There is AIM, a NASA development program that seeks to develop a space platform for astrometric interferometry that would give positions of stars down to 17th magnitude or fainter to an accuracy of better than 10 micro-arcseconds. It would promise to give "a distance to any star in the Milky Way galaxy" But if this route were to be selected, we could forego, for a decade or more, the general capability to point at a particular object and take a picture or take an ultraviolet spectrum with the 0.1 arcsecond resolution, a standard set by the Hubble Space Telescope.
An aerospace consortium has proposed Adapt, a 4-meter diffraction limited "demonstrator" to low earth orbit within 3 years on a Proton rocket, at relatively low cost. The proposers seek astronomical involvement to establish "dual use" and would release the telescope to astronomers for the final 4 years of a projected 5 year lifetime.
These missions involve genuinely new technology. This seems to hold greater attraction to NASA than an enhancement of scientific capabilities, even considering the substantial scientific payoffs of a more powerful version of HST. This relationship of the astronomical community with NASA has already become and will continue to be a point of discussion for the committee. NASA's admitted goal is "to build hardware and fly it" and not necessarily to do science.