The Washington Post has a dispirited piece on the impending demise of the Hubble Telescope:
The dismay wells up at all levels. At an institute news briefing earlier this month to unveil a Hubble deep space image, the usually circumspect Beckwith suddenly remarked in anguished wonderment that “never in the history of telescopes have we developed an observing capability and given it up.”
This is not the only jewel of technology and progress that we’ve lost recently:
WHEN I first stepped on board the Concorde, in the late 70s, it felt as if I was taking a supersonic voyage into the future… When was the last time that humans developed a superior technology and then, having put it into use and service, decided to abandon it?… It was all over too soon… There sat the pale greyhound, its race run, looking none the worse for its hectic dash… it seemed to recede, in a melancholy manner, back into the future.
The WaPo of course takes the death of Hubble as an opportunity to blast the Bush administration for misplaced priorities. But one can hardly fault them when they’re right.
