So much for all the effort to get the Hubble telescope tip-top, we're just going to throw the thing away. Not even putting it in a yard sale like you do when your kid gets bored with his scope that he was so joyous about on his birthday.
Seriously though, the reasoning is that we're phasing out the space shuttle, and we won't be able to service the telescope. Wait, don't we have a big effing space station floating up there too? That we and other countries are sending astronauts up to to work on and in?
My solution:push that Hubble around the planet and bolt it to the International Space Station. Then whoever's doing duty on the station at the time can service the thing anytime we need it. And it'll make the Space Station look bigger. Don't tell me we can't do it, the Russians kept a VW bus up there for almost 16 years! And MIR didn't cost nearly as much the Hubble! I just can't stand to throw away perfectly good equipment. Can't we at least give it to China, now that they're going into space? It would give the Taikonauts something to fiddle with, and they'd probably appreciate it. More than we do.