Live from the Nuke Free Zone

That’s not exactly what I wanted to say to this, but even the Nuke-Free Zone is bound by certain unwritten decency guidelines. Otherwise, you would have been treated to the link below, followed by a whole lot of distressing monosyllables. I’ll spare you all, though, and stick to language I could use within a mile of a church.

A bit of news from SPACE.com, then:

White House Cuts Hubble Servicing Mission from 2006 Budget Request

WASHINGTON – The White House has eliminated funding for a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope from its 2006 budget request and directed NASA to focus solely on de-orbiting the popular spacecraft at the end of its life, according to government and industry sources.

That budget request, according to government and industry sources, will not include any money for Hubble servicing but will include some money for a mission to attach a propulsion module to Hubble needed to safely de-orbit the spacecraft with a controlled re-entry into the Pacific Ocean.

Now, I’ve known Bush has had a certain level of significant contempt for just about anything scientific that isn’t directly attached to a warhead since his first week in the White House. I was also pretty certain the Columbia disaster was essentially going to be the death knell for any high-profile US space-related projects and platforms. When Columbia went down, I was pretty certain the Shuttle program was gone, which essentially means manned spaceflight in the US is.

Secondary damage from that is, of course, the Hubble telescope, which is probably one of the most spectacular success stories in the entire history of astronomy. It is suffering from reperable wear and tear, which could be easily repaired with a Shuttle mission, or repaired with some difficulty with a robotic mission. For the cost of a typical Shuttle mission, amounting to roughly one-fifth of one percent of the DoD’s budget, the Hubble could be repaired and continue being the highly beneficial tool to mankind that it is.

Instead, President Bush has decided that it must be scuttled instead - and, adding insult to injury, ordered that a mission to the damn thing to install the source of its destruction be mounted anyway. Nevermind the fact that if the money to get to the thing and install maneuvering capability is available, the slightly larger amount of money to make the Hubble useful isn’t that big a deal. Ohyeah, and there’s no replacement for it.

The real kicker is that this that this is being spun in places as a necessary evil in order to find the money for Bush’s “initiative” for manned space exploration. Now, it’s not like panning stupid space policy is at all a common theme here - er, wait. Maybe it is. Sorry.

But suffice to say, ditching the Hubble of all things, in the name of a plan the president has no plans whatsoever to actually pursue - I can’t call that anything other than purest idiocy on his part, unless I call it contempt for knowledge itself.

I try really hard not to be a cynic for the most part. I’m bitter about some things, though, and just about anything to do with space policy since shortly after Cassini (success that that is, and a multitude of hats are doffed to all who were involved with that thing) is one of them. When I look at this “plan” regarding Hubble, I see nothing more than an unnecessary action whose justification is nothing more than yet another lie. I look at this and find myself a little more embittered about the American space program than I have been, despite my best efforts not to be.

All I can really say is, thank goodness the rest of the world, and the new crowd of private groups aiming at their own space presence, are getting things done, because this particular announcement has pushed my opinion of the bulk of America’s space program from saddened distrust to flat contempt. Congratulations on emasculating American space science and exploration even more than it already is, guys; I’m counting the days to 2008 with just a little more antcipation now.

There’s still vague hope, though. Maybe the Europeans, the Chinese or Russians or someone else will figure out how to snatch the telescope before the Americans destroy it for no reason. It’s something I could see them doing - after all, they can at least see as far as their own noses these days, which is more than I can say for Washington.