"Roger Balettie" wrote in message . ..
"Hallerb" wrote:
The interesting concept thread has a proposed propulsion system that could
move
hubble to a near ISS orbit for easy servicing. It could then be updated
indefinetely.

I believe this is a excellent cost effective idea and would make retrieval
easy
too

This is completely impractical from an orbital mechanics standpoint, as well
as a safety standpoint.

It is cost prohibitive to move HST's inclination that much, and once "near
ISS" would steadily move away from ISS without very costly maintenance
thrusters, which (of course) would degrade the scientific merits for the
telescope *in the first place*.

You'd be surprised. It can be made to work, though in my
opinion the benefits don't outweight the costs. Those
crazy Europeans are planning (or maybe, kinda, sorta
planning on planning, in the classic European fashion) to
do this trick (stunt?) with an X-Ray telescope:

http://astro.esa.int/XEUS/