save hubble

[alxian]

should nasa just sell hubble to private interests?

or china france or russia?

[UncleAl]

Not A Space Agency would gladly destroy the Hubble before getting a $billion for it on the open market. NASA is all about political favors to friends, starting with President "Landslide Lyndon" Johnson headquartering NASA in Texas. NASA is an expensive dysfunctional joke.

The Space Scuttle's solid fuel booser segments (already a disaster) are porkbarrel fabricated in California. Their width is limited by railrroad tunnel size under the mountains Specs for Space Scuttle SSBs are therefore directly traceable to [b]the width of two horses' asses[b]. Here we go...

The U.S. Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and U.S. railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did *they* use that gauge? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? If they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.

So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

We have the answer to the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot.

Specs and Bureaucracies live forever. The next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. The Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two war horses. Does it stop here?

You must go back even further! See Nicholas Reeves' book on King Tut and looked at the figures for Tut's chariots. The axles were 2.3 m or 7' 6 1/2". Had Tut's workers had built low slung wide Chrysler style equipment? The wheels seemed to have exceptionally long hubs, and the ends of the axles pushed out even more. Wait a second...

Projective Geometry to the rescue! Trace the picture of Tut's hunting chariot on p. 172 (the stripped down version photographed in the text nearly head on) so it is possible to have lines tracing the axle, the center of wheel rotation, and the point of wheel contact. They are not parallel and are thus distorted by perspective. It is possible to find what fraction of the axle extended beyond the point of wheel rotation. It works out to be a slightly strong 11 3/4", maybe 11 7/8"? Doubled to 23 1/2" (this is all easier to work out with a sexagesimal rather than a decimal system) or 24", leaves an estimate of 4' 9" or maybe 4' 8 1/2". Where have we seen that number before?

The Shasu or Desert People, likely forerunners of Scythians from the Steppes of what is now Siberia, brought the chariot into Egypt. The premise that it matches two horses' asses is still alive!

There's another way of looking at the Egyptian question. The tread imperative (4' 8 1/2" - 1.44 m) did not adjust to the Egyptian cubit, Royal or Common. The correct tread was neither three Royal Cubits (each 0.525 m or 20.66" for a total of 1.575 m or 62.0" ) of seven palms (each 0.075 m or 2.95") of four fingers (each 0.01875 m or 0.738"), nor three Common Cubits (each 0.45 m or 17.72" for a total of 1.35 m or 53.15") of six palms of four fingers each of the same size as in the Royal Cubit. The latter is close but no bullseye, UNLESS the projective geometry is out. The difference between three common cubits and the Roman chariot tread is 1.44 - 1.35 = 0.09 m. Just about one finger!

Is that close enough for Sargon of Akkad a millennium or so earlier? Or Space Scuttle Columbia going high order because its SSBs were not cast in one piece in Florida?

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by UncleAl

The Space Scuttle's solid fuel booser segments (already a disaster) are porkbarrel fabricated in California. Their width is limited by railrroad tunnel size under the mountains Specs for Space Scuttle SSBs are therefore directly traceable to [b]the width of two horses' asses[b]. Here we go...

Ha ha! I'm hardly one to argue *against* the notion of Nasa--along with every government program by the way--being massively pork barrel, BUT....

The boosters are manufactured by Morton Thiokol in UTAH...what the 'ell does that have to do with California? Slander, I say! Slander! (It does mean of course they have to go through train tunnels in the Rockies, but unless there's a reeeeeeally big earthquake the Rockies are still not in California....)

Cheers,
Buffy

[maddog]

Originally Posted by alxian

should nasa just sell hubble to private interests?

or china france or russia?

That would presume there would be a buyer... Who would want to buy it ? Let's see not the
scientist who use it. Nobody gives them enough money. Then for how much, a $ Billion ? How
come when you resell a car it doesn't go for the same price. Resale value! Let's see it cost
about 2.5 Billion (not counting the launch cost, refurbishment cost, data reduction costs). If it
were like my fiance's 1990 Cavalier which is now worth about $350 used from it's original $12,000
or so price. This would imply a resale value of about $70 million. A steal! Put that into liquidation
and you got about $5-13 Million. Then maybe a consortium of colleges could afford that. NASA
would still have to have funding for the ongoing $300 Million to continue to data for the remaining
year or so of data before it crashes, unless they were to go ahead and fund about a $1 billion to
do another refurbishment to keep it in orbit. I guess that would have to come from the taxpayer.
How would you like to pay $10 / gallon for gas to pay for it ?

maddog

[alxian]

indeed that that was the meat of the question

with private companies able almost to get into space then selling hubble for 100million and then having private company keep it in orbit then there would be a few buyers able to buy and keep hubble running

if its a public institution then the scopes pics could be sold for profit.

if its a private company then they may do more unscrupulous things with it...

could the hubble be pointed at the earth and recalibrated to be the mother of all spy sats?

[Little Bang]

Unc, that was an impressive dissertation.