Having airlocks at the ISS pretty much gets rid of most reasons why a capsule would spacewalk and capsules are at their best transporting people from place to place. They are bad if you need to do work in space(i.e. Fix Hubble or JWT) or be in space long term(months).

As for lunar Soyuz with a kick stage, yes that is possible in fact I really like the idea but changing planes in LEO is very costly more costly than looping around the moon. ISS and Hubble are in different planes. Only way Soyuz can get there is if they launch out of Gaina and again current version only has 4 days orbit. The shuttle can stay 13-16 days in space (if they ever rebuilt the extended duration kit lost with Columbia) or about 10 days without it.

CST100, Orion, and Soyuz can be stored at a space station for months but have limited time when they can support a crew in orbit by themselves. Of these Orion can support a crew the longest at 21 days.

Orion,CST100, Dragon, Cygnus, Dreamchaser, New Sheppard and Prometheus won’t be a shuttle replacement. They won’t be a large general purpose spacecraft capable of acting as a pseudo space station and returning large items from orbit. They are smaller more specialized crafts. The ability that will be lost with the shuttle is the ability to return large objects.

You could design some sort of disposable airlock/robot arm kit for say Orion but that is the limit of its ability to repair anything.

I hear you and I thought he would do so but it is more complicated than just firing people. See for example, Constellation is still ongoing whether we like it or not. Why would you get rid of its current leadership, those who know it best? Who would replace them? Who would take the helm of a cancelled program? Those in the pipeline are those who followed the corporate structure at NASA which means you would most likely get more of the same behavior.

Thanks to Congress, not Bolden, not Musk, not even ATK, but thanks to Congress NASA HSF is on the brink of extinction. The status of Constellation was well known even before this WH came to power. No one acted. I mean no one but Griffin who pushed it as far as it would go and now it’s looking at the precipice.

Another point I’d like to make. In the end it’s of benefit to nobody if NASA HSF sinks. “Newspace” will not gain if NASA takes a nose dive and I don’t think they wish for that much.

NASA has been kept as a Cold War relic by the Congress and we can all hear the nonsense of the national security argument. No one wanted it to change so long the money was flowing. Well times are achanging now…

Oh well…

“In fact all of them do nothing but parrot “we just do what we are told and what we are given money for”. These are the titular leaders of our space program, Not a single one has ever led a damn thing. ”

You need to understand (?) how some one, any one, behaves in order to climb the corporate ladder and that is key to your comments. It is NOT about leadership. It has everything to do with supporting, emulating the immediate supervisor, be it even a CEO, or NASA Admin…

When you actually lead you tend to make waves, you tend to put yourself but also others in the spotlight. Even though this is great behavior I believe it also is not so good for your career. Such is life. Usually a great leader does not belong to any corporate structure such as NASA or Boeing or any of those giants. A great leader, whether we like it or not, would be people like Steve Jobs or Burt Rutan, or even Elon Musk. But they do not belong to government supported corporate structures. Neither would survive in such a place.

We always hear about changing the mentality or culture at NASA. Well you CANNOT. It is the way the system works, the way people climb into management position. In order to change the culture you would have to, for example, merge NASA with, I don’t know, SpaceX, Masten, XCOR? And put some of these companies leaders in charge. But the inertia would make the change very long. You will not do it otherwise well unless you close NASA down and rehire people from a really diverse background. Also and more importantly you need to remove or replace the holders of the purse, the customers, in that case Congress. The management chain only is responding to its share holders, the Congress.

So bottom line is you will never, ever see the leadership you seem to crave for at NASA. Note further that in that regard I am finally inclined to believe that Charles Bolden is doing just what is needed. It may not be spectacular but who cares if it is effective.

FWIW.

Orion would be your best bet for service the telescope as it is planned to have 21 days worth of life support. Orion however lacks airlock (have to depressurize the whole capsule) and robot arm. JWT I think has a grapple for a robot arm but no more. It is not built to be serviced. Hubble can be docked with now but that is the limit of it.

CST100 probably does not support spacewalks at all. Future versions of Dragon might but space X is unclear as to those plans. Dreamchaser likewise lacks an airlock or clear ability to support spacewalks.

A Soyuz isn’t large enough for the occupants to carry their lunch, let alone new HST instruments. Also, once docked the occupants have no way to get out! That aside, I am sure Soyuz is being given full consideration for the mission by the progressive thinkers at NASA.