Rand Simberg wrote:
On Sun, 28 Mar 2004 21:58:22 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
(Greg Kuperberg) made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

This is what it is really all about. The space station is NASA's
priority. Not a moonbase, not a manned mission to Mars, not the Mars
rovers, and certainly not Hubble. The space station is still eating
both NASA's budget and the shuttle's schedule. It isn't just because
the station has major foreign partnerships;

Yes, it is.

as if Hubble doesn't?

Hubble doesn't. Not any with whom we have treaty-level commitments.

Although there are commitments with ESA. They funded nominally 15%
of the costs (in-kind, FOC and solar arrays for example) and are
entitled to 15% of observing time averaged over the mission. Although
the question does get raised at review meetings, so far proposers
from ESA member states have always seemed to come in ahead of the
15% anyway. Of course, an operational agreement like this is always
implicitly or explicitly subject to the "until it breaks" clause.o

ESA is in for at least this big a slice of JWST - including their
recent kind offer to keep it on-budget by prividing an Ariane 5.

Bill Keel