Hubble update: We're surprised that this news hasn't gotten more coverage (including the blogosphere). Here are some story excerpts: (emp add)
MSNBC The fight for Hubble’s life begins anew
A White House decision to cut funding for a Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission and dump the observatory into a remote stretch of ocean waters at a future date is sure to incite debate in scientific, engineering and policy-making circles.
THE REGISTER
The Bush administration has cut funding for any future mission manned or robotic, to service the Hubble Space Telescope, according to anonymous sources, cited by The Washington Post.
The paper reports that NASA has [scrapped] its plans to send a robot to service the telescope so that it can focus its resources on Bush's Martian ambitions. Unnamed officials, also quoted in The Post, have confirmed that Congress will not approve funding for the mission, and that it does not appear on Bush's 2006 fiscal plans.
This is incredible. The Hubble is an
instrument. This is not a contested area of research (stem cells) or public policy (global warming). Bush doesn't want to spend $1 billion to keep one of the most useful (and still promising) scientific tools.
Face it, this administration is opposed to science. Perhaps an extension of their disdain for experts of any type (who are usually called, incorrectly, 'elites').
This is a dark day for American science.
posted by Quiddity at 1/24/2005 09:17:00 PM
If only the Hubble had the ability to knock Soviet missiles headed toward the US out of the sky, then they'd spend the billion.
The Hubble telescope is more than an instrument; it's a doorway into the past, extending our view of the universe back more than 10 billion years. When you remember that the Fascist Party is ideologically wedded to the concept that the universe is only 6,000 years old, basing their claim on the accruing mistranslations of anecdotal oral traditions that were probably transmitted as teaching paradigms, it makes more sense.
It's harder to control people who are able to think logically and properly understand their true place in the universe. But if you play to their "dumb" genes, and tell them they're unique, special, and the center of all known space then they'll believe anything.
Even that a consensual blowjob is more important than the murdering of 200,000 innocent civilians in a defenseless country.
Lurch
