The news that the Department of Defense had two space telescopes with Hubble-sized mirrors (via) sitting in storage is yet another reminder of the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been spent on defense that we know nothing about. Just think how many totebags had to be purchased to pay for NOVA pieces justifying the Hubble, all while the NRO had a couple of spares just sitting around in their garage:
The new telescopes are “actually better than the Hubble. They’re the same size, but the optical design is such that you can put a broader set of instruments on the back,” he said.
NASA might not get to use these scopes because they have no money for refitting, launching and operating them–our priorities aren’t that screwed up–but it’s still nice to see the military throwing a crumb to the rest of government.
PeakVT
We spend $50B+ on spies, satellites, and the like. Is what we get worthwhile? There’s no way to know.
AlladinsLamp
So, but out a bid for someone (SpaceX) to put these in orbit. ASAP.
Marc
They’re “better than the Hubble” only for some purposes. It’s a happy accident that their wide-field design is ideal for the sort of programs that were highly ranked in the last astronomy decadal survey. (The decadal survey is an astronomical community effort to recommmend funding priorities to Congress; scientists get together and look at important scientific questions and promising ideas for addressing them. The outcome is a prioritized list, and WFIRST (a dark energy + planetary microlensing search) came out at the top.
The biggest problem is JWST. The successor to the Hubble is over budget, delayed, and enormously expensive; NASA is paralyzed until it launches.
arguingwithsignposts
I wondered what that thing in my garage was.
Villago Delenda Est
Department of Defense, my ass.
Department of Spending. Always has been. Priority one: Larding defense contractors with cash. Priority last: the actual people in uniform.
owlbear1
Our country has too many of these bug-fuck nutz jackasses sucking at the government teat.
Fire these paranoid stupid mother fuckers NOW!!
Keith G
What’s with BJ’s penchant to use this formulation.
Totebags have little to do with it. I imagine that Nova’s production costs are covered by corporate underwriters. One of which is Lockhead Martin. Go figure.
Donut
There must be some reason why the Tea-hadists don’t freak out over this stuff but do freak out over spending on education, Medicaid and food stamps.
I wonder what that reason could be? Hmmmmmm.
DLew On Roids
Somewhat pedantic, but I think those satellites were part of NRO, not DoD.
Glidwrith
One question: if they have two in storage doesn’t that kind of indicate there are others actually in orbit and these are the spares in case one went down? Or if they are giving these up that they’ve got something better in the wings?
Schlemizel
NASA has always been, at some level, an arm of the DoD. Men in space was just a convenient way to gain knowledge and develop technologies to bring warfare to a higher plane. They almost stopped pretending after Apollo. The POS Space Shuttle was designed and built for the military to launch satellites covertly. It was useless for actual exploration. Any civilian uses/benefit/growth was merely coincidental.
Remember that great Hubble rescue mission in the early 90s? For what it cost NASA could have built 3 Hubbles and launched 2 into better orbits with standard rocket technology holding the third just in case.
Like so much else we had in this country we have pissed away the huge lead and all the advantages we had on the alter of Mars. We spend more than the rest of the world combined on defense and that does not even include the hidden expenditures like NASA
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I remember hearing about this outrageous project funded by the DoD to build expensive room sized computation machines. Later on, the DoD funded this project to connect computers in order to maintain communications during a nuclear war.
All outrageous wastes of money whose only purpose was to serve the DoD. Nothing good ever came of them.
chopper
why build one when you can have two at twice the price?
The Red Pen
Remember when the Hubble had to be fixed after it initially launched? There’s an interesting backstory.
As this article points out, the only real difference between a spy satellite and a space telescope is which way it points. It turns out that the CIA/NRO already had a system for properly focusing these space telescopes prior to launching them, but they wouldn’t let NASA use this system for the Hubble because it was secret, and NASA are nerds.
So, while the repair mission was dramatic, it was an unnecessary expense courtesy of the fiscal black hole known as the nation’s intelligence agencies.
WJS
It should not be a surprise to anyone that, for a lot of NASA jobs, you need some form of security clearance.
Having said that, I can sympathize with a lot of the people who are upset that our government has billions of dollars in satellites overhead. The hardest part of the budget to cut is the one that covers “defending” America from future threats and unknown threats. This has led to the creation of a particular kind of bureaucrat–someone who is in charge of something that doesn’t play well with others but can, nonetheless, bring magic to a PowerPoint briefing. Drones are a lot like this, but they don’t cost nearly as much as a satellite that never gets used.
Those people are wonderful at building walled gardens for themselves that no Senator dare touch.
jak
A book was written about the building of the Hubble back in 1995. “The Hubble Wars: Astrophysics Meets Astropolitics in the Two-Billion-Dollar Struggle over the Hubble Space Telescope, With a New Preface by Eric Chaisson”.
Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Hubble-Wars-Astrophysics-Astropolitics-Two-Billion-Dollar/dp/0674412559/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338904004&sr=1-1
Some relevant interesting background.
celticdragonchick
@chopper:
Exactly. People in NASA have wondered for decades just how much needless duplication is going on bewteen them and the Air Force wrt space technology.
RSR
Rochester, huh?
I guess a Kodak or B&L project?
celticdragonchick
@The Red Pen:
Yes, the repair thing really sucked.
I actually watched the launch from my front lawn. Pretty damned cool. Even though I was over a hundred miles away from Vandenburg, it was perfectly easy to see the first stage booster climbing up and then see the seperation to the second booster. The coronal ejection flare at seperation was enormous and filled maybe a quarter of the horizon.
meander
Villago Delenda Est Says (@5):
“Department of Defense, my ass.
“Department of Spending. Always has been. Priority one: Larding defense contractors with cash. Priority last: the actual people in uniform.”
You make a good argument, but…. SOLYNDRA!!!!!! Who needs to care about the hundreds of billions wasted, the horrible accounting systems, the campaign finance for contracts corruption, when there’s SOLYNDRA to moan about? God forbid that Issa point his gavel at the DoD.
RCH
FYI, NOVA is funded by Lockheed Martin and David H. Koch, as well as the CPB and tote-bagging ‘Viewers Like You’. Koch actually funds a lot of science-related stuff, which is surprising given how much he benefits from public ignorance.
MobiusKlein
@Glidwrith: Yes, it does.
The fact they have two strongly implies there are two more that are even better at spying.
What does it say about our society that spying on each other is more important than spying on the universe?
Tehanu
@meander:
It was called the War Department until 1947 or so. I would submit that that was a much more honest name. At this point, since we are spending more on “defense” than the entire rest of the world, I wonder why our “shining city on the hill” needs to defend itself against the rest of humankind.
James E Powell
@Tehanu:
I wonder why our “shining city on the hill” needs to defend itself against the rest of humankind.
Everybody knows: it’s because they hate our freedoms!