Comments on: Repairing the Hubble

By: Mike Hughes

Mike Hughes — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:11:37 +0000

I just returned from a trip to Florida to see Atlantis launched and so was surprised and pleased to hear this show. There are only eight Shuttle launches left though, so if you want to see one, best get to it. After that, if you want to see a manned launch you’ll need to go to Khazakstan.

The future of NASA might make an interesting topic for a show down the road. The retirement of the Shuttle was inevitable after the Columbia accident. The Bush administration put together a follow on plan that takes us back to the Apollo era instead of leveraging shuttle technology and lessons learned. The result is a way less capable system which would not be able to do the kind of things that Atlantis is doing right now at Hubble. There is debate within NASA on the current plan, (see Popular Science article of a few months back), and the current administration has a commission reviewing that plan. As things develop it might make an intersting story.

MikeH

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 21 May 2009 00:41:32 +0000

Hi Tom, great show, but I think you were mis-pronouncing astronaut Mike Massomino’s name (not Mass-imo)

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 20 May 2009 23:47:24 +0000

Hi Frizzo,
You need to get some perspective on costs. An F16 costs 150 million. Iraq is costing us 2 billion a week! We could do so so much in scientific research with tiny offsets in our military spending. The LHC particle accelerator, largely funded by the Europeans, is an enormous project and is extremely costly as physics experiments go.) It will cost about 4-8 billion in total, a month in Iraq…
Alex

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 20 May 2009 16:53:37 +0000

this show was so great,will the new pictures from the hubble be featured in NATGEO

By: FRizzo

FRizzo — Wed, 20 May 2009 16:17:25 +0000

As if the Space Program was not already a big enough waste of your tax money, leave it to a space egg-head to suggest that it’s a good idea to spend many millions more to turn the Hubble into an orbiting museum. Please disregard the fact that no one on Earth will ever see it and keep your tax money coming.

By: Emily

Emily — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:52:23 +0000

Just so you know, the audio on this live program is looping every 30 seconds or so–each speaker’s statements are repeated.

By: Peter J. Jensen

Peter J. Jensen — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:43:20 +0000

Can you tell us about how computers aide in the mission?

By: Peter J. Jensen

Peter J. Jensen — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:39:41 +0000

Do you worry about radiation or debris?

By: Frederic C.

Frederic C. — Wed, 20 May 2009 04:46:04 +0000

One name I’ll always associate with the HST is Story Musgrave.

As beloved as the HST is, with the grand data gathered during her last hurrah our energies should get focused on what possibilities the NGST (next generation space telescope) promise astronomers.