One of the earliest columns I wrote for NDAI described the role private money has played in scientific research. But a lot of subscribers have joined our community since then. And with Rhea Space Activity winning “a $250,000 grant from the US Space Force to continue studying a robotic rescue mission” for the Spitzer Space Telescope, and two companies proposing to work “together to attach a vehicle to the [Hubble Space Telescope] and raise its orbit,” I thought a revisit was in order.
Enjoy!
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The news that “NASA and SpaceX … will study a concept to send a Crew Dragon spacecraft to reboost, and possibly service, the Hubble Space Telescope to extend its life” offered a welcome break from 2022’s relentless distress.
But the prospect that the mission might occur at “little or no potential cost to the government” is downright glorious.
Jared Isaacman, not yet 40, has been to space once, and he’s training to go again in 2023. The tech billionaire is establishing his own kind of manned program, and believes that by “taking advantage of everything that’s being developed within the commercial space industry,” Hubble can be saved.
Leftists have not yet begun to bray, but give them time. Outrageous. Another joyride for the ultra-affluent, this time to a national treasure that the America people paid for. How dare NASA involve commerce in something as important as space science! There ought to be a law!
If that’s to be the narrative, once again, the ignorance of “progressives” will be awe-inspiring. As Joseph P. Martino noted, in Science Funding: Politics and Porkbarrel, excepting the U.S. Naval Observatory, well into the 1930s “every observatory constructed in the United States was built and operated with private funds, and most of them with funds donated by wealthy philanthropists.” The result? “[B]y the end of the third decade of the twentieth century American astronomy led the rest of the world.”
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