"Years of problems" looks like an outright falsehood. It was as expensive to operate as an observatory plus a jumbo jet plus an observatory actually mounted in

"Years of problems" looks like an outright falsehood. It was as expensive to operate as an observatory plus a jumbo jet plus an observatory actually mounted in a jumbo jet. That is a problem, but does not mean "years of problems". It was doing good science, but cost as much as a lot of other things combined. Still: it would take many more years for the cost to approach that of just getting the James Webb infrared telescope built and launched: like, 200 years. Maybe its high cost relative to some other projects made it seem like it was stealing money people wanted to spend on their own projects. That would be honest to say without inventing trouble.