Hst

Forest for the Trees is a stunning documentary project that looks at the lives of the tree planters of British Columbia and the stunning landscape in which they work.

Remembrance of Things Past It scarcely seems credible that it was almost exactly thirty years ago that I ?rst met Duccio Macchetto at the ?rst meeting of the newly formed Science Working Group of what was then called the Space Telescope project. We were there in slightly d- ferent roles, Duccio as the project scientist for the Faint Object Camera and I as an interdisciplinary scientist. Henk van de Hulst was also there as the of?cial rep- sentative of ESO. The approval of the project was the end result of a great deal of lobbying and politicking both in the USA and Europe, the European contribution proving essential to the approval process in the USA. Those interested in the nit- gritty of the process should read Robert Smith’s outstanding history of the Hubble Space Telescope. We should have realized early on that we were in for a rough time. At that ?rst meeting of the Science Working Group I remember vividly NASA Headquarters telling us that the Space Telescope was a success-oriented programme that would cost M$ 680. Well, we could live with the cost-tag, but we should have had concerns about the expression “success-oriented”. This meant that everything should turn out exactly as planned, the project would be carried out within the projected time-scale and budget and the telescope would be launched in 1983. Well, the rest is history. We learned a lot of useful jargon along the way.

Trains & railways: general interest.

The story of the HST is a rare example of British design success. Developed in the 1970s at a time when the railways were in desperate need of modernization, it filled the gap left by the failure of the infamous APT tilting train to become the mainstay of high-speed rail travel for several decades.

The HST Strategy Panel held four meetings between mid-August and mid-October 1990. At these meetings, a wide variety of options for correcting spherical aberration were identified and debated. This report presents the Panel's findings and recommendations. Problems included: (1) the optical problem and solution; (2) COSTAR; (3) pointing; (4) WFPC; (5) servicing mission; (6) recommended strategy; and (7) fresh reasons to commit to the HST.