I cannot express just how much I want this to happen.
No attempt = hubble will fail and reenter
Attempt(failure) = same
Attempt(success) = hubble continues groundbreaking science and, after some time, can be brought back to earth via Starship to become a museum piece that inspires generations!!
Agree although I doubt it is ever coming back to the ground in one piece. Unless SpaceX just wants a PR piece. That being said, not even sure they are designed to land with a payload of that level.
I mean, Elon did put his Tesla into orbit out to Mars. A PR boost to save one of the most beloved science projects sounds like a winner after the crap he’s been pulling with x.com fka twitter.
Not sure his rockets have the ability to bring back a large and heavy load. Currently the landing of the first stage requires an empty vessel and the second stage certainly does not have the capability. He would need to engineer a brand new rocket to do just this.
The starliner configuration is designed to take 100 people into leo and back. I think that alone could be close to the 12 tons that Hubble weighs. It’ll be interesting to see capabilities when the variants are produced, specifically the cargo version for me.
Are you referring to Starship? Starliner is a Boeing project.
Yes, my bad. Testing a new keyboard with gesture typing. I should’ve caught that
It would be great if/when that happens, but it’s a few years off the Elon deadline ATM, and doesn’t look close to operation soon
I think the current mission being explored is docking a dragon trunk and boosting it and servicing it. That could buy us enough time until starship cargo is ready. STS-125 added a docking port for capture, which is going to be used by a satellite to deorbit if it comes time to do that.
SpaceX is currently doing precisely that. The new rocket is called Starship, and both the first and second stages are designed to be reusable.