"Explorer" wrote in
oups.com:

The reason why saving Hubble is such a big deal is that NASA rarely
ever carries out most new programs through flight status. So, if HST is
not saved, its possible that replacement would be cancelled, leaving
the science community with nothing.

Your comment is indicative of precisely why new projects are often
cancelled before flight - let's say that someone proposes the New Great
Telescope, and NASA funds the program. After a couple of years,
technology advances and the New Great Telescope is now just the Just OK
Telescope, albeit at the same price as before, if not higher. So, the
Better becomes the Enemy of the Good Enough, the new telescope is
cancelled in favor of the Next Really Great Telescope, and so on.

Better to hold onto existing hardware until the replacement is on
orbit. So, we really need that robot to save Hubble!


I don't know of a lot of science missions that are cancelled. Hubble
made it, Gravity Probe B made it, even though the basic reason it was
developed was obsolete thirty years ago. We have all sorts of satellites
and telescopes orbiting the earth, most of which never had to seriously
fight for funding. If NASA has plans to build a new telescope, they'll
get there . Which is disappointing. Why is NASA in the telescope
building buisness? Or the monitoring of greenhouse gases buisness for
that matter?
It seems that its becoming more and more that just because the platform
is based in space, it is NASA's juristiction. Why don't we leave it up
to the EPA to put satellites in space to monitor greenhouse gases?
Telescopes are a bit of a different monster. They're still about space
exploration, just from a distance. If you include that mission in NASA's
goals, then NASA should be maintaing ground based telescopes too.

My view is NASA should step away from its emphasis on science. NASA
should be developing technology to move out into our universe. It
bothers me when people make the statement that we could get more science
done on mars by sending probes then sending people. That's
debatable...however, I don't think the reason that we should send people
to mars is to get science out of them. I think a goal of seeing if
people can establish a permenant base on mars is a far greater goal than
seeing if life once existed on mars.

If you share my view that its not all about acquiring knowledge, then
you'd understand why it's no big deal if the Hubble happens to fall.
However, if your view is that we need to understand as much as possible
as quickly as possible about our universe then you'd want to say screw
the danger of not having a safe haven and get a shuttle up to the Hubble
ASAP, and I respect that.

Tom Kent