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[Waspie_Dwarf]

NASA abandons budget-busting X-ray telescope

www.spaceflightnow.com said:

Growing costs have forced NASA to cancel an X-ray astrophysics mission conceived to study intense gravity fields around black holes and collapsed stars, a senior agency official said Thursday.

The Gravity and Extreme Magnetism, or GEMS, project did not pass a NASA confirmation review, a key decision point before the agency allows a mission to proceed into construction for flight, according to Paul Hertz, the space agency's astrophysics division director.

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[brizink]

duh, this was a dumb idea in the first place. Full spectrum, UV, and Infrared are sufficient until x-ray technology is affordable... give it 50 years or so dudes.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

brizink, on 13 June 2012 - 12:59 PM, said:

duh, this was a dumb idea in the first place. Full spectrum, UV, and Infrared are sufficient until x-ray technology is affordable... give it 50 years or so dudes.

Dumb idea! Not exactly up to date on the subject of x-ray technology are you? You are mistaking ONE satellite over running on cost as meaning that an entire field of astronomy is unaffordable. You couldn't be more wrong.

Later today NASA will launch a black hole hunting satellite called NuSTAR. Guess what technology it uses... yep, one of those x-ray telescopes you seem to think we are 50 years away from being able to develop affordably. It will join the Chandra satellite in orbit, another NASA X-ray telescope. Also orbiting are the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, and Swift X-Rat Telescope. These are also NASA x-ray observatories. In fact NASA launched its first x-ray observatory, Einstein, back in 1978, not bad for a technology you think is 50 years away.

It's not just NASA carrying out X-ray astronomy, ESA has XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL. Japan has Suzuka, Russia has Koronas-Foton. And this list is just satellites dedicated to or mostly designed for x-ray astronomy, many other, non-dedicated, satellites also carry instruments for x-ray astronomy.

You estimate of this technology being affordable in 50 years is out by about 84 years.

Edited by Waspie_Dwarf, 13 June 2012 - 02:37 PM.
Typo