Hubble: A funny thing happened on the way to 25 years.

It is said that sometimes having a good memory can be a curse -- though a curse of whom is not made clear.

In all the traditional (cheap) journalism about the Hubble -- reports on how it changed our view of the universes, opened in vistas of the imagination, and so forth -- there is very little memory.

For example, not a lot of reporting on the  mocking it received at first (justifiably in my opinion) due to its initial problem with a poorly ground primary mirror, or its delay in construction.

Those points are fairly minor historical issues.

What I remember is that by the early 1980's, the degree of hostility I recall being expressed by many of the astronomers (particularly the optical astronomers ) in my department (the University of Minnesota Department of Physics and Astronomy).

The repeated complaint was how much better it would be to spend money on ground based astronomers -- just think about how many conventional (that is my sort of researcher) studies could be funded was the complaint. (I side note, the same object was raised about the weather satellites, that is one could spend the money better on more weather balloons.)

There were an interesting set of symptoms on display -- envy of success, an hostility to supporting other's research, and an inability to distinguish between qualitative and quantitative change.  I don't imagine* that the behaviors are changed.

I wonder how many people would own up to their positions today? I do know of some who still dismiss the work -- primarily as it is not their sort of research.

*Read I am dead certain.