ISS cost ~200 billion, saying we can't do the same research for less is kind of a high hurdle when it's close enough for minimal lag, nobody tried, and people need a lot of ridiculously expensive consumables.
The lag isn't the hurdle it's making the robotics on the satellite to run the experiment. The closest analog is probably the robot that's used to service the JET reactor at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy [0]. With a station for some types of failures with experiments an astronaut can work around or heavily reconfigure the equipment to still get good data. Without a person up there every experiment launch would have to either just accept failures and write off the whole thing or include whatever system we're talking about that would replace the repair and reconfigure ability of people. Instead the various governments front the cost of having a person in space and it's way easier and cheaper for companies to package and run their experiments. It's a subsidy that opens up the ability to do microG science more easily.
Also there's no good alternative way to study the long term microG effects on humans other than a station since you need both space for people to live for up to a year and space for the various experiments on how to combat the deterioration that happens. Having a station up there also teaches us how to work and repair things in space and how things break when they've been running for 15+ years.
Consider, fixing Hubble was a big thing, but we could have sent 3 of them up for less money.
As to micro G, we could send a mars mission with simulated gravity. Which is something we really should be testing instead of simply yet another long stay in micro G.
PS: Some of the most interesting recent experiments have been flame studies in micro gravity. But many of these can be done with 20 seconds of vomit comet zero g time or just a simple drop test like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZTl7oi05dQ
> Consider, fixing Hubble was a big thing, but we could have sent 3 of them up for less money.
Not even close. It cost ~900M for the repair mission and the cost to build Hubble was ~2.5B.
>No, the ITER robot needs to deal with heavy loads, micro G means even small forces add up. Don't forget without people they could send 3x the science payloads. So, scrapping things and trying again really is viable.
Less forces only means that the motors can be weaker but it doesn't lower the overall complexity required, you still have to have X degrees of freedom to get an arm that can barely replace a human in limited circumstances. Telerobotics just isn't there or cheap enough to make it make sense.
> As to micro G, we could send a mars mission with simulated gravity. Which is something we really should be testing instead of simply yet another long stay in micro G.
We /could/ do simulated gravity but there's a lot of engineering issues with that that make it a Gen 2+ solution for a Mars trip or for a more long term solution like a Mars cycler. Just the size required for a spinning torus to be comfortable and provide enough gravity to be worth it would make it much larger than the ISS [0] [1]. There are other problems like dealing with communication equipment and docking which would want a stationary center which brings in more complexity with the seals between the stationary section and the ring. There's other options like a bolas but they're also pretty complex. Until then we'll need to deal with space travel as it comes to us which is without gravity. In short to test and build them we'll need either a large decrease in launch costs or a truly massive pile of money.
Further, 15 years is considered a relatively short lifetime for a satellite, so Hubble 2 and 3 could have easily had a longer total lifespan if they had kept them in a higher orbit because there was no need for servicing. Instead "the space telescope was designed to typically go only three years between overhauls."
26 years (it's still going after all because of the repairs done by shuttle missions) is a long life for a space telescope and particularly for one during it's time. Before Hubble most telescopes were only around for a handful of years before being shutdown.
There's a big difference between designing to fail and designing to be repairable. Even if it's possible it could have been cheaper to launch multiples but it's unlikely NASA could have gotten the funding to start making Hubble 2 in time for it to replace Hubble.
Granted, nobody died, NASA got great press from the Hubble, and it made the shuttle seem useful. And sure funding would have been harder due to less feel good missions, but easier from 1+ billion lower costs. So, I am not going to call it the dumbest thing NASA has done.
However, as to lifespan, from April 24, 1990 to Dec, 1993 the Hubble was significantly 'impaired'. If the next two averaged 10-12 years and the original continued to be useful for a few years that's well past break even. Especially considering the Hubble always suffered from a defective mirror even after the first servicing mission help that's not unreasonable.
PS: By designing to fail I don't mean they intentionally made it worse, just assuming servicing caused a wide range of problems. Sure, NASA did learn something from going though this exercise. But the highly political nature of the organization limits such benefits.
