I am madder than hell about the plans, or lack thereof, as regards the Hubble telescope. It seems that it has been decided to just let the telescope decay into total disuse, become a random piece of floating space debris, perhaps one day to come burning through the atmosphere and crash upon the earth, or the ocean, a useless, worthless wreck. The thought of it is to me worthy of criminal indictments.
Hubble has brought us closer to an understanding of the creation of the universe than had previously been thought possible, or even imaginable. We have seen images that first transpired billions of years in the past, through the magic of light speed travel, as we have captured these images, the light of which has taken billions of years to reach our range of vision. Almost like a movie recording of eternity. How could they possibly let it just decay into worthlessness?
Apparently, someone has decided it would be far too dangerous to the astronauts involved to fly to the Telescope to make the needed repairs. Well, maybe, and I could accept this, albeit grudgingly, if this were the case. But I think there is an untold story here. And I think it might have something to do with the Bush administration and more to the point, their blind obeisance to the Far Right, Evangelical, Christian Conservative supporters of the Administration, who are out for blood in the course of the on going so-called "culture wars". One of their obvious goals is to ensure the teaching of the fallacious theory of "Creationism" as a counter balance to the Theory of Evolution in public schools across the country, as the predominant belief as to the nature of how the Universe came into being. They want God to be taught as the master of this "Intelligent Design" concept, and will stop at nothing in order to assure this. If the truth were known, if they had their way, Creationism would be the only thing taught in schools, Evolution would at most be pointed to as an example of godless atheistic secular humanism, something to be ridiculed and despised.
One has to consider the prospects of Hubbles continuing and potentially improving or improved in order to retrieve further enhanced images, from further back in time than has of yet been the case. What images would Hubble then retrieve?
Would they see The Big Bang, or something similar to this? Or would they see a long bearded, robed figure holding out his hands, as we read his lips saying "Let there be light" immediately before the entire universe suddenly springs into being, as angels fly around him, seeming to be singing as they play harps? I honestly believe people such as James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, in addition to certain politicians such as Rick Santorum and Tom DeLay, had to have given this some thought. Seeing as how most conservative Christians have traditionally held that the world was created in a relatively short span of time, and only a few thousand years ago at that, I would imagine they are not too pleased with Hubble's track record so far.
