Save The Hubble

[xoxoxoBruce]

According to the Washington Post the public is not happy about NASA's plan to ditch the Hubble Telescope.

The news was divulged almost as a by-the-way amid the fanfare accompanying President Bush's new moon-Mars initiative, but it has provoked a level of anguish and outrage that has overwhelmed whatever excitement the administration may have hoped to kindle with proposed new ventures in space. Hubble's distress touched a national nerve. It has become the people's telescope, its fate of vital interest to everyone from the scientists who use it and minister to its needs to amateur astronomers to breakfast-table enthusiasts who marvel at Hubble's spectacular images.
"Let me get this straight. We are going to take the greatest telescope ever conceived . . . and then we are going to blow it up?" one man wrote on Hubblesite. "Do you people have a clue? The American People own the Hubble. How dare you even consider blowing her up?"
"Within our own Hubble community, we've had nothing but shock and outrage," said Steven Beckwith, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSI) here, which supervises Hubble's observations. "The public outpouring has been extraordinary."
Beckwith said he has received hundreds of e-mails of support and suggestions for saving Hubble. O'Keefe has acknowledged to reporters that his "e-mail system is clogged every day."
Other NASA offices also report a brisk traffic in Hubble mail, and Hubblesite has received thousands of messages

It's a good thing the 101st is back from Iraq to crush these traitors so Bush can get on with his quest.