Hubble Servicing Missions to Cease

[alt_f13]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/16/hubble.telescope.ap/

 

 

No more service flights to the Hubble Space telescope will be made.

 

Influenced by new US manned space flight initiatives, funds previously intended for Hubble missions are to be reallocated towards the development of new vessels and equipment to be used in space exploration.

 

The Hubble telescope is to be replaced in 2011, leaving approximately a three year gap without an operational space-based telescope, with Hubble's surmised failure being between two and three years from now.

[blike]

I'm kind of in the middle on this. I would like to see the hubble serviced, but I also like the idea of manned space exploration. It's unfortunate that congress has forced NASA to make this decision by cutting funding.

[RedAlert]

I say the NASA, Canadian, Russian, European and Asian space agencies should all be combined into the ISA (International Space Agency). No more funding problems then.

[Bettina]

Why is manned space exploration so important when probes can do it just as well. I just don't see spending the amount of money to send humans, when we can send many robots for a fraction of the cost.

 

Just the astronauts safety would bother me. When they sent those men to the moon, that was probably great to have seen that first hand, but why do we need to do it again on a different body.

 

Bettina

[RedAlert]

Errmmm....the entire point of space exploration is to learn about space and to eventually colonise it. So yes, that is why we want to send astronauts.