>>1317942There's an MIT OCW course where they invite guest lecturers to discuss the system design of various parts of the shuttle.
One of the things that stuck with me was this one lecturer (I think it is the first one :p) where the lecturer went over the "triangle of systems engineering." The three vertices of the triangle were "Performance, Cost and Schedule" and he said that it's a principle, in systems engineering that you can't specify all 3 vertices in a design specification and hope for anything good yo come out. There must be some area of flexibility.
NASA didn't have that liberty. They needed a high performance, low cost aircraft that they could turn around in a short period of time. It's remarkable that they were able to partially meet all those goals DESU.
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-885j-aircraft-systems-engineering-fall-2005/ 