Hubble Telescrope Permanently Near-Sighted

WI NASA wasn't able to correct the Hubble Space Telescope's problems?

Would such a large, public, high-cost failure end up dooming or at least highly-restricting the space program in the USA?
 
IIRC, it would have been cheaper to make a new and better space telescope and maybe even operate both.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
The mission to repair the Hubble was critical not just for the sake of the project, for for NASA's reputation. With the destruction of Challenger in 1986 and the massive SNAFU of the Space Exploration Initiative proposal in 1989, the troubles with Hubble in 1990 was basically the last straw. Indeed, the astronauts who went out on that particular mission that that the future of the American space program was in their hands.

Had the mission to repair Hubble failed, NASA's credibility would have been shot with both Congress and with the general public. While I can't see any realistic scenario in which the space program is terminated altogether, it would have become increasingly difficult for NASA to maintain a budget necessary for an extensive program.
 

Thande

Donor
Could have been very, very bad considering that the Americans were also helping to keep the Russian space programme afloat at the time. There's a lot of angry finger-pointing right now about having to buy Soyuzes off the Russians because America won't be able to access the space station it mostly built otherwise, but if it hadn't been for U.S. support in the early 1990s, those Soyuzes wouldn't be being built now.
 
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