>>1297779>that happened because NASA was forced cooperate with military and intelligence agencies that wanted bigger payloads to orbit>>1296752>>1296778>largeness was so it could fit inside some retarded military hardware the airforce wanted and steal soviet satellites.And after Challenger the USAF decided to scrap these ideas and work began on the X-37 for that purpose instead. The design decisions the USAF forced onto NASA for the Shuttle which ended up contributing to its inadequacies and failures were never even utilized for their intended purpose by the Air Force.
Why didn't they just design their own fucking variant from the start instead of forcing those requirements onto NASA, fuck
