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It's really expensive to get telescopes up in space. We have a lot of astronomers that could use some time on a space telescope, but launching enough to supply
by Sebb767 5y ago
It's really expensive to get telescopes up in space. We have a lot of astronomers that could use some time on a space telescope, but launching enough to supply all of them is not economically viable in any way. Sure, the stuff hubble is currently used for is not as groundbreaking as when it was launch, but we still have use for it.
My point it is, we have so few space telescopes that even having time on an "outdated" one is still pretty valuable.
EDIT: Maybe a better example, it's not much use for a first-world person to use a ten year old smartphone, since current smartphones are much more capable and they're comparatively cheap. Planes, on the other hand, are used for decades, since simply buying a new one is very expensive. This is despite it's tech being far superior.