Hubble weighs 11 tons, well within the capacity to LEO of a single $70M reusable Falcon 9 launch (probably around half that cost for SpaceX).<p>I wonder how expensive a telescope like this would be today, both the design and actual manufacturing, and whether it would be feasible for SpaceX to shut up all the "Starlink satellites are blocking my view of the sky" complaints by launching a Hubble-equivalent space telescope (not more capable, just more modern and presumably much cheaper) and then giving out observation time on it.<p>Of course, it would not be easily maintainable given we no longer have the space shuttle, but if the majority of the cost was development, the manufacturing + launch costs today might make replacement cheaper than on-orbit repairs.<p><a href="https://www.space.com/15892-hubble-space-telescope.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.space.com/15892-hubble-space-telescope.html</a> claims "Getting Hubble developed and launched cost $1.5 billion".
NASA didn’t design for serviceability, but rather the NRO.<p>There’s an old photo showing a Hubble mirror being ground by a technician in 1979. It’s a cute how-the-sausage-is-made photo, until you think about the timelines when Hubble was donated and realize it’s a photo of top secret work being done.<p>(1) <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hubble_mirror_polishing.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hubble_mirror_polishing...</a>
This reminds me again of the tremendous opportunity of making a spacesuit with a five finger articulated 'hand' at the end of the sleeve. Imagine an astronaut who puts their hand into a controller at the end of the sleeve that wraps around their fingers and hand such that their hand movements are exactly replicated on the robotic 'hand' outside the end of the glove. This would revolutionize what could be done on spacewalks.<p>At one of the NASA tech days at NASA Ames (Moffet field), they had a space suit glove simulator where you put your hand in it and it had the flexibility that you would expect with a partial pressure spacesuit glove in vacuum. It was super hard to do anything precisely when pushing so hard just to move your fingers around. A robotic 'waldo' type device which replicated your hand movement precisely would minimize hand fatigue and allow for doing precise alignment.