Didn't the NSA gift NASA two hubble class telescopes with a note along the lines 'bought a ton on bulk discount and never ending up using these two before the new model was released'?
Not really. They gave NASA two "telescopes" that have mirrors and a chassis and basically not much else. It will still require billions of dollars and years of work to turn them into space based observatories. One of them is actually being built (WFIRST) but isn't expected to be launched until the 2020s.
Also, overall there isn't a huge advantage to this hardware. It doesn't save much money as most of the cost of the telescopes is in the other components: the spacecraft parts (including the attitude control system which as we've seen with Hubble is quite important) and the instruments. The biggest advantage to the NRO gifts (the NSA doesn't have telescopes, that we know of) is not that they make building space telescopes cheaper but that they mainly just make those missions more likely to be funded.
Yes, but it was the NRO (I doubt the NSA owns any telescopes).
NASA has plans to maybe use one of them sometime, but because of how expensive the James Webb Telescope turned out to be doesn't have money to do anything with the second.
NASA has gotten out of quite a few pickles by using Earthside clones/spares of spacecraft to troubleshoot issues with the ones actually in space. Even if NASA had the money to launch the spare telescope, they'd be wise not to.
The NRO (national reconnaissance/spysat office), back in 2012. They also gave them the mirror and other components for a third. They were hand-me-downs, presumably obsoleted. Things like that always make me wonder what the current state of the art is, let alone when you look at the things like the SR-71 Blackbird, first launched in 1964 -- 54 years ago!! On the other hand then you look at things like the F-35, SLS, Zumwalt, etc today and it somehow almost seems that we've regressed technologically.
They're past KH-11. KH-11 has the solar panels on side like Hubble. WRIST has the solar panel on the top which blocks solar radiation which is a newer design.
