As high as the sky let down

As high as the sky let down

The Hubble Space Telescope has been a rollercoaster ride of a venture for NASA. Originally promised to be the greatest advance in astronomy since Galileo’s telescope, the Hubble space telescope was viewed as a marvel of technological lunar innovation. Rather, it became a source of wasteful spending, several unwanted trips to space, and embarrassment. But, NASA has recently announced plans to take one more trip back to the Hubble in hopes of revitalizing it. This comes to much of a surprise because four years ago NASA announced that they would let the telescope die in orbit. This leads one think about how public money is used. The Hubble space telescope has cost over 9 billion dollars. Despite the constant disappointments linked to the project, money was still put into trying to repair it. It is the widely shared opinion that the Hubble was nowhere near what it was worth. Still, billions of dollars were spent. Granted most of the money put into the telescope was during the nineties but that was a much more economically sound time. With today’s uncertain economic infrastructure we cannot wastefully spend as we have before. The problems we have to solve as a nation need to assessed and ordered and solved. Money being thrown out the window on lack luster space telescopes is the exact fiscal mismanagement that is standing in the way of real revolution.