dollar piece of space trash," O'Keefe told reporters at his first news conference since resigning. "And the assessment from the (scientific) community and the experts was that it had a very low probability of success of repair," he said. "Well, I guess if we had listened to that wisdom, we would never have repaired it, or never given it the first mission that it needed." O'Keefe drew fire from the Hubble telescope's fans when he canceled a scheduled shuttle mission to update it and add two new instruments. He said then that a human mission was too risky and did not follow safety guidelines set out by investigators of the fatal shuttle Columbia accident. He plans to leave in February to become chancellor of Louisiana State University. O'Keefe was appointed chancellor of the LSU main campus in Baton Rouge by a vote of the university board of supervisors late on Thursday night. O'Keefe was the top contender for the $500,000-year job running the university, which has 31,000 students. --More 2303 Local Time 2003 GMT
