What if Google or Microsoft launched a new Hubble?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Or, more likely, something rather better. They can afford the startup costs, they’d rent out time to scientists - or anyone interested - as per Hubble, on a purely commercial basis. They’d charge enough to cover operating costs. Give the scientists 3 months lead time (Hubble gives them a year but there’s Wall Street to consider), then sell the pictures, complete with online advertising, for your actual profit. And then there’s all the merchandising - posters, mousemats etc. I think I could put up with some advertising in return for a new, cool, picture every day or so.

Perhaps even Amazon could do it - have a Picture of the Day with a ‘Click here to order poster / mousemat / whatever’ button. I’m not sure they’re sufficiently solvent, though.

2

I might be the one who is wrong, but I am personally guessing that either you’re really underestimating the cost of launching stuff into space, or really overestimating the profitability of a coffee-table book…

Space travel has principally been in the domicile of the government because, simply, at this point there isn’t way to do it profitably. About the only things you can get up there that you can’t down here are zero-G that lasts longer than a few seconds, and pictures of the earth.

3

What if the telescope needed repairs, too? Could Microsoft or Google afford to send astronauts and a space capsule up to repair it? In the past, NASA simply sent up a space shuttle. Since the Columbia accident, not only are shuttle launches farther between, but NASA wishes for missions to stay in the vicinity of the International Space Station in case there are problems making it necessary for the shuttle to dock to the station. The Hubble is in a completely different orbit from the ISS, and I assume any telescope launched by a third party would also be in a different orbit. Not only is the shuttle fleet expected to be retired by 2010, NASA also has announced they will not send any more crews to maintain the Hubble and expect to let its orbit decay and the telescope burn up in the atmosphere.

4

Given your other thread about Google Earth, I’m again wondering if you are underestimating just how long it takes to get anything like this off the ground (pun intended :wink: ) To recreate Hubble from scratch would take many years. To start something new using satellites, longer. If you can find the venture capital, then go ahead.

I’m pretty sure the folks at Google have ridden enough dot-com bubbles to know that their supposed worth is only because they are doing what they’re good at, not messing around with rockets and stuff.

5

It’s not that far-fetched. Forget another Hubble - there are plenty of deep-space pictures, and a large telescope like Hubble costs billions.

But there may be other commercial angles to space exploration. The Mars rover web site got something like 100 million hits when the Spirit first landed on Mars. So there is clearly huge demand out there for unique space activities.

One idea I’ve seen floated around is the concept of micro-rovers on the moon. Send up a rocket with a dozen tiny rovers, which can be controlled remotely from Earth. Set up a web site where members can watch real-time video from them, and for a larger fee you can actually get a few minutes of control time on the robot, so you can actually drive around on the moon. Other financing models would have to be examined - selling time to schools or organizations, maybe creative things like a brush on the back of the rover that makes it act like a pen - for $100, you can have the rover draw the name of your sweetheart or child in the lunar soil, and it’ll be there for millions of years… Lots of angles.

6

[QUOTE=JacksonRoykirk]
Not only is the shuttle fleet expected to be retired by 2010, NASA also has announced they will not send any more crews to maintain the Hubble and expect to let its orbit decay and the telescope burn up in the atmosphere.
[/QUOTE]

[Nitpick]There actually will be one more servicing mission to HST. link

7

I think a large business would be better off making a deal with NASA instead of trying to go it alone. NASA has infrastructure that it would cost billions to re-create - not just physical technologies, but scientists and specialists with decades of experience. They could sponsor a telescope / shuttle launch / whatever and in return get exclusive (temporary) rights to webcasts from space, etc. NASA gets to save taxpayer money (or spend it on projects that wouldn’t otherwise get funding) and the large business not only gets possibly lucrative rights, but also terrific advertising.

I’m reminded of a great line from the movie “Fight Club”:

8

[QUOTE=BlackKnight]
I think a large business would be better off making a deal with NASA instead of trying to go it alone.
[/QUOTE]

Pretty much what I was going to post.

Rockets to date have had only a few relatively small pieces of lettering on them, saying USA or NASA, and the rest is white space. Compare that to a racing car that had every square inch plastered in advertising. A sleek white rocket with a huge GOOGLE down the side would be worth a lot to Google. And to NASA. Google pays apart of the cost, according to their means, and they get a part of the action.

9

[QUOTE=drewbert]
[Nitpick]There actually will be one more servicing mission to HST. link
[/QUOTE]

Thank you for the update. I stand corrected. My main point was any private venture to put a Hubble-type telescope into space will also need the resources to service it. Even if they contract with NASA to maintain it, it will still cost several hundred millions for such a venture.

10

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
It’s not that far-fetched. Forget another Hubble - there are plenty of deep-space pictures, and a large telescope like Hubble costs billions.
[/QUOTE]

Cite?

IIRC the launch cost is in the millions, but with Hubble the actual build cost, once you strip away the government boondoggles and all the added costs of the various delays etc was also in the millions, not billions.

11

[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
Given your other thread about Google Earth, I’m again wondering if you are underestimating just how long it takes to get anything like this off the ground (pun intended :wink: )
[/QUOTE]

I think you’re wondering too much.

So it takes a couple of years, so what? I know how long Hubble took, but that was plagued by delays, a Shuttle disaster, and government inertia. Private enterprise is usually far more efficient.

12

[QUOTE=Quartz]
Cite?

IIRC the launch cost is in the millions, but with Hubble the actual build cost, once you strip away the government boondoggles and all the added costs of the various delays etc was also in the millions, not billions.
[/QUOTE]

So if the whole project only costs, say, fifty million to do, then all Amazon would need to do is sell fifty million pictures at one dollar each to cover the cost. Plus another ten million pictures or so to provide a profit margin, cover the interest payments, etc. All this while government-funded pictures are being given away for free. :dubious:

Or alternatively, they could put the fifty million into building new warehouses, upgrading their stock management systems, launching Amazon.com Furniture or an Urdu-language site, paying their staff better, or any of six hundred other things that they know more about than running a space telescopy operation. Taking huge radical leaps into areas where there is absolutely no demonstrated demand and which have nothing whatsoever to do with your core business is generally not a great way to make lots of money.

13

[QUOTE=Quartz]
So it takes a couple of years, so what? I know how long Hubble took, but that was plagued by delays, a Shuttle disaster, and government inertia. Private enterprise is usually far more efficient.
[/QUOTE]

You can’t simply say “it’ll be more efficient”. Either you piggy-back the launces onto American, European or Chinese space programs (negating much of the assertion) or you start your own from scratch.

14

[QUOTE=Quartz]
IIRC the launch cost is in the millions, but with Hubble the actual build cost, once you strip away the government boondoggles and all the added costs of the various delays etc was also in the millions, not billions.
[/QUOTE]

Even the smallest scientific satellites (~1000 lb) cost over $100 million, of which about 1/3 is the launch cost. A Hubble-size satellite usually costs over $1 billion. Last I heard, the “replacement” for the Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope, is estimated to cost $3.5 billion.

The launchers are already built and operated by private companies. And much of the design and construction of the satellite is also contracted to private companies.

Also, while scientists may buy on a commercial satellite, they’d have to use government grants to pay for it. So if a private company owned and operated it, you’re actually adding a middleman and making things less efficient. It’s better for the government to pay for the satellite and operate it. That way the operation of the satellite can be optimized for scientific value (rather than selling time to the highest bidder), and the data can be made available for free.

15

[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
I’m pretty sure the folks at Google have ridden enough dot-com bubbles to know that their supposed worth is only because they are doing what they’re good at, not messing around with rockets and stuff.
[/QUOTE]
Google helped start an electric car company.

The founder of Amazon.com is starting his own space program.

16

[QUOTE=Quartz]
Cite?

IIRC the launch cost is in the millions, but with Hubble the actual build cost, once you strip away the government boondoggles and all the added costs of the various delays etc was also in the millions, not billions.
[/QUOTE]

Depending on the accounting method you use, the Hubble cost between 2 and 6 billion dollars. That doesn’t include the COSTAR mission to fix the flawed mirror, or any of the subsequent servicing missions.

I don’t think you quite have a grasp on how expensive it is to fly into space. You can’t just wave the private enterprise banner and claim that it will save orders of magnitude in cost.

For example, the Hubble weighs 24,500 lbs. If you look at this cite, you can see the cost per pound for various launchers to LEO. You might be able to use a Proton rocket, at $1697/lb. At that price, it would cost 42 million dollars just in expendible costs to lift something the size of Hubble. Launching on an Ariane-5 would cost 92 million. Building your own rocket would definitely NOT be cheaper - the costs of current launchers are as low as they are because the development costs are amortized over many launches.

The total cost of a launch is significantly more, though. For example, a Zenit-2 booster is only 1152/lb in expendibles cost, but a launch has a total cost of about $45 million.

Then you have to build the scope itself. The construction of Hubble cost well over a billion dollars. Oh, and you need launch insurance. Expect to pay a good chunk of change for that as well.

Then there’s servicing - the original Hubble needed to be serviced right out of the gate to fix a flawed mirror. But even after that, it needed servicing missions on a regular basis to replace worn gyroscopes and the like, or it would only have lasted a few years.

Servicing missions are very expensive. NASA estimated a robotic servicing mission to Hubble at 1 billion dollars. That’s what Google would have to do, unless they’re also going to start their own manned space program.

Private space exploration still isn’t that cheap. Burt Rutan spent 26 million designing and building a little one-man sub-orbital craft. He estimates that being able to build his own private orbital craft will still cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Space is very expensive, no matter how you do it.