Can NASA save money and risk by building a new space telescope to replace Hubble instead of flying the servicing mission?
Weiler has said that while the cost of the mission is one that can be criticized, even attempting to build a new space telescope would face the same scrutiny later on because cost overages would most assuredly follow then too. Hubble was initially slated to cost about $400 million, but by the time of its 1990 launch it had increased to several times that. To date, NASA has spent about $10 billion to build Hubble and keep it operating in space for the last 19 years. However, a future space telescope – like a daughter of Hubble – would cost much more, be larger and require a new launch vehicle (like NASA’s heavy-lift Ares V) that does not yet exist.
