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- The Hubble Space Telescope completes
one revolution every 90 minutes. Not a scientific revolution, an orbit.
Yet if one were to read its press releases and manuals, one would think
the space telescope is revolutionizing astronomy and astrophysics just
as the microscope did for biology. In fact, the only thing the Hubble
is revolutionizing is what we are led to believe.
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- NASA The Hubble Space Telescope
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- It all began in 1990, when the cigar-shaped
telescope was found to be perfectly imperfect. The Hubble was born with
a defect in its heart, a flaw in the curvature of its primary mirror.
As astronomers awkwardly spilled the beans, NASA officials pulled the
remaining hairs out of their heads and the Space Telescope Science Institute
(STScI) " which manages the Hubble from Baltimore " became during
its own revolution: spin-city.
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- Today, words that explicitly mention
a flaw, defect, or mistake in Hubble have been banned from public discourse.
The 1993 repair mission is renamed a servicing mission which "fully
restored the functionality of HST." In fact, the Hubble's planetary
camera is still unable to perform its original task " imaging planets
around faraway suns.
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- Hubble manuals even claim that its pictures
"have revolutionized astronomers' thinking." But most examples
of so-called Hubble revolutions (brown dwarfs, proto-planetary disks, comet
Shoemaker-Levy, Big Bang chemistry, extra-galactic distance scale) were
in fact done from the ground, not space. At least half of them aren't
revolutionary either, not like the real Edwin Hubble's discovery of the
recession of galaxies, which heralded our view of an expanding universe.
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- Hubble's deepest-ever view of the universe
unveiled myriad galaxies back to the beginning of time
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- Even the highly publicized image of a
runaway planet is in fact quite contentious. This is acknowledged in the
STScI 1998 annual report which defends it as a "discovery in progress"
" an oxymoron akin to being "a little bit pregnant." Yet
the uncertainty of the finding provided the perfect opportunity to educate
the public about the scientific method and show how thrilling research
can be. The Hubble's truly outstanding discovery " a self-propelled
Black Hole " is lost in the cacophony of superlatives.
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- Sensationalism has turned ordinary science
into hyped news items. As consumers, we are used to being told that our
car has been fitted with a revolutionary mechanism when in fact it is the
same old combustion engine under the hood. Shouldn't scientists be held
to higher standards of information than car salesmen?
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- The Hubble sees objects five times sharper
though not as far as large ground-based telescopes in Hawaii and Chile.
Unlike claims by the Hubble spin doctors, these telescopes now routinely
achieve high resolution and with new optics may even challenge Hubble's.
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- By discrediting other research tools
(or not volunteering to credit others) the Hubble reveals the crux of the
matter: We want funding, Mr. congressman. The state-of-the-art Keck Observatory
cost $140 million to build. Whereas the Hubble's price tag is in the billions
of dollars, not including space shuttle launches at $500 million a pop.
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- NASA Underwater training is conducted
in preparation for telescope servicing operations
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- With commercial and military satellites
opting for cheaper launch vehicles and the International Space Station
running into delays, the Hubble provides the space shuttle with a concrete
job in space " unlike the John Glenn mission. The Hubble could not
have been repaired without the space shuttle. This point is used in Congress
to leverage more funding for the shuttle program.
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- In 1998, STScI distributed $23 million
to educators and researchers, turning into one of the largest space grant
providers. Who would dare blow the whistle? In some scientists' opinion,
the publicity created by the Hubble will profit the entire field of astronomy.
So why rock the boat? After all, one has to compete for attention against
television and video games. And one has no definite promise of a financial
return to offer when pleading with a spartan Congress for funding.
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- Big science projects like the defective
Hubble and the defunct Super Conducting Super Collider (designed to probe
particle theory) have become financial black holes. They drain other disciplines
of badly needed cash and undermine public confidence in scientists. Ten
Keck telescopes could have been built out of one Hubble. Keck is where
a handful of extrasolar planets were detected, ironically one of Hubble's
original purposes. Space science missions are losing their science. The
International Space Station costs over $2.5 billion a year yet it remains
unclear what astronauts will be doing up there " repairing it?
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- The bubble created around the Hubble
is big and expensive. While as an astronomer I understand the good that
publicity can bring, I cannot help but remember a note I read in an Irish
pub when the Hubble was revealed to be flawed. On the blackboard, beneath
the day's specials, someone had scribbled in red chalk: "The Space
Telescope: a Hubbling experience." Perhaps it's time we astronomers
take stock of such thoughts.
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