A follow-up to yesterday's posting about Bush's new space vision ...
NASA, readjusting its sights to fit the current political winds, has now announced that it will no longer service the Hubble Space Telescope, and will, in fact, help destroy the telescope when it comes time for it to re-enter the atmosphere.
Launching of the Hubble telescope in 1990 initiated a revolution in our studies of the universe. Over the last decade, especially since the mirror was repaired (during a shuttle mission), Hubble has given us an unparalleled view of many phenomena invisible from the surface of the earth because of, among other things, turbulence in the atmosphere. It appears that this short-lived era of a growing understanding of an ever more complex universe is about to come to an end, as, in its time, did our exploration of the moon.
There is no reason why we can't afford both a manned space program and an unmanned research program including Hubble. But a government which seems to have no qualms about throwing a few hundred billion dollars away on foreign wars and tax cuts for the wealthy is considerably more parsimonious when it comes to knowledge. (And I don't want to hear anything about how that money could be better spent on earth feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless -- the current administration has no intention of spending one penny more than it absolutely has to on such trivial matters, space program or no space program.)
Posted by Don Harlow at January 17, 2004 11:29 AMI agree that it is terribly sad. and your last point is excellent. Measure 30 is on the ballot here in Oregon and if it fails (as it most likely will) the Oregon Health Plan (our medicaid program) will be slashed to the point that it may not even meet federal mandates for the Medicaid program. and all the pundits are saying "Why don't they spend their money better in the first place?" The legislature is not going to suddenly divert money from business to keeping people alive and healthy, so I don't mind paying the extra $25 a year to do it.
someone sent me this: http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~gawne/stash/NASA_Mars_Budget.jpg the NASA budgetary forecast for the next 16 years.
Posted by: Esther at January 18, 2004 01:26 PM