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Yada yada yada china weak yada yada china poor yada yada china stupid.....

Look, we can through figures at each other all day, but it doesn't change the facts.

America has been spinning its wheels since the early 70's and China hasn't. The fact that anybody is talking about China's economic power is testament to how far they have come (and they are just getting started).

China is poised to be an economic juggernaut and if we don't wake up and realize this soon, then we won't be able to do anything ten years down when it is too late.

You can't make comparisions to Japan. The analogy doesn't fit. Japan is an island nation that has virtually no resources. It's economic growth was not based on raw production power, rather it was based on over-inflated market projections (much like our boom/bust of the 80's).

The former Soviet Union is not a fair analogy either. China's borders havent changed in hundreds (thousands?) of years. China is also addressing humanitarian issues and becoming a strong supporter of human rights.......why? It is good for business.

'Oh yes, and I suppose that its just as easy to wave our hands and magicly make a robotic repair mission in only two years? Or to wave our wand and make an ISS payload go away to make room for Hubble on the schedule?'

Actually, the testing and training is already underway. The technology IS available and need only be adapted to deal with vaccum and extreme temperature changes. As for the ISS, nowhere is it written that we need to sacrafice our equipment (HST) to meet the demands of other nations not sharing the burden of lifting and assembling. I mean, for goodness-sake, we don't even have an agenda for the damn thing.

'And are you naieve to think that the media would forgive them this in hindsight?'

So the media dictates government policy? It's not as if the media even has a positive opinion of NASA or space exploration in general......so what's to lose?

'Having O'Keefe publicly stand up and ask tell that "its the stingy taxpayers fault" would be political suiside too, by the way.'

You misunderstood me GCNR. I said that O'Keefe should have held the politicians to the fire after Columbia. It isn't the taxpayers that quietly kill budget request after budget request in the middle of the night, it is politicians. The public believes that NASA recieves about as much money as the Navy or Air Force.

I don't mean to seem down on O'Keefe, but is it wrong to expect leaders to lead?

Oh ok Smurf, I'm sorry. Bigotry has nothing to do with low intelligence.

Seriously, descrimination/sexism has everything to do with intelligence. Hating women or thinking them inferior isn't a value but a lack of it. If you think you are better than a woman or someone with different skin color just because you are male or white then you aren't expressing a different system of beliefs, but a lack of comprehension and yes intelligence.

Last time I checked, sexual tension actually drives progress not inhibits it. If there are more men than women, then what women are available have many more choices for mates. This means that successful and intelligent men are more likely to reproduce than your average joe.

Put another way, who is more liekly to win a woman's heart: a man that is sexist or a man that believes women are his equal?

Perhaps the imbalance of the sexes in China is a large part of why China is progressing so quickly?

BUT GCN, there is no replacement for the HST being built or even on the drawing board. Would it be possible to simply wave our hands and magically produce Hubble 2.0 to replace it, hell, even I would be in favor of that.

The next space telescope, tentitively scheduled for 2011, will  not be an optical telescope. It may well yeild valueable scientific information, but it can't inspire. The public won't be excited about pictures that aren't a true representation of what we would see. It simply isn't 'real' to the general population because we don't see in ultraviolet.

If NASA can't take risks then they are unfit to lead our space exploration program. It doesn't matter what kind of spaceships we build, people will die. Instead of O'Keefe addressing the public in a bold and ambitious manner he has been using his airtime to appologize and promise not to risk astronauts lives.

This isn't cautious, this is ridiculous. Would our military be effective if we never entered a situation where lives were at stake? Would a single skyscraper have been built if the engineers were not willing to deal with loss of lives?

Had I been O'Keefe, I would had said something like the following after the Columbia tradgedy:

'We always strive to protect our astronauts, but risk is part of our buisness. Perhaps next time you vote against funding that NASA needs badly to safely transport its pioneers to space, just perhaps you will think twice.'

Yes karov, you are correct. But theres one little problem. For China to become satisfied and lazy, they must surpass us. Japan felt very superior to us in the 80's and became sloppy as a result. their buisnesses are only now picking up the pieces and relearning skills they have forgotten.

And as far as slave labor goes.....do we not also put our prisoners to work? My car has a licence plate that Im pretty sure was made in a prison somewhere.

But America need not resort to using prisoners for manual labor, we have something called the lower class. Our lower class makes our burgers, brings us refills of coffee, wipes our piss off our bathroom floors. And make no mistake, they are slaves. A slave is a human being forced to do labor to survive, without the opportunity to better their lives.

When you work two jobs for about 60+ hours a week you don't have time for college let alone seeking a better paying job. Think about it.

Well you said it, not I. NASA is afraid.

Of the almost limitless disasters that can destroy a shuttle and its crew, sending a shuttle to HST's orbit is but one. Nearly the entire scientific community agrees that any additional risk in sending a shuttle to the HST's orbit is negligable.

We are going to send shuttles up anyway and take the chance another freak accident can happen, but we arent going to service Hubble......moronic.

Ouch! Hubble, a white elephant?

I can't believe you just compared the most successful machine of all time to that orbiting disaster waiting to happen we call the ISS.

Do I love Hubble? Well, yes I do.

Is it worth saving? Yes, it is.

Would saving Hubble be expensive? Of coarse.

Does NASA have anything better to do in the next 4 years? Sadly, no they don't.

The circular logic of our politicians and fellow posting members blows my mind. I thought most of us agreed that the ISS was built primarily to give the shuttle a destination in LEO. I thought we agreed how horrible a mistake it was to push ahead with the ISS. And now I am hearing people say that Hubble isn't worth saving? Are ye daft? Repairing the HST is the ONLY thing the shuttles are good at. As we have seen, grounded shuttles don't save NASA money (or they wouldn't need additional funding to return to flight). It is insane to think NASA is going to find something better to spend their time and our money on in the next four years before Hubble is usless.

If I'm misunderstanding, then please disregard the following statements. Nationalism, at least in the form of local bragging rights and pride will never go away. However, if you mean that countrys have been and always will be, I totally disagree.

From a historical perspective, there are fewer nations today than at anytime in history. The path of progress brings peoples and nations together, not apart.

Technology makes once impassable barriers no more than speed bumps. I also believe that technology will help solve problems with our 'natural' anger and primitive nature.

War and violence won't always be with us either. War and violence are counter-productive to any society.

And I really think the big picture is that what we call human today won't be the status quo in the next hundred years. It is impossible to predict what humans will be like after just 100 years. I think people will look very much the same as they do now, with only a few exceptions, but their minds will be as alien to us as people from 1000 years ago are to us.

comstar, good points.

I would personally like to see a follow-up to the Xprize for a similar purse to reach Hubble then a $20M purse to service it?

Hmmm, interesting debate going on here.

United Nation space governence vs individual soverign government flights.

I can see many benefits to our 'handing over' of the space program to the UN or something like it. We are already the world's supplier of War, why not supply the world with a space program too?

For one, it would be much easier to rationalize a much larger budget for NASA because we would need to be flying international scientists and popular figures into space.

Think about it for a second. The world has over 200 countries in it, most of which can't afford their own space program. If you could collect an average of $1B per country then you have, theoretically, a possible budget of over $200B a year as opposed to $15B.

Think also of how often in the past 50 years the few space programs of the world have wasted money repeating the same things their rivals have done.

If we truly want the human race to become a space faring people then we must include all people and all generations.

History has shown us that when a country like the US has virtually all the space capability, the effort can't be sustained.

All this for an obsolete telescope...

Obsolete? Hardly....

Granted, the technology of the HST is 20+ years old but it is still the world's greatest telescope. The great thing about telescopes is that they never need be obsolete when you can network them to produce sharper images of very distant objects.

I realize that any servicing mission is going to cost about as much as sending a new one. So the obvious solution seems to me that NASA should build a copy of the HST, lanch it aboard the shuttle and service the old one during the same mission.