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Originally Posted by Drbuzz0
I realize this is one of those sorta fuzzy questions, but I am wondering if there are any other good examples of space telescopes with a similar mission to Hubble. Not really things like compton, Chandra, soho or things built for a single primary purpose.
Basically: General purpose or broad mission, optical telescopes using visible light, or UV or near visible IR, but excluding telescopes especially designed only for work in the lower thermal IR range, x-ray telescopes... that sort of thing.
Yes, it is a blurry line, but basically stuff with a lens and CCD and optical sensors, as opposed to a scintillation imager or something similar. And intended for broad use for stars, galaxies etc etc.
What is there to compare hubble to? I know it's pretty much the biggest and best, but are there any others in this nitch? were there?
The only thing that comes to mind ATM is some of the stuff on Skylab...
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From the viewpoint of someone who's been collecting information for a book on the history of space astronomy - no, not really. The major difference from the other wavelength bands - UV, X- and gamma-rays, IR - is that there was little point to building an optical space telescope much less capable than Hubble, as most of the science could be done from the ground (sometimes using a different approach) at maybe 1% of the cost. There were many predecessors to HST's UV capability - two OAOs in the late 1960s, experiments on Salyut 1, Skylab, Apollo 16, Soyuz 13, Mir, the International Ultraviolet Explorer, Astron... To be sure Hubble harvested what was learned form most of these. I'd agree that GALEX comes close, since a deep UV survey has such broad scientific value. And it's a very healthy thing that we've been learning to tear down the traditional boundaries between wavelength regions, all set by our detection limits and techniques, and use whichever gets us the scientific conclusions.
Looking at the short-wavelength limits of instruments currently manifested for JWST, one could make the argument that there is no other such general-purpose optical space telescope seriously planned at the moment either... The reason is that the compelling science cases for studying the formation of planets, stars, and galaxies all agreed on the value of a large IR-optimized space instrument, so that realy is the obvious next step.