[APML] OT: HST update

["Greg Hartke" <ghartke@adelphia.net>]

It occurred to me today that even though this is published information,
others with interest may not be privy to it. I took this verbatim from the 2
February, 2004 copy of Aviation Week and Space Technology.

Greg Hartke
Sykesville, MD

Adm. (ret.) Harold Gehman will review the decision by NASA Administrator
Sean O'Keefe to scrub a final planned servicing mission to the Hubble Space
Telescope, but O'Keefe has left little room for a change of mind. He
rejected a request from Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) to set up an
independent panel to review his decision and says he offered Gehman as an
alternative after Mikulski pressed for a "second opinion." Gehman was
chairman of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), which set up
the rerquirements for stand-alone on-orbit inspection and repair that
O'Keefe ruled can't be met quickly enough for the Hubble mission slated for
next year. O'Keefe says that the Hubble team should stop planning that
mission and focus instead on operational techniques to keep the telescope
working as long as possible. As for an independent panel, he says "there is
no panel, however distinguished they might be, [that] will bear
responsibility for the mission if it were to be conducted. They would all
render their assessment and leave, and the person who would have to make
that judgement is... me. No amount of wisdon was going to alter that."


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