I like this Editorials about the fate of HST so much that I will just paste it here instead of just a link:
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[The NewYork Times]
March 5, 2004
An Astronaut Changes His Tune

What a difference a few months makes. Last July, John Grunsfeld, an astronaut, waxed enthusiastic about the value and sheer pleasure of participating in servicing missions to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the most productive scientific instruments of all time. In testimony prepared for an expert panel, Mr. Grunsfeld called Hubble missions "highly coveted assignments" and said his own two Hubble flights had been the most important achievement in his life. Despite the tragic loss of the space shuttle Columbia, he said, he judged Hubble missions as little more risky than other shuttle flights. "I can say without hesitation that traveling to space to upgrade the instruments and ensure the future of the Hubble Space Telescope was worth the potential risk to my life," he testified.

Then came new requirements to enhance safety after the Columbia accident, followed by President Bush's expansive plan to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars in distant years. That plan requires maximum use of the shuttles to complete the international space station, relegating Hubble to the status of an inconvenient diversion.

So Mr. Grunsfeld, now NASA's chief scientist, has changed his tune. He has become a defender of NASA's recent, and wrongheaded, decision to cancel the next servicing mission, thereby sentencing Hubble to a slow death. Suddenly, the mission he deemed worth the risk of his own life has to be canceled for safety reasons, as he explained yesterday in a letter in The Times. Mr. Grunsfeld has acknowledged more candidly than most officials that other factors were also at work — namely, the demands of the Moon-Mars program and the complications of meeting new safety requirements. Although the shuttles should be safer than before once they are upgraded for their return to flight, he says, any Hubble mission would require repair and rescue options that are not readily available.

The implication, of course, is that if a self-described Hubble-hugger like Mr. Grunsfeld is comfortable with killing the telescope, that decision must be the right one. The only question is whether he is speaking from the heart, as he clearly was last July, or is simply a good soldier ordered to front for the premature curtailment of a great instrument.