Could we have had a new space telescope with all the money we have spent on refurbishing Hubble?
Zefram asked:
With Shuttle launches averaging $500 million each and this last Hubble repair mission coming in at $1.1 billion. Could we have had a new modern space telescope for the money we spent on the 5 repair missions?
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With Shuttle launches averaging $500 million each and this last Hubble repair mission coming in at $1.1 billion. Could we have had a new modern space telescope for the money we spent on the 5 repair missions?
June 2nd, 2009 at 1:02 am
We can’t likely put up a space telescope any larger than Hubble due to the size of the shuttle’s cargo bay. Hubble could just barely fit into it.
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Not really. The cost of the Hubble (in today’s dollars) exceeds the cost of the missions to refurbish.
BTW: A new space telescope is already in the works and being built. It will be launched by a rocket to be put in orbit because the vehicle planned to replace the shuttle fleet is not big enough to carry something even as large as the Hubble.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
The Wikipedia article on the James Webb Space Telescope has the following:
“As of the 2005 re-plan, the life-cycle cost of the project was estimated at about US$4.5 billion. This comprises approximately US$3.5 billion for design, development, launch and commissioning, and approximately US$1.0 billion for ten years of operations.[8] ESA is contributing about €300million, including the launch,[9] and the Canadian Space Agency about $39M Canadian.[10] As of May 2007[update] costs were still on target.[11]”
Maybe more has changed in the 2 years from May 2007 but I’d say the basic answer to your question is yes, we could have built one or more new (expendable) space telescopes with the money that has been spent refurbishing Hubble.
On the flip side, the $500 million per launch figure for the Shuttle is I believe a cost averaged over the whole program. If you take the Shuttle as a given (for doing the other things it does, most notably the ISS) then the extra cost to the Shuttle program of a single Hubble servicing mission is under $100 million.
June 7th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
no, because the money spent on repairing and upgrading Hubble is only a fraction the cost of a replacement, and besides there are other telescopes up there (CMOS, WMAPS etc) but hubble is the only one that works in visible light.
There will be a replacement for hubble, but there are several ideas as to what it will be, my personal favourite is 5-10 telescopes that fly in formation at a distance apart, this would make the telescope equivalent to a 1 mile diameter mirror (millions of times more powerful than Hubble) but this would be an incredibly expensive undertaking
June 9th, 2009 at 8:12 am
Yeah, we probably could. Problem is that there wouldn’t be too much point. Hubble has already got a lot of the data needed by scientists, but its just hard to filter it out. Adding a new satellite wont solve that, it will just add to the problem.
June 11th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
No,
Once we have the payload in space it make $$ sense to leave it there an repair it as often as possible.
A new modern space telesope (Jame W Webb space telescope) will be launched soon. This is really a departure from visual light astronomy as the Webb will be used for infrared research.
Couldn’t we have other Hubble like telescopes in space? Maybe, we already do … but they’re just not pointed into space!
… nuff said on that one!
June 14th, 2009 at 3:58 am
They were developing James Webb and also..i agree with the first post
I think, Hubble made it self worth beyond any ones imagination
The Deep Field is priceless