[extropy-chat] Re: Soyuz Hubble Repair Mission--reply to areplyon another list

[Dan]

On Thursday, January 27, 2005 5:59 PM Mike Lorrey mlorrey at yahoo.com
wrote:
>>> The Phillips OTV's arcjet has enough power
>>> and fuel to be capable of SEVERAL trips back
>>> and forth to and from geosynchronous orbit with
>>> significant payloads.
>>
>> Supposedly.  It's not actually flown to space.
>> And we'd have to do the math to see if this
>> actual made it capable of the necessary
>> orbital plane change.
>>
>> Also, do you think it'd be ready for flight in
>> three years or less?  My Soyuz proposal
>> has the benefit of using tried and tested
>> technology for the most part...
>
> There used to be pictures of it fully assembled
> back in the 1997-1999 period, on the Phillips
> Lab website. Don't know whether they are just
> being more reticent with information since 9/11,
> or what, but I'm wondering if it wasn't launched
> on a classified program...

You can wonder, but this does not actually do much.

Also, I doubt anyone's using it because it'd be fairly easy to detect -- 
unless they're masking it somehow, but that's like adding epicycles to
the Ptolemaic system.  It doesn't take anything that's above the level
of consumer optical telescopes (and, in the radio spectrum, consumer
satellite dishes) to track something that big on orbit.  Plus, launches
are watched.  If, say, the USAF sent up the OTV but tried to hide it as
a spy satellite, it'd be fairly easy for most foreign governments to
notice that the alleged spy satellite did some funny stuff once it got
into space.  This is not to even bring up leaks...

A more likely explanation is that it just didn't go further in
development and that means were you to use it now you'd have to restart
the development and get some actual flights.  I doubt anyone would want
a Hubble repair mission to be the test flight of the thing.  If this is
so -- and it seems much more likely to be the case than your theory -- 
then my Soyuz repair mission proposal appears to be a much better
choice.

Finally, imagine that your theory is true and they're using it now, but
as part of some secret operation.  What makes you think it'll be
declassified just to save an aging and soon to be replaced space
telescope?  That's sort of like expecting that a black helicopter will
land in downtown LA at noon on a weekday to help someone fix a flat.
Maybe they have antigravity too and FTL drives...:)

Cheers!

Dan
    See "Tackling Tebye Again!" at:
http://uweb1.superlink.net/~neptune/Tebye2.html