Even so, the Hubble would have been cheaper to replace than repair it with a Shuttle mission.
In my original post I said a SpaceX mission would be improbable, but cool if it could be done.
BTW, the Falcon 9 now has 1.7 million pounds of thrust at launch.
“Think of this though. If we had something that could retrieve and return payloads from space, the Chinese and others would be claiming that we had a space weapon.”
Did you know that was one of the primary capabilities of the Shuttle? It was to launch from Vandenberg, snag Soviet satellites out of polar orbit and return to California all in one orbit before it could be detected. That’s why the Shuttle wings were overly large, so it could glide back to California to compensate for Earth rotation during the mission.
Actually I didn't. And which satellites were the intended targets?
My first assignment in the USAF was at VAFB working on the space shuttle program. That mission doesn't sound familiar. But, if we were going to snag Russian satellites it would have been above my classification at that time.