As Tom Knight & others have already remarked, it is highly unlikely that this story is anything other than some screenwriter's fantasy. Nevertheless, I would think that a use for the Hubble would be something more connected with its different orbit, and possibly with the _generation_ of light -- e.g., using some sort of laser -- rather than the _consuming_ of light. If the fantasy were real, then someone would have also had to mess with the sensor, as well, which would have required a lot of work to make the existing sensor appear to still be there to the researchers on the ground. At 09:52 AM 7/17/2013, Whitfield Diffie wrote:
After all, the company making the Hubble's lenses was the same company that had been making lenses for spy satellites since the beginning, and it's hard to see how they could have made such an 'error'.
The story at the time was that they were not allowed to use test equipment from the classified programs in bulding the Hubble mirror.
I think the Earth is too bright for Hubble to look at so if they were doing something secret, it is hard to imagine what it would have been.
My devious imagination fails at finding something who's coversion is so great that the cheapest way to do is was to fly an otherwise unneeded service mission to the Hubble.
Whit