Re: And shut the door on your way out ...
> On the other hand, there are now ground based facitities that are as good or better than Hubble for some of the spectrum.
...which will be progressively blinded by the clouds of Internet satellite constellations shot up there, Starlink being the first one.
Funnily enough to counter this, people in this very forum told me that nowadays all telescopes should be space-based, simply ignoring that it's not like we are even able to keep Hubble operational and get James Webb off the ground (supposed to be launched 15 years ago, remember?). Case in point, Hubble has hardware problems, and while NASA might manage to work around them for a while, we simply can't repair them anymore: Hubble is doomed because of a couple hundred dollars worth of components.
The slight but fundamental difference between what we're able to do right now, and what we should be able to do (potentially, eventually) is apparently very difficult to apprehend.
Even in that wishful-thinking dreamworld, where each small $5-million ground-based telescope is readily replaced by a $10-billion space one, we simply don't have the technology anymore to keep them running. Yes, we might have the potential, but it's still just a potential.
/rant
Biting the hand that feeds IT
