Brian Gaff wrote:

I think one of the problems was that there is a lot of junk in
slightly higher orbits and it would be doubly silly to both risk an
orbiter, and the newly repaired Hubble by doing that, or at least that
seems to be one of the factors. Its a bit of, if it aint needed, why
bother sort of thing.

lol, Brian, Brian is joking.

The alternative if he is not, is that NASA is the joke. You don't have
to try to explain the joke. There are no humans on the Hubble, and the
time to take it up and drop it off is very, very short. Just a little
bit longer than astronauts going to the moon will have to spend at that
altitude. They won't be able to go to the moon if they are worried about
the Orbiter dropping the Hubble off at a slightly higher altitude.

Maybe it's sabotage, by some passive-aggressive mid level manager who
didn't what to repair the Hubble. Snickering, "So there, you got your
Hubble repair mission, but I'll have the last laugh as the fully
functional Hubble spreads debris across Africa."

lol