Ok, rather “out there” question, but would it be economically feasable, from a profit making perspective, to have hubble repaired?
I mean, would it be possible to say hire the russians to fix the thing, and then bill the scientific community for continued use? Seeing as how NASA would have to spend in order to bring it down, and the technology involved is no longer cutting edge it may make sense to “sell it off” for a very low amount.
I am woefully ignorant of costs involved, so please be nice, but I was just reading about the decision to scuttle the HST and it got me wondering if there would be sufficient demand to justify a private consortium to fund such a venture. Seeing as the infrastructure is already there (control centers, users, telescope itself) and all.
The feasibility without NASA’a zooperation has to be considered zero.
The “scientific community” has no billing address. What would you do, divide up the cost of a mission equally among every college professor in the US? In the world? I would think that would piss off a lot of cultural anthropologists. Astronomers only? Maybe cosmologists too? Astrophysicists?
I think you need to clarify your question. I think what you’re asking is how much it would cost to repair the Hubble.
There are at least 5 elements to consider.
Manufacturing the replacement components and/or software – might already be done, could be sitting on a shelf awaiting a mission for deployment. At a guess, making the parts would be somewhere from 20-200 million.
The actual repair – negligible, if you can get the parts and people up in orbit.
The cost of getting to the Hubble to make repairs. According to this NASA site, the cost of a shuttle mission os about 2 dollars per American. Let’s say about half a billion dollars.
How long would the Hubble’s life be extended by a single repair mission? Couldn’t find anything on this, as a WAG I’ll guess 5 years. On this basis, you could pro-rate a physical maintenance cost of domething over 100 million per year.
The cost of the data collection hardware and personnel on the ground. Must be into the millions, but again I didn’t find anything that breaks out this cost.
But when you’re asking about “feasibilty” you’re really asking for an opnion, not a fact, and this is not the appropriate forum for this. I’d say if NASA cooperated to provide the personnel and hardware, a mission could be done for comfortably inder a billion dollars, which does not seem excessive to me. But that’s only MHO.
Currently, researchers do not pay to use time on the Hubble. You do need to submit a proposal, but if it gets approved, you get the time. If a researcher did have to pay to use the Hubble, the money would most likely come from the same grant as his other expenses, and most grants come from various branches of the government anyway. So even if a private company did repair the Hubble, it would still end up being the taxpayers who would foot the bill. Might as well just skip the middleman and have NASA to do it.
Boyo Jim, it’s not clear whether that cost per mission is the marginal cost or the amortized cost. The former is the cost to launch one more shuttle mission, whereas the latter also adds in a portion of the R&D costs, and hence is higher. Amortized cost is relevant if you’re deciding whether to start a new program, but once the R&D is already paid, the marginal cost is more appropriate.