... but to say that it's so way cool that it justifies wasting a perfectly good telescope to make it politically salable is a fairly dodgy logic for everyone except those people who'll make the bucks building & operating NGST... we aren't talking nostalghia here: we're talking straight scientific & economic common sense. Hubble with still be perfectly servicable in 2010; & all the budgetary & the bandwidth issues that are occasionally misrepresented as conclusive are actionable - so maybe its time the astronomy community made support for NGST strictly conditional on continued operation for the older scope.

(THAT would stir the contractors up, wouldn't it?)

After all, given NGST's nonservicable orbit, there's no doubt that the minute Hubble is made inoperable, NGST will shut down with a bug the designers didn't quite plan for....

Robert