Re: Musings on Random Musings
Why the smiley? That's exactly right. The astronomers I was working with back when HST was in development spent a lot of time wailing and gnashing their teeth because it was going to be launched on the shuttle, which meant it'd be in LEO. Exposure times would be shorter, there would be thermal, gravitational, and reflectivity interference issues with Earth, orbital decay, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria, etc.
In my experience the only thing astronomers hated more than the shuttle was the ISS.