Was the Hubble Telescope Worth It?

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Was the Hubble Telescope Worth It?

Robert Tagorda | Monday, April 25, 2005

Nature marks the fifteenth anniversary of the Hubble program with a mini retrospective. It notes the 750,000 images and 120 gigabytes of data sent back to earth, then describes the finances:

Fifteen Years of Hubble

Launched at a cost of $1.5 billion, it has now had three servicing missions, only one of which – a trip to fix a focusing defect in one of its mirrors – was unplanned. The telescope was initially seen as having a potential working lifetime of 20 years. But given its prolific output, each image has averaged a cost of just a few dollars.

Interesting. As one might expect, this estimate coincides with Hubble scientist Ed Weiler’s claim that the average American is paying less than $1 a year in taxes.

I’m unsure whether these numbers are accurate, but it certainly doesn’t give me much comfort that NASA figures have been lacking in documentation. See this November 2004 GAO Report:

At our request, NASA prepared an estimate of the funding needed for a shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble. NASA estimates the cost at between $1.7 billion to $2.4 billion. However, documentary support for portions of the estimate is insufficient. For example, NASA officials told us that the Hubble projectâs sustaining engineering costs run $9 to 10 million per month, but they were unable to produce a calculation or documents to support the estimate because they do not track these costs by servicing mission. Additionally, the agency has acknowledged that many uncertainties, such as the lack of a design solution for autonomous inspection and repair of the shuttle, could change the estimate.

I suppose it’s one thing to be cost-effective and another to maintain rigorous accounting.