"Putting an astronomical telescope in space was a natural solution, and it followed directly—and, according to some, very directly—from the spy satellite program." Can anyone expand upon this? I know the NRO has recently donated some of its old gear to NASA, but is there much cross-pollination between the space-operating agencies?
It has turned out to have put the astronomy community in a bit of an awkward position. Although the telescopes are free, they still need to be outfitted with appropriate instruments, and, of course, launched into space. Each of those projects costs roughly as much as the telescope itself, so the donation really only covers ~1/3 of the total cost of putting a working telescope in space. Unfortunately, the community just doesn't have the budget to do that. Furthermore, the telescopes aren't really ideal for astronomy since they were designed to look down rather than up. (That is, they are designed to focus on relatively nearby objects rather than on objects "at infinity.") But politically we can't turn the telescopes down, since that projects a bad image to Congress. Beggars can't be choosers, after all, so we have to look grateful while we try to scrape together the funds to get something useful out of them.
