>>1477065>So? Soyuz hasn't had an inflight fatality since 1971. A Soyuz craft is the emergency escape vessel on the ISS. Crew were far more likely to die on the STS than they were riding Soyuz, which is especially bad because every orbiter lost is hundreds of future missions that can no longer happen. Not that anyone believed the STS would fly hundreds of missions after 1981, of course.
>Anon learns when the government does something, it's more expensive than the private sector doing it.Nothing else and no one else save Apollo was that expensive, especially not to merely go to LEO. STS was government to the core, don't see how that is an argument in its favour.
>But they didn't Because of Congress. Congress also heavily gimped the STS. Yell at them for funding a worse launch system to save money in the 1970s.
To get back to prototype/concepts, concepts for the Advanced Solid Rocket Motor, which would've replaced the Space Transportation System Solid Rocket Boosters, offering higher performance and greater reliability.
