Hubble

Had to work outside of the office this morning. It did not take much hesitation and I found myself at the Liberty Science Center (LSC): free Wi Fi, good looking but otherwise not so good and too expensive cafe (while on the cafe subject, it does not open until 10am, an entire hour after LSC itself; had to buy a coffee from a vending machine).

There was an IMAX movie titled Hubble. The last time in the IMAX dome was 6-7 months ago, so decided to give it a try. The movie was just 45 min: not a big time waste, regardless of content quality.

It was great though. Guilty of not following much news apart from Techcrunch, Venturebeat, Scientific American (has anyone seen it anywhere lately?!), about two minutes in the movie, I found out that after the originally stated by NASA "nah, too risky, not gonna do it" in 2004, a service mission did actually take place last year. Not just that, during the service mission, Hubble got an infrared capability.

Why am I sharing all that, exposing my partial ignorance to news? Surprisingly, there might be a hope for us as species.

The movie mentioned about ~10,000 people were involved in the Hubble creation. Digging into my corporation experience, may be the project needed fewer people (the major project contributors may back me up here, though I am not looking for any type appraisal for this "insight"). One way or another, Hubble is one of the most considerable projects, and not just by man*hour measure our typical focus falls on. Keeping Hubble alive for few more years, until the launch of the infrared space telescope, let us collect more invaluable data and more importantly have no gaps in observation. The telescope will, with no doubt, have many implications on the future state of Physics. Another NASA project that comes to mind is Pioneer, though it might not have been a disruptive from Physics perspective until the Pioneer anomaly.

Collectively, the anomalies discovered by either projects, challenge the Physical models we've built, let us gain better understanding of the big world we live in, adjust, improve, develop new technologies, and ultimately give us a chance to survive as species in a long run.

Not knowing the development during the 2 years of "not going to do it" and not considering the motivations of the parties involved, we should all thank Sen. Mukilski for keeping one of the most significant human projects operational. Senator, thank you!