Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

Hmmm...the world is getting weirder (or am I just not cynical enough)?

This just out:

"Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration plans to forecast a bigger budget deficit than estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, seeking to head off pressure to increase spending, two administration officials said."

Note that their reasons for predicting a larger deficit is not honesty. After the CBO itself acknowledges that its estimate does not include the cost of war in Iraq, not to mention the extension of the Bush tax cuts, among a few notable expenses guaranteed to drive the deficit MUCH higher.

Nor is it, at least according to the White House, that they are prediciting a whopping huge humongous deficit so that they can later claim to have "reduced" it when the actual numbers are added up.

No...they are predicting larger deficits so that they can cut spending more. After all, this is their golden chance to get rid of all those nonsensical government expenditures on silly things like education, infrastructure, and other ways of "promoting the general welfare" that have accumulated over the years!

They believe a faith based telescope has a better view of the heavens.

Actually, killing the hubble makes sense: It would cost about the same to build a new and better telescope (or better yet, two identical telescopes) and put them into orbit.

Of course, what Nasa really needs to kill is the space shuttle and the space station. But that's not gonna happen.

The Hubble is obselescent;$1billion on a high-risk rescue operation is not a good use of resources. Hubble is about to be upstaged by a ground-based(!) telescope, the LBT, and a new space-based telescope due to be released in a couple years. Of all the things to worry about, the Hubble is not a big deal. I agree on cancelling the shuttle & space station, though.

We need that billion to spread freedom to Iran.

We've no time to waste on silly science experiments to discredit foolish unsubstantiated hypotheses about the creation of the universe.

You can't see God with that telescope. Besides, we KNOW how the universe was created...its all in the Bible silly goose.

This is not something to pin specifically on Dubya, but the emphasis on space exploration does seem misplaced when we've got nuclear subs hitting uncharted mountains in the south pacific ocean. I know it's not a straight tradeoff between charting stars and oceans, but the politicians probably think of it that way.

If the only benefit was allowing nuclear subs to go walkabout (who are they hiding from these days) I would choose Hubble but I think Mac has a point. New technology tends to become old very fast.

Put the billion into an X-Prize for the first company (or country?) able to put more image resolving power than Hubble into orbit.

This is so disturbing, I was counting on Hubble finding us a place to go when we have to leave because of global warming.

Nicholas, I can see it might be cheaper to put up a better telescope. So does the new budget have money to build and launch the new telescope?

Incidentally, I wonder how much it would cost to stabilise the Hubble in orbit? It's so expensive to put mass in orbit it ought to be worth something to keep it there, so we can mine it later for stuff we need.

I have little doubt that Bush doesn't give a lick about the bountiful science and beatiful images the Hubble has given us, but as I understand it there is a measure of political complexity here.

After the Columbia disaster, apparently the new safety standard for shuttle missions is that no matter where they go, they must also be able to get to the international space station as a liferaft should something go wrong along the way.

The hubble is in a low orbit. The ISS is in a much higher orbit. Apparently the concern is that if the shuttle was damaged on ascent, or during its repair and upgrade of Hubble, it wouldn't have enough fuel to reach the space station, and that's why the idea of a manned repair of Hubble is politically problematic. A robotic repair, on the other hand, is technically very complicated, and untried. If it failed it would be a very expensive failure.

I'm of the opinion that the manned mission should go, despite the potential safety concerns, but then again they're not asking me.

When reporters do their jobs, the headlines are a whole lot stronger:

US budget deficit to reach $427bn

(BBC) The US budget deficit is set to reach a record $427bn (£229bn) in 2005, the White House has predicted.

But officials said the administration would meet its pledge to cut the deficit in half over five years, partly by controlling public spending.

The forecast takes account of an extra $80bn the White House is seeking from Congress to fund military operations.

It comes as a non-partisan watchdog said the 2005 deficit, not including military costs, would be $368bn.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had previously forecast a $348bn shortfall in the 2005 fiscal year.

The US budget deficit hit $412bn in the 12 months to 30 September 2004, after reaching $377bn in the previous fiscal year.

I'm sure there are astronauts that would volunteer to go on a mission to fix the Hubble. Astronauts aren't stupid - I'm sure that they realize how many breakthroughs the Hubble has produced.

There is a follow on to the Hubble called the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) which is due to be launched in 2011, but at a price much greater than fixing the Hubble. But the Hubble will almost certainly fail several years before the JWST is launched unless it is fixed - the gyroscopes fail on a regular and predicatble basis. I think some scientists even hope to use the two in parallel. But there's a war on, dontchaknow, so it's down with the expansion of human understanding.

"Sometimes I think that the Republican right is so convinced by its own "government-is-the-problem" rhetoric that it instinctively tries to kill any public program that demonstrably isn't stupid."

Certainly this doesn't apply to the Bush administration that has raised spending across the board. What major program have they actualy cut?

Leslie
We use different telescope designs to look for asteroids for space colony locations. Gehrels had the asteroid searching project in Tucson or somewhere.

The Heritage Foundation has infiltrated NASA. The Hubble isn't the only thing going by the wayside. The only things left will be pork barrel projects for Tom Delay and military applications. It all started when O'Keefe took over and is excelerating now that Bush has a "mandate".

Maybe we can sell it to the Japanese?

There's a lot to criticize in Bush's space and science policy, but I'm uncomfortable pinning the Hubble situation on it. Hubble's problems have much more to do with the fact that, about a quarter-century ago, it was designed to be utterly dependent on the Space Shuttle: a program that never was the economic miracle promised, has had two fatal crashes out of five operating orbiters, and is well past its expiration date. While I'd like to see the HST serviced again and its useful life extended, with NASA human spaceflight still reeling from the Columbia accident, I don't think the decision to service it again is so obvious that only rank incompetence could explain the contrary.

(And the robotic service mission was a non-starter, reminiscent of the never-enacted plans to boost Skylab with a Shuttle-launched robot after the cancellation of the Apollo infrastructure on which Skylab was completely dependent.)

Actually, Hubble is in a higher orbit than the ISS (and differently inclined, which makes it impossible to get from one to the other), and the CAIB report NEVER said that non-space station missions were "too dangerous." In fact, the same safety recommendations pertain to both because, as the CAIB report pointed out, in case of damage to the orbiter it might not be able to make the station even if it's headed there.

Bush's plan is simple. Kill the Hubble, kill the shuttle, kill the station, and cancel the spam-in-a-can (the planned Crew Exploration Vehicle) because by then the government will be broke. He's out to kill the entire deal. After all, every time we go into space, we prove the earth is neither flat nor 6000 years old as Bush and the fundies so fondly believe.

Also, the Webb telescope is not a direct replacement for Hubble. It's an infrared telescope; Hubble sees in the visual wavelengths.

Well.... it was obvious by 2:00Pm Sptember 11, 2001 that the space program would be sacrificed.
Letting the Hubble go is a crime.
A mars mission is a wonderful idea which I supprt, but support is the thing.
A Mars mission needs support.
Space station, Moon base, fleet of reusable craft, rescue capability, stuff like that .
If we had a serious program, if they were showing off even one new vehicle or willing to try some different approach...

Randolph is right. Can the Europeans or Asians (maybe together) buy in? or hopefully create their own telescope? I mean, the opportunity is there for them to take the lead in space. And the jobs and contracts that go with it.

Maybe this idea comes from the same place as the ideas "global warming" and "evolution" do not exist. The GOP has become the party of being anti-science, and they are simply being logically consistant here.

Hubble Telescope=Science=BadBadBad

Hubble Telescope=Science

Science=Baby Jesus Cries

Therefore,

Hubble Telescope=Baby Jesus Cries

The one mission to Hubble is far more scientifically valuable than the many missions to complete the ISS put together. If Bush had courage he'd propose canning the Shuttle and ISS after the Hubble repair, pay off the Euros and Japanese for the small amounts they've spent on the ISS, and using the money saved for anything else, even his stupidly underpriced moon mission (which does not include a serious Mars proposal when you look at what they're actually planning). But that would require courage.

I agree that if it is obvious that they are trashing the space program, one way or the other, that saving the Hubble
is highest priority with the mission capability let.
But it is not wise.
As I see it, the gloomy prognostications about the future of our economy and the assumption that we are to become
a nation of Aroma Therapists and free-lance Preachers,
really is based on this anti-science, creationist belief.
We are ceding the economic development of the century
to other nations, some of whom might be less than gracious with the high ground.
Airplanes: we are losing the domestic market.
Stem-cell and other bio-reasearch: Verboten.
Robotics: Off the radar and table.
Software: See : Sub-Continent.
Manufacturing: Give up.
Agriculture : no longer considered important.
And now we will give up the potential technology , science, andenergy discoveries of the space program.
No wonder the projections are so negative.

Ditch Hubble, cancel the ISS, burn the drawings of trips to the Moon & Mars, blow up Canaveral.

Then give ALL the money saved to X-Prizes & make all incomes & profits earned in space tax free for the next 40 years.

I've clearly not explained myself well here & the X-Prize fund is not as well known as I thought.

http://www.xprize.org/ for a detailed rundown

In short version the X-prizes are a series of awards given for private persons or groups achieving a particular target in space. The idea was based on the prize Lindberg got for the solo Atlantic crossing. Burt Rutan recently won the first ($20 million I think) for getting Spaceship One beyond the atmosphere.

For $20 muillion NASA can't make a pencil (literally - they spent more on designing a pen that pushes ink in zero-g). If NASA were completely destroyed & the $10 billion a year they get were put into prizes, together with encouraging space industry by zero taxing it, we would have people bungee jumping onto Pluto using carbon tube cables manufactured in orbit by 2020.

I was using a bit of hyperbole about Hubble - as you will gather I think that any money spent in space is likely to be among the best investments the human race can make - but if the money available is a fixed sum X-Prizes are the way to go. To be fair in the real world, such is the nature of government spending, if space money was handed back, rather than directly handed to a revamped agency, it would be more likely to go into some other earth based programme.