Yes, a good reason...

Post #184,264

11/16/04 5:02:10 PM

But the cost of space observatories, is saturating these budgets already. How can even he justify space based for only those two jobs known to really be effective in space... where as the bah-millions of other jobs that need to be done can be by earth-based.

Come on, what would *YOU* do skip?

Given your job is to bomb then hell out of the <insert target>

Make a down payment on a $1B Stealth Bomber only capable of dropping a few tons and make payments for $LOAN_LENGTH (longtime there bucko)

Buy a B-52 for a percentile fraction of that and run 10,000 sorties by the time you would have paid off the B2.

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Post #184,268

by ben_tilly

11/16/04 5:33:39 PM

But it isn't only those two jobs that Hubble is good for

There are a lot of jobs that Hubble is good for. The two that he cares about happen to be among them.

To pick another of more interest to you, if we want to some day carry out a comprehensive survey for major asteriods and comets of size over 1 km across that might be on an intersection path with us, then guess what, Hubble or relatives are the only way to do it. (If we know about something of this size a few decades ahead of time, we can probably do something about it.)

In other words adaptive optics is useless for the only astronomical survey that is likely to have defence implications for us.

Furthermore many people believe that it is possible to dramatically lower the cost of operating in space. In which case the economics against space-based telescopes would go away. And the same survey which was estimated as being a security issue becomes the groundwork to identify what space-based objects we might want to try to mine!

Cheers,
Ben

I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)

Post #184,270

by imric

11/16/04 5:42:34 PM

Adaptive optics is what he was

talking about. And can adaptive optics do bah-millions of other jobs? I'm with him - space-based platforms are a better long-term investment.

Hell, it's a better investment even if it only gets us more practice in operating in space... WE HAVE TO GET OFF THIS ROCK.

Oh. Right. Space-based weapons will fill this role. No need for peaceful platforms in space. That would be a waste of money.

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