this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
351 points (99.4% liked)
Space
1951 readers
102 users here now
A community to discuss space & astronomy through a STEM lens
Rules
- Be respectful and inclusive. This means no harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
- Engage in constructive discussions by discussing in good faith.
- Foster a continuous learning environment.
Also keep in mind, mander.xyz's rules on politics
Please keep politics to a minimum. When science is the focus, intersection with politics may be tolerated as long as the discussion is constructive and science remains the focus. As a general rule, political content posted directly to the instance’s local communities is discouraged and may be removed. You can of course engage in political discussions in non-local communities.
Related Communities
🔭 Science
- !curiosityrover@lemmy.world
- !earthscience@mander.xyz
- !esa@feddit.nl
- !nasa@lemmy.world
- !perseverancerover@lemmy.world
- !physics@mander.xyz
- !space@beehaw.org
🚀 Engineering
🌌 Art and Photography
Other Cool Links
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Honestly, Hubble is old, very old. It was based on a spy satellite that the US developed in the 70s, we built 5 of them. There were essentially 5 hubbles looking down at the earth and only 1 looking up.
But those spy satellites were retired years ago, they're 4 generations old now. Since then, we've gradually launched 14 other spy sats to replace them.
All that is to say, why are we still content with our 1 ancient Hubble telescope? Clearly there is a budget for more. If the military can point 19 satellites down at the earth, surely we should be able to point 5 upward, right?
Yeah, the Hubble is struggling up there in LEO, but this isn't a hubble problem, it's a US prioritization problem. You get what you pay for, and apparently we're only willing to pay for war.
You've heard of JWST right?
Oh absolutely! But why not more?
Why are scientists around the globe competing for small chunks of time on the jwst when we could have several more telescopes like it? Or perhaps even a few slightly less advanced telescopes. I know designing it was a huge challenge, but even with the design complete, just constructing it presented a number of serious challenges. Given that the jwst was such a complex project, I wonder if a series of telescopes with optics and instruments still significantly more modern than Hubble would still be useful to astronomers as well as much easier to produce than the jwst.
Because learning about the universe is unlikely to have any short-term gains for people making budget decisions on this scale
I think that's probably right. But personally, I want more and I think it's worth caring about, worth encouraging people to think about.