I may be paranoid, but surely, cancelling the Hubble service mission even
before anyone has tried or tested any repair ideas for rcc panels, and
considering that by the law of averages, the mission is probably going to
have a better chance of success than the first Apollo had, is kind of
counter intuitive.

To put things in perspective for a moment in the shuttle program there have
been 26 flights that have gone to a space station (and I'm counting the STS 63
Mir flyby).

That's 26 out of 111 missions where the crew went up and came home safely.
That's less than 25% of the shuttle flights by my math.

Hell, Discovery which has racked up 30 missions only has 6 space station
missions. Only Atlantis will have more station missions flown that solo-Earth
orbit flights, if it is indeed the shuttle that ends up flying STS 114.

And here we are terrified of flying one more non-station mission...

-A.L.