I don't know how many of you have heard about the recent decision to cease repairs on the Hubble; my dad informed me of the decision. It's moderately old news and this is why it's not on the frontpage.

Remember recent news articles like Hubble sees 'most distant object'... well, it speaks for itself. I'm concerned for the astronaut's safety but it would/will be catastrophic to see the Hubble, a $6 billion (space.com) project, to go down in flames.

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"It follows opposition to Nasa's chief, Sean O'Keefe's decision, that servicing missions should be cancelled because of astronaut safety concerns."

"Without that mission, which would repair failing gyroscopes and upgrade detectors, the telescope will eventually stop functioning and will need to be nudged out of orbit toward Earth in a controlled descent."

"So we have a family member that has now a timetable for when that family member's going to depart and we all feel bad," he said. "I think the most important thing is to make sure that the time we have left is quality time."

Possible work-around:
"Regarding a possible shuttle mission to Hubble, Readdy said schedule pressures and logistics would be formidable, especially if Nasa were required to ready two shuttles simultaneously - one to service Hubble and a second to wait on an adjacent launch pad if a rescue was needed."
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News Source: BBC NEWS | Science

Yep.. heard about that too... They are also trying to get OUR Canadian Mercury telescope technology to make cheap.. good quality telescopes but we aren't giving the technology away at least yet.. lol

There is a major reason for this though. Any shuttles that go into space, for now, must be in the same orbit as the international space station, I believe, so, worse comes to worse, the astronauts can bale out and send for help. The problem with hubble is that it is no where near the station and therefore they would not be in that orbit in case of problems. I hate to see the hubble go, but they do have human lives to take care of.

edited: damn my typing skills have gone downhill

Hmm that's true. Quite a pity.

Just think on the things they would miss out on though...

Another blairing reason for ditching huble is this... the new one is supposed to be launched in a couple of years so in the great scheme of things not much longer and its supposed to be 10X better then Hubble so just imagine the images we will get then

Yes, that's great, but Hubble is doing an excellent job. They've made many discoveries regarding the most distant galaxy in space; they were focusing on a patch of sky for maybe 2 months in order to obtain the images. Not to mention the Hubble is worth $6bil. I'm just disappointed with their decision.

Yea well.. as M$ said.. its only gonna get better (the space program)