I was on the suspended section about a year before collapse - everyone could tell it was about to fail. Visible stress in rusty beams, old cables, and failing concrete. I think it just came down to underfunding at the end of the day - there was no money available to ask for even if the alarms were louder.

And for most applications it was obsoleted by the larger new telescope in china, so there was no large push to turn that ship around from the wider scientific community.