Space: More Trouble For Hubble

More Trouble For Hubble

The Hubble Space Telescope's devolution from Wonder of the Age to Blunder of the Century continued without letup last week. For one thing, the Associated Press reported that Perkin-Elmer Corp., which built the flawed mirror on the telescope, gave a subcontractor backward drawings for part of the telescope's guidance system -- forcing the prime contractor to pay the San Diego-based subcontractor, Composite Optics Inc., to rebuild it. Composite Optics reportedly made a tidy 63% profit.

For another, Tennessee Democratic Senator Albert Gore Jr. told his Commerce Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space that Perkin-Elmer shrugged off a test that might have...

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