Hubble Servicing Mission 4 cancelled?

"Jim Shaffer, Jr." wrote:

The head of NASA was asked about that at this afternoon's press
conference. Basically, he said it would be difficult and the HST might
die before they could arrange it anyway.

And just after Opportunity landed, Weiler, Theisinger and Elachi give
O'Keefe a sign:

http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/...5officials.jpg

;-)

You still have to design the new mover, docking gear, etc etc etc.

agreed...

but I was under the impression that those issues should be also solved
for the "desorbit booster"... assuming one will be indeed built (I
personally doubt it).

I don't know how confident NASA is with it's ionic propulsion (seems
that the latest test probes were quite successful) but I don't see any
reason not to consider it... and actually decide which way to apply
the delta V at a later stage !

AlexT

Seems the ion drive itself would work dandy, but the weight of the requisite
solar panels to give it the required thrust is prohibitive. I thought maybe an
electrodynamic tether could be harnessed at a significant weight savings, but
I'm told this would only serve to brake and de-orbit the unit much quicker. In
fact Boeing and lockmart have looked at those for de-orbiting old dead
satellites when their useful life has gone. I wonder what ever became of the
pop sci magazine idea of one gigantic antenna teleport at geo over north
america, where you could just keep plugging in new satellite transponders
mision after mission, like they keep adding antennae to the Empire state
Building, and, they being all handy in one place, you could send servicing
missions to it as needed....