Dying for lack of funds

While the plumbers and wrench wielders (they are wrongly referred to as ‘astronauts’ by the media) perform some of the costliest repairs on earth (oops, outside Earth) it’s clear that the magnificent piece of imagination-turned-to-reality known as the Hubble space telescope is on its last legs. That’s a shame. Still, unlike the guy with the beer belly who gets $100 an hour for turning up when he feels like it and charging you whether it works or not, at least the NASA plumbers turned up more or less on time.

The Hubble space telescope

The pictures that Hubble has sent back are like nothing else we have seen before, and doubly exciting for that.

I still remember with amusement, if without surprise, the debacle when the Hubble was first launched. A Hughes subsidiary – yes, you guessed it – owned by who else but General Motors? – royally cocked up the manufacture of the mirror so that the results beamed back to earth compared unfavorable to snaps taken using the bottom of a Coke bottle for a lens. In a world where we prefer being nice to enforcing accountability, no heads rolled and the taxpayer had to pay up as usual for government incompetence.

In this case, let it be added, the fix was brilliant and it’s one I have been advocating for camera makers for ages. It’s the software, stupid!. Some engineers a good deal smarter than the clods at Hughes who made the mirror wrote code to correct the aberrations introduced by the badly made mirror and all was sweetness and light. Lousy lens, great software. Far cheaper than the other way around. Here’s what I’m talking about:

Hubble space snaps before and after the software fix

This is what good DSLR lens design so needs – small lenses, huge zoom ranges and great software to fix what ails the design compromises.

But the Hubble is a pleasant reminder of America’s technical genius and ‘can do’ spirit, coupled with a broader sense that sharing all these great images with a curious world can only be a good thing.

On to Mars!