Repairing Hubble

Welcome! You are encouraged to register with the site and login (for free). When you register, you support the site and your question history is saved.

The Hubble telescope has the great advantage over land-based telescopes of taking images from outside of the planet's atmosphere, which greatly blurs images. Nevertheless, the Hubble has two major disadvantages relative to land-based telescopes: it is difficult to repair, and to maneuver it requires the use of fuel, which will ultimately run out. An advisor at the space agency has proposed equipping the International Space Station with small robotic spacecraft that can be launched from orbit to repair the Hubble at a much lower cost than a repair craft launched from earth would cost.

Which of the following, if true, is NOT a serious weakness of the space agency advisor's plan?

While in flight, the robotic spacecraft are roughly as likely to break down and require repairs as the Hubble, and they are not capable of repairing each other.

The robotic spacecraft will themselves need fuel and will require fuel to be sent from Earth at a total cost comparable to that of launching repair craft from Earth.

The robotic spacecraft proposed by the advisor will incur significant design costs not incurred by a repair craft launched from earth, which already exists.

To be effective, the proposed robotic spacecraft may require human maintenance on the International Space Station when all astronauts aboard are committed to other uses of their time.

The robotic spacecraft will not have the capability to refuel the Hubble.

Review: Repairing Hubble

Explanation

Reading the question: we are presented with a plan to repair the Hubble. Specifically, our aim is to repair the Hubble at much lower cost than launching a repair craft from Earth. The all-caps NOT leaps out at us: four of these answer choices will give flaws in the plan. Since we have a NOT, we'll use a very basic relevance filter and see which answer choices which are related to the cost of repairing the Hubble.

Applying the filter: choice (A) presents a problem, because if the spacecraft break down they will fail to achieve their goal of repairing the Hubble. It's a valid weakness so it's not the answer and is out. (B) is definitely an issue, because part of the aim is lower cost and (B) invokes cost. So (B) is a problem and is not the answer and is out. Choice (C) is out on similar grounds. Choice (D) says we might not be able to launch the things at all, which is an even bigger problem. So (D) is not the answer and is out. (E) is not great news, but it's not the aim of this plan to refuel the Hubble, only to repair it. So it's not a weakness in the plan as proposed. The correct answer is (E).

If you believe you have found an error in this question or explanation, please contact us and include the question title or URL in your message.

Continue »

GMAT Free

The Free GMAT Prep Course

Repairing Hubble