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...