A great gift idea, or a Trojan horse?

Today we learn of a previously classified gift--the US's National Reconnaissance Office has given NASA two brand new telescopes. The scientific community has identified the telescopes, which of course would be flown in space, as perfect for dark matter searches. That's awesome and I wish them well.

There is a "new space" aspect to this story, however. Here is an excerpt from the New York Times story, quoting the NASA official in charge of the new instrument:

"Dr. Grunsfeld said the repurposing of the telescope for dark energy came at a personal cost. He had long dreamed that the Hubble, which he and the other astronaut servicing teams had said goodbye to forever in 2009, might be visited again and upgraded one more time to do the dark energy work. That dream, he admitted, was now dead.'If for half the cost, you could turn this into a telescope, why would you do that?' he said."

Well, you might do it if you could use robots instead of astronauts, and if the Hubble became the perfect test bed for robotic space technologies.

You might go that route if you remember the track record NASA has of estimating the cost of telescopes. The latest, the James Webb Space Telescope, has increased in cost by a factor of 16 from its original estimate. So the "savings" promised by the NRO gift might be illusory. It's kind of like my wife telling me how much she saved when she went shopping.

In 2004, I was part of a group presentation to NASA on how the Hubble might be serviced with robots. The subject had some urgency, because the shuttle Columbia had just been destroyed with the loss of 7 lives. Like the previous shuttle disaster, Challenger, the future of everything that depended on the shuttles was in doubt. And the Hubble needed servicing in a big way--both batteries and gyroscopes were approaching the ends of their useful lives. 

The NASA reaction was predictable. "Robotic servicing is too risky." Hmm, compared to sending up humans in a vehicle proven to have a 1% chance of killing them?

Now 8 years later, no robotic servicing capability has been developed. And even NASA is now getting ready to walk away from the Hubble.
 

If robotic servicing is developed now, it would be a win-win: our overall space robotics capability would be enhanced, with valuable test and operational experience that would help all future space endeavors. And the amazing Hubble Space Telescope would continue to serve humanity, not being discarded like some other piece of space junk. Perhaps this is more compelling than spending an unknown sum to "civil-ize" the NRO gifts.