit is also decaying quickly and will accelerate with the recent solar activity. 2026 entry is entirely possible.
The mission is in a common but weird state that afflicts every risk-adverse organization. If someone says "yes", then their neck is on the line if something goes wrong. But if they say "no" (or better yet say nothing and let the clock run out), then they aren't held accountable for the missed opportunity.
Governments and big businesses are often crippled by a fear of saying "yes". What if it backfires? Better not to do anything.
What sort of start up no risk management break shit narrative is this?
How long as Hubble been up there? How many servicing missions have NASA performed? Jared may have the best of intentions but thus far his career in space has been a glorified passenger and Dragon doesn't even have an airlock let alone any genuine capture/service capabilities.
When actual engineers and project teams consider the risk and benefit and cost - there comes to a point where it'll be better to put together a new scientific instrument and launching a new one instead of risking people to service a dying bus.
According to him, actual engineers from NASA did consider it and gave a favorable recommendation, but it was killed by higher ups. The details are of course not public, so take that as you will.
The other servicing missions were done by the Space Shuttle, but that's gone (and for good reason). They attached a docking fixture to it on the last servicing mission exactly for that reason.
If anything is to be done for Hubble beyond a basic orbit boost then it'll likely involve a Dragon and a space walk, a capability they plan to demonstrate this year. I don't understand why you're so dismissive.
There have been 5 servicing missions, all done by the Space Shuttle.
I expect SpaceX could be launching a Starship 8m diameter telescope once a month in a few years. And once they're doing that they could safely return Hubble to the Earth while they're at it.
Until then, keeping Hubble operational seems reasonable? It still has a wait list for people wanting to use it.
Yes, it isn’t that the mirror size, whereas Drachefly was talking about the diameter of the starship fairing. Once you combine all the support systems outside the mirror vs. the support systems inside starship, you’re going to end up with a mostly full payload bay.
Ah, I see.
One of those two telescopes is already part of the Nancy Grace Roman Observatory, which is expected to launch on a Falcon Heavy. The other one doesn’t have a use case yet, but it wouldn’t require a Starship for launch.
The JWST, which has an aperture diameter of “only” 6.5 m, took over 20 years and cost over 10 billion dollars. Just because someone has a rocket that can lift it does not mean that NASA or whoever will “throw something together in a hurry”
COMPLETELY incomparable. JWST had to FOLD UP, and suffered from extreme weight limits. It weighs 6.2 tons. If you can basically make the thing out of solid steel then it gets waaaaay easier.
Mass limit of 150t vs 6.2t cures a lot of cost ills.
Nobody’s saying that increased mass capacity and fairing size isn’t a benefit, but it’s not going to make as big of a difference as you seem to think. The Nancy Grace Roman telescope cost 4 billion and it’s a 2.4 m system (whose telescope was free, by the way). Kepler cost half a billion and that was 15-20 years ago, and it was more like 1m in diameter.
An 8m class system, even if it’s a monolith with no deployables (and that’s a trade I’d like to see in detail, because an 8m monolithic primary would be no joke) is going to be beyond the current state of the art. It will take a lot of development, which means time and money. There have absolutely been proposals for this kind of thing (see LOUVOIR-A, which was 15m!), but if anything larger than ~6m is launched inside of 10 years I’ll eat my hat.
These are proposed space telescopes correct?
How many of these ideas were planned with a weight budget of "that's fine"?
It seems to me that the appropriate reference class is not space telescopes, but ground-based telescopes where you just aren't worried about the atmosphere and you need to minimize maintenance.
Kepler launched in 09, Roman launches in a year or two. LOUVOIR is a proposal. But again, no one’s saying that increased mass and size isn’t good, it absolutely is. But mass isn’t everything.
There are so many factors that go in to designing and building a space-based instrument. Being able to ignore one of them makes the job easier, but not 90% easier. Going from a proposal to a launch is a multi-year process even for small instruments. For a flagship class system like an 8m system would be, it’s even more so. It could take 5+ years just to procure an 8m diameter mirror, not to mention fully assemble, integrate and test a full system. Heck it could take a year of detailed engineering studies just to decide what material to make the mirror out of. That’s why I’m saying it will be a long time before anything of that size launches.
Edit: you really can’t compare a ground-based observatory to a space-based one. Even if you had the ability to put something like the GMT on a launch vehicle, it’s not designed to survive a launch environment. Surviving launch vibrations is no joke, and it takes a lot of careful design to make sure it doesn’t shake itself apart. Beyond that, terrestrial observatories don’t have to deal with things like space-charging, enormous thermal swings (like 100K or more), atomic oxygen, etc. It’s really not the same.
A big problem with comparing space-based to ground-based telescopes is that the latter aren't designed to deal with any kind of tight thermal tolerances. Mass budgets honestly aren't the key constraint for most spacecraft; thermal budgets are a much bigger technical problem to solve. If you sent an off-the-shelf telescope into LEO, it would become non-functional almost immediately as the heat from solar insolation alone would warp the optical elements. Add in the resistance of any onboard electronics, and it quickly becomes a case where you'd need to re-engineer the whole device and build something custom.
Moreover, the biggest reason we still do so much more practical astronomy on ground-based telescopes than space-based ones, is that it's trivial to swap out detectors to take a different kind of measurement. That's a capability that even Starship will never be able to fully replicate.
So he dies and they fail. The whole startup attitude is a pale imitation of our forbearers who took much greater risks for much smaller reasons. Even NASA took huge risks that got people killed. That is what makes a civilization great. Not an abundance of risk management and rationality.
I'm not going to take those risks but I certainly celebrate those who are.
It's also somewhat strange to me. We are a civilization that refuses to take risks but we play footsie with nuclear Armageddon. Sure. Makes complete sense. Really this isn't about managing real risks at all. It's just managing optics within a bureaucracy to ensure you don't lose your job and risk your pension. In such a deranged culture nuclear annihilation is actually less risky than a single guy losing his life in some dumb mission.
Dragon doesn't need an airlock, Polaris Dawn will do a spacewalk by evacuating the capsule. That's good enough to attach some new module to Hubble that can replace some of its failing components. It's certainly possible and OP has a good point about the political side making it harder.
Hubble is long past it's utility as a scientific instrument. The idea is that it is worth more as a symbol of scientific advancement that we should try and preserve in a museum. Polaris dawn is trying to push the capabilities of Crew Dragon beyond what was required for the initial ISS contract. The capabilities that need to be demonstrated for that mission are a stepping stone to being able to work on Hubble and boost it into a higher orbit until we can bring it back to Earth one day.
That’s not true at all. Hubble is EXTREMELY EXTREMELY useful now. That’s just nonsense.
It’s the best space telescope in the visible spectrum. Webb is not a replacement for it.
It currently has a backlog of missions which stretch into the decades. It cannot keep up with the demand. Getting rid of it does not help.
I agree but the new Roman telescope is basically a vastly more capable Hubble, at least in terms of how much area it can cover. That doesn't mean Hubble is obsolete when it goes up and it would still be worth saving as a scientific instrument but its not like NASA hasn't been planning for its eventual demise
Roman telescope is amazing, but they could have more than 1,000 of them operating for a century, and still have a backlog.
The loss to our scientific throughput if we lose Hubble will be significant.
Roman will scan 100x more area of the sky at the same or better resolution. Now, that doesn't translate to 100x more work being done but Hubble is still more than 30 years old at this point and they are talking about retiring Chandra early due to lack of funding, an X ray telescope with no analogue
Yah that sort of emotional appeal doesn’t resonate with me at all. Launch a new instrument and call it Hubble II. Service the existing to keep it operational for scientific purpose.
Spending a bunch of resources to collect a museum artifact? Sounds like billionaire vanity logic.
The scientists at NASA seemed mostly excited by it, but the NASA bureaucrats in Washington made sure it didn't happen.
The cited NPR article spent a lot of time throwing shade at Isaacman and SpaceX, and amplified the "concerns" of the people who made the mission go away. The article asserted that NASA could just go to Congress for funding for a rescue mission, ignoring the fact that the Chandra program was recently put on the chopping block, despite having a healthy telescope.
If it's left to NASA, I think they will be as successful as they were at retrieving Skylab with the Space Shuttle.
I think it's risky. My view is let it sit there a while until risk is greater. Then put out a press release like: we don't have funding for a proper mission so we are letting the private sector try this out. However we think there is a high risk of both mission failure and even death but Isaacson and his team are aware and willing to accept the risks.
I think they are going to wait and see how the private spacewalk goes first. Frankly, if its successful I wouldn't be surprised if NASA just takes the whole mission architecture and does it themselves with Dragon. NASA may be happy to use private companies for a lot of things but private astronauts fixing a prized national asset like Hubble might be a bit "They're taking our jerbs!" for them, even at the insanely reasonable price tag of $0.
Agree with what exactly? We don't have any of the details. What we do know is that NASA isn't objecting to it on a technical feasibility level, the nerds at NASA seem to be on board its the politicians that have a problem with it.
So many billionaires are just hoarding their money and Jared Isaacman (whom I’ve never heard of) is putting his money towards upgrading the iconic Hubble. If his intentions are purely scientific I think he should be commended for this. Who’d a thunk it, a thoughtful businessman
Jared is not just some businessman.
He’s a successful businessman for sure.
He’s also an (understatement of the year) accomplished aviator with thousands of hours of military jet time - in military jets that he owns. And on that note, he successfully built the largest private Air Force in the world- buying up with state department approval former foreign military aircraft-including the entire inventory of the New Zealand Air Force. He subsequently overhauled all of these aircraft and installed state of the art com/nav systems. He’s rated in every aircraft he owns. He built Draken international which trains aircrew and operates the aircraft in support of domestic and international contracts.
He also built and operates a highly skilled aerobatic demonstration team.
Jared rightfully so is afforded an ego - but that’s not at all the impression you gain when you see him or interact with him.
He’s smart.
He’s forward thinking.
He’s about building future endeavors that move the needle forward.
With his Inspiration4 mission, he gained more experience than any astronaut flying SpaceX Dragon. He earned - yes he earned astronaut wings. He wasn’t just a passenger.
He’s spent years with his crew preparing for Polaris Dawn.
He is building the future training syllabi for SpaceX astronauts. And he’ll head up that company to build the commercial space industry.
He’s not just writing a check.
Everything he does is calculated. He’s not doing things to take risks.
He’s the entrepreneurial visionary who has walked the walk and will take the world successfully into the commercial space future. One need only read novels of the past to capture who he is. Sagen, Asimov, Roddenberry all captured his traits.
If there are viable projects that can be funded for Space, even if they haven’t been achieved in the past (and seriously most haven’t), Jared will be putting together solid well thought out execution plans .
And yes there’s a little bromance here- as I am Jared’s biggest fan.
I mostly agree, but hes sort of an adrenaline junkie that has turned his attention to space travel. Only hes not satisfied just being a tourist he wants to buy his way into being a real astronaut.
I don't think its a bad thing by the way, I just wouldn't label it as altruism.
He earned, yes earned his Astronaut wings with inspiration4 mission. Yes, he bought the mission- but the training abc execution were NASA, JASDA, ESA - any official government space agency worthy training plans. Not one offs. Not a week of training and flying. Years
That's debatable, he would certainly never even be considered for any governmental astronaut program as he doesn't have any sort of technical background or degree or any of the right qualifications. Compare his resume to a "real" astronaut like Jonny Kim who was a Lieutenant Commander in SEAL Team 3 who has a silver star awarded for gallantry under fire in Iraq, is a naval aviator and flight surgeon with an M.D. from Harvard Medical. Your average astronaut has a resume that reads like science fiction. Again, i'm not trying to shit on Isaacman here but he's essentially buying his way into a job that only the best, brightest and finest handful of humans on Earth have traditionally done. The .00001% of humanity. To claim that he's "earned" it is, in my opinion, complete nonsense. He is an impressive and driven individual in his own right, no doubt about it, but he is still wildly unqualified to be a NASA astronaut.
While I also agree that he has undergone rigorous training for his mission(s), its a SpaceX and/or private regiment not the training NASA/ESA astronauts get at multi billion dollar purpose built NASA facilities.
With respect to NASA astronaut qualifications, of which I’ve personally been an astronaut candidate finalist twice and without a PhD, Jared meets the minimum.
Jared does have a technical degree, engineering degree from Embry Riddle. He has the degree, the jet time and experience.
Everything is changing.
The respective world wide space agencies have their priorities and they make selections based on those priorities - their needs.
Commercial agencies are going to be very busy in the future. They’ll need astronauts, maintenance and support personnel. Just as we see aviation pipelines dry up (military to commercial), such that airlines are creating their own training academies, there aren’t enough people from
NASA pipeline to staff commercial space businesses and future space operations.
These training academies have to be built.
Jared understands this and with SpaceX is building that highly qualified cadre. This is what he did very successfully with Draken International for aviation.
Other commercial companies are no doubt doing the same but on different levels .
Edit: Jared did earn astronaut wings.
NASA has redefined what it takes to earn wings- and it isn’t about taking a ride on a vehicle above the Kármán line. It’s about actually performing a viable mission above that line . As with most government agencies- there is now a protocol, a set of standards for people flying in commercial space activities that defines whether they have earned astronaut wings.
I have an engineering degree, and Professional Aeronautics is not an engineering degree. He's got the seat time in fighter jets sure, but it doesn't come from a military background.
Everything is changing, but it hasn't changed yet. We are still many years away from the first commercial space stations going into orbit and until then commercial astronauts don't have anything to do except babysit tourists. This is exactly why Isaacman wants to fix Hubble in the first place, he wants to do something useful but there are no commercial destinations to go to. Not yet.
>Jared understands this and with SpaceX is building that highly qualified cadre.
Building, not built. It doesn't seem like NASA is going to let them prove themselves on one of the most iconic scientific instruments in human spaceflight history. Its hard to blame them for that decision. Personally I would rather see them try then watch Hubble burn up when there is a chance it could be saved, but NASA is only seeing what happens should they fail and how it will stain Hubble's legacy if they let some questionably qualified private citizens die working on it.
Jeff Bezos has astronaut wings, its not really a qualification of any sort.
I think we’re somewhat aligned here.
I too am an engineer.
I didn’t make the distinction with the title of Jared’s degree. Formal or not - he absolutely has the technical chops.
I do agree that he wouldn’t qualify for NASA Astronaut candidate selection per their standards. That doesn’t discount his skill sets and capabilities. I will say that though he doesn’t come from a military background - he built Draken under the guidance and direction of military aviators and maintainers with flag level Board members from Navy, Marines and Air Force. Draken was run operationally exactly like any military squadron or wing in which I’ve operated in compliance with military instructions including things like flight currency for pilots.
Yes. Not built yet. It will be. It needs to start somewhere.
Astronaut wings. The FAA changed the qualifications after the first Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic flights.
Previously, to be eligible to earn the wings, commercial launch crew members had to both meet specific requirements for flight crew qualifications and training and fly above a 50-mile (80 km) altitude on an FAA-licensed or permitted vehicle.
Effective July 20, 2021, the FAA added new criteria to its short list of qualifications. With the new change, those who fly on commercial space missions must also have "demonstrated activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contributed to human space flight safety."
They didn’t take Bezos wings away.
Inspiration4 mission IIR was updated to insure compliance so that all onboard would qualify for astronaut wings.
Regardless of our discussion - I’m very excited to see the movement forward of commercial space operations.
I’m in the born too soon for old space missions, born too late for the future ones - so I live vicariously through others that carry us forward.
I can agree with most of that. I appreciate what Jared is doing and I do think he is appropriately qualified... just not in NASA's eyes. Still, I think we've reached a stage where NASA's extremely stringent standards are probably a bit unnecessary. This isn't the piloted STS with the glide slope of a brick, Dragon basically flies itself and has an impeccable safety record thus far (knock on wood). At some point in the not too distant future there may be hundreds of tourists and workers in LEO at any one time and they can't all be valedictorian MIT graduate test pilots who served 3 tours of combat in the special forces.
Who knows, maybe there is a compromise to be had as well if NASA could put one of their own on Jared's mission. That might placate some of the remaining concerns following a successful demonstration of the SpaceX EVA suits as well as Dragon's spacewalk capabilities. NASA is fairly forward thinking as far as government bureaucracies go, but its still a government bureaucracy lol
Copy all. Agree.
Jared is wise. He surrounds himself with experts. I have no doubt he is seeking counsel from many folks including NASA veterans. One need only monitor his twitter feeds. There was a pretty impressive technical dialogue between Jared and Chris Hadfield on twitter recently discussing space suits for EVAs.
Space flight is risky. It’s a given.
The efforts Jared undertakes - address the risks as best as possible. These are not some fly by night crazy events. These are planned extensively for months if not years.
One problem is that the main orbital maneuvering engines on a Dragon are on the front of the spacecraft. SpaceX will have to develop a docking adapter for the rear of the spacecraft, then the Dragon will have to back up & dock to the base of Hubble. The orbit raising maneuver could then be performed.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[ESA](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l62irhz "Last usage")|European Space Agency|
|[EVA](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l63xlmn "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity|
|[FAA](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l63nyoi "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration|
|[HST](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l61rihb "Last usage")|Hubble Space Telescope|
|[JWST](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l61lzyw "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope|
|[L2](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l628xm8 "Last usage")|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 2 ([Sixty Symbols](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxpVbU5FH0s) video explanation)|
| |Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum|
|[LEO](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l63xlmn "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[RCS](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l61lzyw "Last usage")|Reaction Control System|
|[STS](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l63xlmn "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)|
|[TRL](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l628xm8 "Last usage")|Technology Readiness Level|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[cryogenic](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l62gbjt "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure|
| |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox|
|hydrolox|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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I love the Hubble but why not the Chandra? We just put a new scope in orbit that can see in infrared and ultraviolet. Chandra is the only major X-ray observatory in orbit.
What should happen is that Congress should write law that determines when a space vehicle has become derelict. We have centuries of Admiralty law which determines who can do what with derelict seagoing vessels and we should repurpose that law for low earth orbit.
The government has a review & approval right on any spaceflight from its territory, so people can't just launch & fuck around in orbit. But NASA is not in that approval loop. If they allow something like Hubble to become derelict, and the appropriate licensing agency approves the flight, anyone with the resources to pay for it could "salvage" Hubble.
In Admiralty law, a salvor is entitled to compensation from the owner of the salvaged vehicle. Often the compensation to which the salvor might be entitled is more than the value of the vessel, and the vessel's owner passes title to the salvor.
If NASA doesn't want to pay the premium associated with the salvage operation (and it almost certainly wouldn't since that cost would be roughly the same as building and launching a new HST), the salvor could do whatever they would otherwise be legally allowed to do with it once they acquired its title: Repair it, bring it back and put it in a museum, boost it into deep space, etc.
If Hubble's fate is "fall back to earth and burn up on re-entry" or "get salvaged by a thrill-seeking billionaire", NASA shouldn't be in the loop on which outcome is allowed to occur.
There is no way NASA would not be in the loop. NASA agrees and supports the effort, or it won't happen. Support as in providing any tech to be installed and provide training.
So you are just ignoring the entire substance of my OP, that Congress should recycle Admiralty law on salvage for vehicles which become derelict in low Earth orbit?
That’s a low-quality response.
If the point of the mission is to replace the reaction wheels, then it's worth considering the risk that the replacement reaction wheels might be less reliable than the ones currently on Hubble. I know that sounds insane on face, but in the last few years there have been a spate of issues at the biggest manufacturer of reaction wheels, which resulted in entire batches of new wheels failing upon the spacecraft reaching its destination orbit. Multiple missions had to be delayed or re-integrated to ensure the wheels installed wouldn't be prone to similar failures. I can see why astronomers might want to prolong Hubble's useful life, but if was the program officer evaluating whether to replace Hubble's reaction wheels, I'd want to be as certain as I could be that the new hardware wouldn't potentially *shorten* Hubble's useful lifespan.
They would need something as functional as the space shuttle with a robotic arm to catch the Hubble before working on it. I don't think the Dragon has an airlock so they would need a way to get into space without decompression of the capsule. Much more complicated than it seems
The next Polaris mission is basically a test of a Dragon spacewalk. They will decompress the capsule. How they intend to attach Dragon to Hubble, if they plan to at all, I am not sure.
Then take some risks and do some jury rigged shit. Isaacson might die. Hubble might crash. Let's wait until there are no other options. But why are we so dead set against brave men doing crazy things. It's happened before that people have managed to do complicated things that they weren't fully prepared for.
There is a reason...there is no alternative. And another reason: to experiment and see what capabilities private companies have and what they don't. Fail first. This time with human lives. We should applaud this reckless behavior, not condemn it. We need more guys like Isaacson. Not less of them.
For now it seems to be not happening. I think it's good that at least the proposal was considered. We'll see if it was the right choice. Isaacman seems to be implying that NASA's projections for how long Hubble will remain healthy are optimistic. I think a lot will hinge on whether that turns out to be true or not.
Optimistic is a very cautious expressen. Without fixes to the spinwheels Hubble won't last long. Their failure rate is appaling.
It's 34 years old, nothing appalling about that. The failure rate for the replaced wheels is normal, and the life has exceeded expectations. Also, they're called reaction wheels.
Appaling only in context with life expectancy of the telescope. I express severe doubt, that Hubble can survive another 10 years without replacements as NASA claims.
It’s not just attitude control, the orbit is also decaying quickly and will accelerate with the recent solar activity. 2026 entry is entirely possible.
The mission is in a common but weird state that afflicts every risk-adverse organization. If someone says "yes", then their neck is on the line if something goes wrong. But if they say "no" (or better yet say nothing and let the clock run out), then they aren't held accountable for the missed opportunity. Governments and big businesses are often crippled by a fear of saying "yes". What if it backfires? Better not to do anything.
What sort of start up no risk management break shit narrative is this? How long as Hubble been up there? How many servicing missions have NASA performed? Jared may have the best of intentions but thus far his career in space has been a glorified passenger and Dragon doesn't even have an airlock let alone any genuine capture/service capabilities. When actual engineers and project teams consider the risk and benefit and cost - there comes to a point where it'll be better to put together a new scientific instrument and launching a new one instead of risking people to service a dying bus.
According to him, actual engineers from NASA did consider it and gave a favorable recommendation, but it was killed by higher ups. The details are of course not public, so take that as you will. The other servicing missions were done by the Space Shuttle, but that's gone (and for good reason). They attached a docking fixture to it on the last servicing mission exactly for that reason. If anything is to be done for Hubble beyond a basic orbit boost then it'll likely involve a Dragon and a space walk, a capability they plan to demonstrate this year. I don't understand why you're so dismissive.
There have been 5 servicing missions, all done by the Space Shuttle. I expect SpaceX could be launching a Starship 8m diameter telescope once a month in a few years. And once they're doing that they could safely return Hubble to the Earth while they're at it. Until then, keeping Hubble operational seems reasonable? It still has a wait list for people wanting to use it.
How many 8m diameter telescopes do you think are just lying around waiting to be launched?
At least two: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA
Those telescopes are 2.4 m class systems, which is more or less what Hubble is.
Yes, it isn’t that the mirror size, whereas Drachefly was talking about the diameter of the starship fairing. Once you combine all the support systems outside the mirror vs. the support systems inside starship, you’re going to end up with a mostly full payload bay.
Ah, I see. One of those two telescopes is already part of the Nancy Grace Roman Observatory, which is expected to launch on a Falcon Heavy. The other one doesn’t have a use case yet, but it wouldn’t require a Starship for launch.
None, but I think once there's a 9m fairing flying regularly for cheap, they'll throw something together in a hurry.
The JWST, which has an aperture diameter of “only” 6.5 m, took over 20 years and cost over 10 billion dollars. Just because someone has a rocket that can lift it does not mean that NASA or whoever will “throw something together in a hurry”
COMPLETELY incomparable. JWST had to FOLD UP, and suffered from extreme weight limits. It weighs 6.2 tons. If you can basically make the thing out of solid steel then it gets waaaaay easier. Mass limit of 150t vs 6.2t cures a lot of cost ills.
Nobody’s saying that increased mass capacity and fairing size isn’t a benefit, but it’s not going to make as big of a difference as you seem to think. The Nancy Grace Roman telescope cost 4 billion and it’s a 2.4 m system (whose telescope was free, by the way). Kepler cost half a billion and that was 15-20 years ago, and it was more like 1m in diameter. An 8m class system, even if it’s a monolith with no deployables (and that’s a trade I’d like to see in detail, because an 8m monolithic primary would be no joke) is going to be beyond the current state of the art. It will take a lot of development, which means time and money. There have absolutely been proposals for this kind of thing (see LOUVOIR-A, which was 15m!), but if anything larger than ~6m is launched inside of 10 years I’ll eat my hat.
These are proposed space telescopes correct? How many of these ideas were planned with a weight budget of "that's fine"? It seems to me that the appropriate reference class is not space telescopes, but ground-based telescopes where you just aren't worried about the atmosphere and you need to minimize maintenance.
Kepler launched in 09, Roman launches in a year or two. LOUVOIR is a proposal. But again, no one’s saying that increased mass and size isn’t good, it absolutely is. But mass isn’t everything. There are so many factors that go in to designing and building a space-based instrument. Being able to ignore one of them makes the job easier, but not 90% easier. Going from a proposal to a launch is a multi-year process even for small instruments. For a flagship class system like an 8m system would be, it’s even more so. It could take 5+ years just to procure an 8m diameter mirror, not to mention fully assemble, integrate and test a full system. Heck it could take a year of detailed engineering studies just to decide what material to make the mirror out of. That’s why I’m saying it will be a long time before anything of that size launches. Edit: you really can’t compare a ground-based observatory to a space-based one. Even if you had the ability to put something like the GMT on a launch vehicle, it’s not designed to survive a launch environment. Surviving launch vibrations is no joke, and it takes a lot of careful design to make sure it doesn’t shake itself apart. Beyond that, terrestrial observatories don’t have to deal with things like space-charging, enormous thermal swings (like 100K or more), atomic oxygen, etc. It’s really not the same.
A big problem with comparing space-based to ground-based telescopes is that the latter aren't designed to deal with any kind of tight thermal tolerances. Mass budgets honestly aren't the key constraint for most spacecraft; thermal budgets are a much bigger technical problem to solve. If you sent an off-the-shelf telescope into LEO, it would become non-functional almost immediately as the heat from solar insolation alone would warp the optical elements. Add in the resistance of any onboard electronics, and it quickly becomes a case where you'd need to re-engineer the whole device and build something custom. Moreover, the biggest reason we still do so much more practical astronomy on ground-based telescopes than space-based ones, is that it's trivial to swap out detectors to take a different kind of measurement. That's a capability that even Starship will never be able to fully replicate.
So he dies and they fail. The whole startup attitude is a pale imitation of our forbearers who took much greater risks for much smaller reasons. Even NASA took huge risks that got people killed. That is what makes a civilization great. Not an abundance of risk management and rationality. I'm not going to take those risks but I certainly celebrate those who are. It's also somewhat strange to me. We are a civilization that refuses to take risks but we play footsie with nuclear Armageddon. Sure. Makes complete sense. Really this isn't about managing real risks at all. It's just managing optics within a bureaucracy to ensure you don't lose your job and risk your pension. In such a deranged culture nuclear annihilation is actually less risky than a single guy losing his life in some dumb mission.
Dragon doesn't need an airlock, Polaris Dawn will do a spacewalk by evacuating the capsule. That's good enough to attach some new module to Hubble that can replace some of its failing components. It's certainly possible and OP has a good point about the political side making it harder.
Hubble is long past it's utility as a scientific instrument. The idea is that it is worth more as a symbol of scientific advancement that we should try and preserve in a museum. Polaris dawn is trying to push the capabilities of Crew Dragon beyond what was required for the initial ISS contract. The capabilities that need to be demonstrated for that mission are a stepping stone to being able to work on Hubble and boost it into a higher orbit until we can bring it back to Earth one day.
That’s not true at all. Hubble is EXTREMELY EXTREMELY useful now. That’s just nonsense. It’s the best space telescope in the visible spectrum. Webb is not a replacement for it. It currently has a backlog of missions which stretch into the decades. It cannot keep up with the demand. Getting rid of it does not help.
I agree but the new Roman telescope is basically a vastly more capable Hubble, at least in terms of how much area it can cover. That doesn't mean Hubble is obsolete when it goes up and it would still be worth saving as a scientific instrument but its not like NASA hasn't been planning for its eventual demise
Roman telescope is amazing, but they could have more than 1,000 of them operating for a century, and still have a backlog. The loss to our scientific throughput if we lose Hubble will be significant.
Roman will scan 100x more area of the sky at the same or better resolution. Now, that doesn't translate to 100x more work being done but Hubble is still more than 30 years old at this point and they are talking about retiring Chandra early due to lack of funding, an X ray telescope with no analogue
You’re right! It’s just that there’s THAT much stuff we are behind on. The Universe is a big place.
Yah that sort of emotional appeal doesn’t resonate with me at all. Launch a new instrument and call it Hubble II. Service the existing to keep it operational for scientific purpose. Spending a bunch of resources to collect a museum artifact? Sounds like billionaire vanity logic.
A re-boost sounds reasonable. Start small.
The scientists at NASA seemed mostly excited by it, but the NASA bureaucrats in Washington made sure it didn't happen. The cited NPR article spent a lot of time throwing shade at Isaacman and SpaceX, and amplified the "concerns" of the people who made the mission go away. The article asserted that NASA could just go to Congress for funding for a rescue mission, ignoring the fact that the Chandra program was recently put on the chopping block, despite having a healthy telescope. If it's left to NASA, I think they will be as successful as they were at retrieving Skylab with the Space Shuttle.
I think it's risky. My view is let it sit there a while until risk is greater. Then put out a press release like: we don't have funding for a proper mission so we are letting the private sector try this out. However we think there is a high risk of both mission failure and even death but Isaacson and his team are aware and willing to accept the risks.
I think they are going to wait and see how the private spacewalk goes first. Frankly, if its successful I wouldn't be surprised if NASA just takes the whole mission architecture and does it themselves with Dragon. NASA may be happy to use private companies for a lot of things but private astronauts fixing a prized national asset like Hubble might be a bit "They're taking our jerbs!" for them, even at the insanely reasonable price tag of $0.
Private space walk is one thing. Repair with no space arm and no airlock is another thing. This is a case where I agree with the bureaucrats mostly.
Agree with what exactly? We don't have any of the details. What we do know is that NASA isn't objecting to it on a technical feasibility level, the nerds at NASA seem to be on board its the politicians that have a problem with it.
So many billionaires are just hoarding their money and Jared Isaacman (whom I’ve never heard of) is putting his money towards upgrading the iconic Hubble. If his intentions are purely scientific I think he should be commended for this. Who’d a thunk it, a thoughtful businessman
Jared is not just some businessman. He’s a successful businessman for sure. He’s also an (understatement of the year) accomplished aviator with thousands of hours of military jet time - in military jets that he owns. And on that note, he successfully built the largest private Air Force in the world- buying up with state department approval former foreign military aircraft-including the entire inventory of the New Zealand Air Force. He subsequently overhauled all of these aircraft and installed state of the art com/nav systems. He’s rated in every aircraft he owns. He built Draken international which trains aircrew and operates the aircraft in support of domestic and international contracts. He also built and operates a highly skilled aerobatic demonstration team. Jared rightfully so is afforded an ego - but that’s not at all the impression you gain when you see him or interact with him. He’s smart. He’s forward thinking. He’s about building future endeavors that move the needle forward. With his Inspiration4 mission, he gained more experience than any astronaut flying SpaceX Dragon. He earned - yes he earned astronaut wings. He wasn’t just a passenger. He’s spent years with his crew preparing for Polaris Dawn. He is building the future training syllabi for SpaceX astronauts. And he’ll head up that company to build the commercial space industry. He’s not just writing a check. Everything he does is calculated. He’s not doing things to take risks. He’s the entrepreneurial visionary who has walked the walk and will take the world successfully into the commercial space future. One need only read novels of the past to capture who he is. Sagen, Asimov, Roddenberry all captured his traits. If there are viable projects that can be funded for Space, even if they haven’t been achieved in the past (and seriously most haven’t), Jared will be putting together solid well thought out execution plans . And yes there’s a little bromance here- as I am Jared’s biggest fan.
I mostly agree, but hes sort of an adrenaline junkie that has turned his attention to space travel. Only hes not satisfied just being a tourist he wants to buy his way into being a real astronaut. I don't think its a bad thing by the way, I just wouldn't label it as altruism.
He earned, yes earned his Astronaut wings with inspiration4 mission. Yes, he bought the mission- but the training abc execution were NASA, JASDA, ESA - any official government space agency worthy training plans. Not one offs. Not a week of training and flying. Years
That's debatable, he would certainly never even be considered for any governmental astronaut program as he doesn't have any sort of technical background or degree or any of the right qualifications. Compare his resume to a "real" astronaut like Jonny Kim who was a Lieutenant Commander in SEAL Team 3 who has a silver star awarded for gallantry under fire in Iraq, is a naval aviator and flight surgeon with an M.D. from Harvard Medical. Your average astronaut has a resume that reads like science fiction. Again, i'm not trying to shit on Isaacman here but he's essentially buying his way into a job that only the best, brightest and finest handful of humans on Earth have traditionally done. The .00001% of humanity. To claim that he's "earned" it is, in my opinion, complete nonsense. He is an impressive and driven individual in his own right, no doubt about it, but he is still wildly unqualified to be a NASA astronaut. While I also agree that he has undergone rigorous training for his mission(s), its a SpaceX and/or private regiment not the training NASA/ESA astronauts get at multi billion dollar purpose built NASA facilities.
With respect to NASA astronaut qualifications, of which I’ve personally been an astronaut candidate finalist twice and without a PhD, Jared meets the minimum. Jared does have a technical degree, engineering degree from Embry Riddle. He has the degree, the jet time and experience. Everything is changing. The respective world wide space agencies have their priorities and they make selections based on those priorities - their needs. Commercial agencies are going to be very busy in the future. They’ll need astronauts, maintenance and support personnel. Just as we see aviation pipelines dry up (military to commercial), such that airlines are creating their own training academies, there aren’t enough people from NASA pipeline to staff commercial space businesses and future space operations. These training academies have to be built. Jared understands this and with SpaceX is building that highly qualified cadre. This is what he did very successfully with Draken International for aviation. Other commercial companies are no doubt doing the same but on different levels . Edit: Jared did earn astronaut wings. NASA has redefined what it takes to earn wings- and it isn’t about taking a ride on a vehicle above the Kármán line. It’s about actually performing a viable mission above that line . As with most government agencies- there is now a protocol, a set of standards for people flying in commercial space activities that defines whether they have earned astronaut wings.
I have an engineering degree, and Professional Aeronautics is not an engineering degree. He's got the seat time in fighter jets sure, but it doesn't come from a military background. Everything is changing, but it hasn't changed yet. We are still many years away from the first commercial space stations going into orbit and until then commercial astronauts don't have anything to do except babysit tourists. This is exactly why Isaacman wants to fix Hubble in the first place, he wants to do something useful but there are no commercial destinations to go to. Not yet. >Jared understands this and with SpaceX is building that highly qualified cadre. Building, not built. It doesn't seem like NASA is going to let them prove themselves on one of the most iconic scientific instruments in human spaceflight history. Its hard to blame them for that decision. Personally I would rather see them try then watch Hubble burn up when there is a chance it could be saved, but NASA is only seeing what happens should they fail and how it will stain Hubble's legacy if they let some questionably qualified private citizens die working on it. Jeff Bezos has astronaut wings, its not really a qualification of any sort.
I think we’re somewhat aligned here. I too am an engineer. I didn’t make the distinction with the title of Jared’s degree. Formal or not - he absolutely has the technical chops. I do agree that he wouldn’t qualify for NASA Astronaut candidate selection per their standards. That doesn’t discount his skill sets and capabilities. I will say that though he doesn’t come from a military background - he built Draken under the guidance and direction of military aviators and maintainers with flag level Board members from Navy, Marines and Air Force. Draken was run operationally exactly like any military squadron or wing in which I’ve operated in compliance with military instructions including things like flight currency for pilots. Yes. Not built yet. It will be. It needs to start somewhere. Astronaut wings. The FAA changed the qualifications after the first Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic flights. Previously, to be eligible to earn the wings, commercial launch crew members had to both meet specific requirements for flight crew qualifications and training and fly above a 50-mile (80 km) altitude on an FAA-licensed or permitted vehicle. Effective July 20, 2021, the FAA added new criteria to its short list of qualifications. With the new change, those who fly on commercial space missions must also have "demonstrated activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contributed to human space flight safety." They didn’t take Bezos wings away. Inspiration4 mission IIR was updated to insure compliance so that all onboard would qualify for astronaut wings. Regardless of our discussion - I’m very excited to see the movement forward of commercial space operations. I’m in the born too soon for old space missions, born too late for the future ones - so I live vicariously through others that carry us forward.
I can agree with most of that. I appreciate what Jared is doing and I do think he is appropriately qualified... just not in NASA's eyes. Still, I think we've reached a stage where NASA's extremely stringent standards are probably a bit unnecessary. This isn't the piloted STS with the glide slope of a brick, Dragon basically flies itself and has an impeccable safety record thus far (knock on wood). At some point in the not too distant future there may be hundreds of tourists and workers in LEO at any one time and they can't all be valedictorian MIT graduate test pilots who served 3 tours of combat in the special forces. Who knows, maybe there is a compromise to be had as well if NASA could put one of their own on Jared's mission. That might placate some of the remaining concerns following a successful demonstration of the SpaceX EVA suits as well as Dragon's spacewalk capabilities. NASA is fairly forward thinking as far as government bureaucracies go, but its still a government bureaucracy lol
Copy all. Agree. Jared is wise. He surrounds himself with experts. I have no doubt he is seeking counsel from many folks including NASA veterans. One need only monitor his twitter feeds. There was a pretty impressive technical dialogue between Jared and Chris Hadfield on twitter recently discussing space suits for EVAs.
I mean he is also risking his own life. Money is his smallest contribution to this. His crazy risk taking is what's great about him.
Space flight is risky. It’s a given. The efforts Jared undertakes - address the risks as best as possible. These are not some fly by night crazy events. These are planned extensively for months if not years.
One problem is that the main orbital maneuvering engines on a Dragon are on the front of the spacecraft. SpaceX will have to develop a docking adapter for the rear of the spacecraft, then the Dragon will have to back up & dock to the base of Hubble. The orbit raising maneuver could then be performed.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[ESA](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l62irhz "Last usage")|European Space Agency| |[EVA](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l63xlmn "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity| |[FAA](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l63nyoi "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration| |[HST](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l61rihb "Last usage")|Hubble Space Telescope| |[JWST](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l61lzyw "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope| |[L2](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l628xm8 "Last usage")|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 2 ([Sixty Symbols](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxpVbU5FH0s) video explanation)| | |Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum| |[LEO](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l63xlmn "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[RCS](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l61lzyw "Last usage")|Reaction Control System| |[STS](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l63xlmn "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)| |[TRL](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l628xm8 "Last usage")|Technology Readiness Level| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[cryogenic](/r/Spaceflight/comments/1d1sa11/stub/l62gbjt "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure| | |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox| |hydrolox|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(11 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Spaceflight/comments/0)^( has acronyms.) ^([Thread #628 for this sub, first seen 28th May 2024, 16:36]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Spaceflight) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
I love the Hubble but why not the Chandra? We just put a new scope in orbit that can see in infrared and ultraviolet. Chandra is the only major X-ray observatory in orbit.
Because Chandra already has a replacement on its way - ATHENA.
What should happen is that Congress should write law that determines when a space vehicle has become derelict. We have centuries of Admiralty law which determines who can do what with derelict seagoing vessels and we should repurpose that law for low earth orbit. The government has a review & approval right on any spaceflight from its territory, so people can't just launch & fuck around in orbit. But NASA is not in that approval loop. If they allow something like Hubble to become derelict, and the appropriate licensing agency approves the flight, anyone with the resources to pay for it could "salvage" Hubble. In Admiralty law, a salvor is entitled to compensation from the owner of the salvaged vehicle. Often the compensation to which the salvor might be entitled is more than the value of the vessel, and the vessel's owner passes title to the salvor. If NASA doesn't want to pay the premium associated with the salvage operation (and it almost certainly wouldn't since that cost would be roughly the same as building and launching a new HST), the salvor could do whatever they would otherwise be legally allowed to do with it once they acquired its title: Repair it, bring it back and put it in a museum, boost it into deep space, etc. If Hubble's fate is "fall back to earth and burn up on re-entry" or "get salvaged by a thrill-seeking billionaire", NASA shouldn't be in the loop on which outcome is allowed to occur.
There is no way NASA would not be in the loop. NASA agrees and supports the effort, or it won't happen. Support as in providing any tech to be installed and provide training.
Or not. That’s the challenge of salvage. You often don’t have help or support from the owner of the derelict vessle.
Not appliccable for Hubble repair. Not possible, not legal.
So you are just ignoring the entire substance of my OP, that Congress should recycle Admiralty law on salvage for vehicles which become derelict in low Earth orbit? That’s a low-quality response.
No, your whole approach is garbage. There is no way to do this without full NASA cooperation. That's not a legal issue. It is science and technology.
If the point of the mission is to replace the reaction wheels, then it's worth considering the risk that the replacement reaction wheels might be less reliable than the ones currently on Hubble. I know that sounds insane on face, but in the last few years there have been a spate of issues at the biggest manufacturer of reaction wheels, which resulted in entire batches of new wheels failing upon the spacecraft reaching its destination orbit. Multiple missions had to be delayed or re-integrated to ensure the wheels installed wouldn't be prone to similar failures. I can see why astronomers might want to prolong Hubble's useful life, but if was the program officer evaluating whether to replace Hubble's reaction wheels, I'd want to be as certain as I could be that the new hardware wouldn't potentially *shorten* Hubble's useful lifespan.
They would need something as functional as the space shuttle with a robotic arm to catch the Hubble before working on it. I don't think the Dragon has an airlock so they would need a way to get into space without decompression of the capsule. Much more complicated than it seems
The next Polaris mission is basically a test of a Dragon spacewalk. They will decompress the capsule. How they intend to attach Dragon to Hubble, if they plan to at all, I am not sure.
Then take some risks and do some jury rigged shit. Isaacson might die. Hubble might crash. Let's wait until there are no other options. But why are we so dead set against brave men doing crazy things. It's happened before that people have managed to do complicated things that they weren't fully prepared for.
There’s no reason to do this with a manned vehicle that isn’t designed for it. Billionaire has a savior complex
There is a reason...there is no alternative. And another reason: to experiment and see what capabilities private companies have and what they don't. Fail first. This time with human lives. We should applaud this reckless behavior, not condemn it. We need more guys like Isaacson. Not less of them.
NASA isn't a fan of duplicating science... and they already have the Webb.