On Mon, 18 May 2009 17:01:50 -0700, jps wrote:

On Mon, 18 May 2009 19:52:32 -0400, "Eisboch"
wrote:


"Vic Smith" wrote in message
news
http://www.scientificamerican.com/bl...nal-2009-05-18

Mission accomplished.
These guys hardly get recognized unless they're killed.
Space - The Final Frontier
Don't it just give you the goosebumps?

--Vic


Was just watching the wrap-up of their work. Gave the Hubble another 5-10
years of life with even more enhanced capabilities. Definitely have
received our taxpayer's money's worth out of the Hubble. Astronomers have
had to rewrite the books on our understanding of the universe. Your right,
unless you are interested in it, the data it has provided goes mostly
unnoticed by most of the public.

Sad that this mission was the last time human hands will ever touch the
Hubble. With the Shuttle program being shut down, it will no longer be
able to be serviced.

Eisboch

Maybe the Russians will maintain it.

Wasn't the Hubble another liberal higher ed wet dream when it went
into space, wasting the hard earned money of taxpayers?

Actually, if the European Space Agency hadn't offered up 25% of the
production cost for 15% of the usable observatory time, the Hubble
would have never gotten off the ground because of - ahem - Democratic
opposition to the expense of a space born telescope which was - ahem -
described as a "frivilous" expense by none other than - ahem - Tip
O'Neil. Even at that it was a close vote passing by 10 I believe in
the house and by 13 in the Senate. I remember it well because one of
my dissertation advisors was involved in the campaign to revive Hubble
and he hated Tip O'Neil for balking at the program.

And even then, the mission was scaled back quite a bit - the mirror
was downsized by 25% and some science instruments and experiments were
eliminated.