Three painful stories from NASA today:

1. Three people died in a van accident.
Three Die in NASA Van Accident

2. Hubble Robotic Repair mission would cost $2 Billion, and won't happen.
Panel Weighs in on Hubble

3. The Space Shuttle in-flight repair kit isn't happening.
[lost the link to this one, sorry]. The shuttle may launch in May or June without the capacity for inflight repair.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Regarding Hubble, I was convinced they wouldn't be able to afford to do the repair robotically anyway, and after reading an article on the subject by Bruce Moomaw through Space Daily (The Case Against Hubble) I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that Hubble is just not worth saving.

We have 2 instruments intended for Hubble that could easily be sent up on their own, either as a pair on one platform or separately. Possibly the most important instrument on Hubble is the spectrograph, and it has already failed. It would be just as easy to send a new one of these up as a separate mission as well.

You could do all of this for less than the $1.6B US minimum price tag of the repair option. I'm sorry, but it just doesn't make economic sense.

I will be sorry when I hear it has deorbitted.

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All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~