[andrew_eu]

Depressing politics aside, I'm curious about how this affects the long term usability of the telescope. I guess as long as the orbit is sustained and it doesn't suffer physical damage, it would still be basically operable for it's design life.

If major cuts essentially leave a skeleton crew, or no crew, for an extended period of time would later reinvestment be able to put the observatories back to use with only lost time? Or do these things need constant remote maintenance to stay operational?

[recursivecaveat]

Apparently it uses ~2.7% of its fuel every year to station-keep in the right semi-stable orbit, so presumably you need at least some crew to manage that. (and any time it's not taking observations you never get back!) I know the voyagers have needed adjustments and reconfigutation from ground crews as equipment as decayed over the years, so I assume similar things would happen on a semi-mothballed JWST.