I saw the Hubble in a Lockheed facility in Sunnyvale, California in 1988*. There were technicians working on it in a clean room but it looked essentially finished. The Hubble was launched in April of 1990 after several years of delays due to problems and the Shuttles being grounded following the Challenger explosion. Too bad no one bothered to test the optics during that time.

*The facility was just across the street from a defense contractor company named ESL. A couple hours after I viewed the Hubble, a man named Richard Farley went into ESL and shot 11 people, killing 7 of them. After a long standoff, he surrendered to police in exchange for a sandwich - a turkey sub from a restaurant called "Togos". I'd eaten that same sandwich for lunch. It was a good sandwich but not worth surrendering over. Farley was sentenced to death in 1991 and is still on death row.

I tend to remember stuff like that.