Decision soon on Hubble repair mission

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The fate of what some scientists dub "the people's telescope" is again up in the air as NASA decides soon whether to squeeze in a last astronaut repair mission to extend the life of the Hubble Space Telescope.

On Friday, NASA engineers will debate the safety of sending a fifth and final manned space shuttle flight to the 16-year-old telescope, probably in 2008. Soon afterward, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin will make the final call.

Time to let the Hubble go..

I disagree.

There are some projects by their size and scope for the public benefit that a few can not fund (highways, air ports and scientific tools of this magnitude)

Given the amount of scientific discovery that has come from a 20+ year piece of hardware vs a one shot rocket to a single planet makes this a very cost effective scientific tool

Nonsense! If there is anything that NASA has done since the last moon landing that was worth a damn, it has been Hubble. I hope they decide to make one last push to fix and repair whatever they can, until such time as we can get the next generation space telescope going.

from nine years ago:

Alpha Centauri
A Candidate for Terrestrial Planets And Intelligent Life
Last Update 15th October '97
http://homepage.sunrise.ch/homepage/schatzer/Alpha-Centauri.html

One may conclude that Alpha Centauri is a most promising star system regarding terrestrial planets and possible life. It is interesting to note what NASA administrator Daniel S. Goldin declared in 1992: "Imagine if spectroscopic analysis revealed a blue planet with oxygen atmosphere just 4 light years away orbiting Alpha Centaury. The demand to build a warp drive would start right away!" When will we know whether there are really planets at Alpha Centauri? Actually, the Hubble Space Telescope is checking for their existance. And it seems to be no coincidence that, recently, at an experts meeting in Toledo/Spain, the chief of the NASA research program Mike Kaplan stated that "...we will discover extraterrestrial life in the next 25 years". Thus, it might soon happen that we are able to take a look at our cosmic neighbours.

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