http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=45664
George W. Bush [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]
Remarks Prior to Discussions With President Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil and an Exchange With Reporters
March 30, 2001
So Mr. President, welcome, glad to have you here.
President Cardoso. Thank you very much, sir. Let me say that I am very glad to be here, be with you. I knew your father. Now I'm very glad to see the way you are. As I said yesterday, I will put—take out my glasses to see your eyes, because you said that you would like to see my eyes directly.
President Bush. That's right. [Laughter]
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june97/hubble_2-11.html
PBS
After an uncertain beginning, the Hubble Space Telescope has been considered a scientific success. With the space-based telescope, scientists have been able to see galaxies and black holes never before visible. NASA is currently attempting to upgrade the telescope to make it even more sensitive. Paul Solman discusses the Hubble program with its chief scientist, Ed Weiler.
PAUL SOLMAN: Seven years ago the space shuttle Discovery carted the telescope to outer space. The $2 billion telescope was created to help scientists see 10 times further into the universe than its earthbound counterparts. But soon after the Discovery released the instrument, some 380 miles above the earth's surface, NASA scientists learned there was a defect in the seven-foot primary mirror causing pictures from Hubble to be out of focus.
SPOKESMAN: The liftoff of the space shuttle Endeavour on an ambitious mission to service the Hubble space telescope.
PAUL SOLMAN: In 1993, the space shuttle Endeavour sped to the Hubble in a last ditch effort to repair the mirror. Its dramatic mission captured the attention of the nation as astronauts completed a total of five space walks and corrected the problem. Since then, the Hubble has produced unprecedented pictures leading to startling discoveries from the birth conditions of stars to billions of new galaxies.
Now NASA's attempting to upgrade the Hubble to make it see a lot more. Joining us from Houston is Ed Weiler, chief scientist for the Hubble telescope. Mr. Weiler, thanks for being with us. Now, I thought the Hubble was no longer broke. So why fix it?
ED WEILER, NASA: We're going to make it better. It's currently the best telescope in the world, and we're going to make it even better with new technology. As you said earlier, we launched it in 1990, but the instruments that actually analyze the light from that mirror were built with 1970's technology. And we've come a long way since then. So the Hubble is going to even be better after this mission.
PAUL SOLMAN: Well, what are 70's instruments doing in something that was launched in 1990?
ED WEILER: Well, you've got to remember, the Hubble was started in 1979, and the instruments were selected in the mid 70's, so you have to sort of lock up your technology at that point. We were supposed to launch in '83, and for various reasons we didn't get to launch until 1990.
PAUL SOLMAN: So what are the astronauts actually going to be doing up there?
ED WEILER: Well, I think it'll be a pretty exciting mission for the Americans to watch, but the only problem is most of it happens in the middle of the night. There'll be six--I'm sorry--four space walks of about six hours each. The first one, I think, is the night of Valentine's, the morning of the 15th. And that'll be the most important one for we scientists because we're going to be replacing two of those 1970 instruments with two of these 1990's instruments.
PAUL SOLMAN: For what purpose?
ED WEILER: To enhance the science. One of the instruments is an infrared instrument, and that will open up a new window for Hubble for the first time, extending our vision beyond what the human eye can see into the infrared. Why is that important? Well, if you want to look even further back in time, further back in space than the current Hubble can look the objects are going to be moving away from us even faster, and that's going to shift the light because of the red shift or Doppler shift into the infrared. So this will really enable us to look even further back in time at even younger objects.
PAUL SOLMAN: How can you look further back in time, what do you mean?
ED WEILER: Well, light takes time to travel from one place to another place. For instance, if you remember the moon walks, the astronaut's voice would take about two seconds to get from the Moon to here. So you weren't hearing the astronauts as they were at this instant. You were hearing them as they were two seconds younger. The same is true with light, just like radio waves. The farther something is away from you, the longer it takes the light to get here, thus, you're seeing fossil light, light that left there a long time ago.
PAUL SOLMAN: What are the risks this time around for the astronauts, I mean, compared to say the last fix, the Hubble mission?
ED WEILER: The last mission was certainly one of the most ambitious, if not “the” most ambitious of all shuttle missions. There were five space walks in that, and really the future of the Hubble was riding on that mission to see if we could really fix it. This mission we have four space walks, and we're really going up there to maintain the engineering and to improve the science. The risks are the same. You can't list all the risk, but I'm not too worried. I don't think the team is worried because the team has taken this mission just as seriously as we took the last mission. We've had just as many practices and simulations, and the spirit of the team, the headquarters people, the Johnson people, the Marshall people, the KSC people, has just been great. It's been as high as it was for the last mission.
PAUL SOLMAN: What's the worst thing that could happen? As a journalist I have to ask you that.
ED WEILER: I don't--I get that question a lot, and I don't like to speculate on it because if you asked that question before the 1990 launch and asked us each to list the ten things we worry about the most, I don't think any of us would have anticipated a problem with a mirror. So the ones you worry about the most are the ones you don't even think about but we've got lots of contingency plans, and I think we're as well prepared as we can be.
PAUL SOLMAN: I read a headline in the Washington Post and I'll quote it--it says, "A former flop, Hubble reaches superstardom." I remember when they called it a "techno turkey," "“trouble rhymes with Hubble." What feats have propelled the telescope from failure to superstar?
ED WEILER: I think in one sense the fact that we have so many problems with it and then overcame them, to me it was the great American comeback story. Hubble was the butt of jokes on nightly comedy shows. It's been in comedy movies.
PAUL SOLMAN: Naked Gun two and a half.
ED WEILER: Exactly.
PAUL SOLMAN: With the Hindenburg and the Titanic.
ED WEILER: And I remember one cartoon back in those days that showed Mr. Magoo and said the real inventor of the Hubble space telescope. And I measure our success in a way by cartoons in one sense. The cartoon that I think is on everybody's wall in the Hubble program now is a cartoon that came out about a year ago that showed a dad and his little son in a telescope shop buying a telescope and the dad was pointing at this very nice two, three hundred dollar telescope. The little boy had tears in his eyes and said, "Daddy, can't I have a Hubble?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=058b8VBYHDo
You Tube
STS-82 launch (2-11-97)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj85x-KnoHA
You Tube
Ayrton Senna Pole Lap - Monaco GP 1991
http://www.tv.com/shows/dragnet-1951/the-big-genius-382379/
tv.com
Dragnet Season 5 Episode 16
The Big Genius
Friday and Smith investigate what seems to be the perfect crime.
AIRED: 12/15/55
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The Countess of Wessex visits the Remus Horse Sanctuary in Essex to mark its 30th anniversary, 10 July 2013.
- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 5:05 PM Pacific Time near Seattle Washington State USA Wednesday 24 July 2013
