Sometimes the wheels of progress turn slowly, so technological setbacks are no reason to panic. Fruitful scientific inquiry comes with the specter of failure.

That's why the recent troubles of two high-profile experiments aren't cause for alarm. The occasional malfunction of complex technology comes with the territory.

Shortly after Europe's Large Hadron Collider was activated for the first time a few weeks ago, the 16.8-mile-long particle accelerator malfunctioned. Helium leaked into the underground structure that straddles the border between France and Switzerland, raising the temperature above absolute zero. It was one of several glitches reported by scientists.

The LHC won't be activated again until next year, a decision that has disappointed scientists around the world who have waited nearly a decade to probe the mysteries of the Big Bang by recreating conditions that existed at the beginning of the universe.

Last Monday, NASA put off until next year the space shuttle Atlantis' repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Days earlier, the Hubble telescope stopped transmitting data and images, creating a new set of problems for the ailing machine.

The previously scheduled repair mission was scrapped because NASA doesn't have a crew trained to fix a problem that hasn't been diagnosed yet.

Like the LHC, the Hubble telescope is a superbly crafted machine. Its technology has allowed humans to glimpse the light of faraway stars and galaxies since the 1980s. Some consider it a time machine because Earthlings are able to glimpse ancient stars that no longer exist.

When two of the most celebrated examples of technological wizardry are on the blink, there's a tendency to second-guess the missions.

We should do no such thing. Those who thirst for knowledge should wait patiently for the machines to be repaired. Then we should continue to expand our horizons to the extent that science enables us -- which is practically boundless.