My Plans For Hubble!!!

There has been alot of talk lately about what should happen to Hubble and most people agree it should continue to be financed until.....well until it just dies.
But this is what i think should happen to Hubble.

In 2006, once NASA is back on track with regular shuttle flights to and from the ISS, they should launch a mission to retrive Hubble.
Once Hubble has arrived safely (not very probable in a shuttle) back on Earth, NASA should then take the oldest of their remaining orbiters (Discovery) and make some modifications.

These modifications would include:

1. The Hubble space telescope would be mounted within the payload bay of discovery on a retractable arm, so it can be pulled in and out of the payload bay whenever instructed to do so.

2. Discovery would be fitted with retractable solar panels to collect energy whilst travelling through space.

3. The three re-usable boosters used during launch would be doubled up, giving Discovery a further three sources of power once out of the Earth atmosphere.

4. Discovery would become 100% radio controlled, so would be controlled solely from the safety of Earth.

Once all these modifications had been carried out, the shuttle would be launched into outer space and left to travel the massive distance to the edge of our solar system with Hubble only coming out of the payload bay when a good photo opportunity arises.

Imagine the images Hubble could return to us from that distance.

Logistics? Nice idea, but I don't think it's very feasible. This kind of thing, despite taking a few more years to plan out and build and design, would cost a vast amount more. HUGE.

Also, the design for Hubble itself, I don't think, improves anything. It won't get any appreciable distance to make a large difference in taking pictures of anything at all (except some Earth pics, but, no, just no.) Traveling, it will also be far, far more succeptible to damage and will be beyond repair. It's basically a suicide mission. If wee keep it in orbit around Earth, we can repair it when need be. Can't go do that near Jupiter...

Check the designs. I don't know off hand if Hubble is even capable of coming back through the shuttle system, but I suspect it might not be able to do so.

See what the others have to say, but my suggestion is to rethink some (many?) of your ideas. Good at heart, I think you'll find they're not quite practical.