What’s being missed by some is that Hubble is very much old tech, has been limping along for a while with occasional scattered periods of not limping along at all and going into safe mode.
One of the things the two year study looked at was fundamentally cost/risk v benefit of trying to keep the thing going verses starting afresh with new tech, new platform.
A few people who were involved in the science/engineering study are a bit p”d off at how some in the media are trying to portray this whole story as being “big bad government verses dynamic entrepreneurs” and how some quotes have been lifted and used to support that POV…the quote below from one involved in the work and the link to their full comment on X.
On surface it looks like "billionaire wants to touch Hubble and NASA said hell no", but that is not what happened. There are three positions here, but only one that truly matters:
https://x.com/rookisaacman/status/1791845941013569616