Throwaway instruments

It's time for an instrument inventory. Used test equipment with finger-soiled knobs and switches gets tossed. That spectrum analyzer's CRT will surely go dim someday, so junk the analyzer and the spare CRT stored in the stockroom. You're replacing all your instruments, so toss their spare parts too.

While you're at it, order a unique and gold-plated metal trash bin to collect the rejects. You'll use it once and then toss it, too. Besides, money is no object. You can use cash from other projects.

Sounds crazy, huh? Not to NASA's chief administrator Sean O'Keefe, who in the latest of a series of questionable policy decisions decreed that the star-crossed Hubble Space Telescope will not undergo two final maintenance missions and thus will deteriorate and fail several years before its planned retirement in 2010.

O'Keefe cited risks and expenses attendant to future Space Shuttle service missions to Hubble. The Hubble decree followed by two days President George W. Bush's proposal for human travel to the Moon and Mars.

To minimize the danger of tons of glass and titanium impacting populated areas when Hubble reenters Earth's atmosphere, O'Keefe advocated using funds from the astronomy budget for a special-purpose "deorbiting" rocket to nudge Hubble into an ocean impact. No longer needed for Hubble's refurbishment, on-the-shelf repair parts and new instruments worth approximately $200 million will get scrapped.

O'Keefe's announcement provoked howls of protest from astronomers, who point out that loss of the Hubble will eliminate space-based visible-light observations until the proposed James Webb Space Telescope reaches orbit, perhaps in 2011. As for risk, some observers believe that servicing Hubble via the Space Shuttle actually poses a lower flight risk than the longer engine burn required to visit the International Space Station.

Two Shuttle disasters have shown how inept management, office politics, and misguided policies can escalate technical risks into catastrophic failures. And speaking of bad policy decisions, where's NASA's replacement for the aging Space Shuttle?

As instruments go, Hubble is well worth keeping—it's NASA's management that needs repair.

brad@tmworld.com