>>1479638>Not a source Hey, that's three words rather than your usual 'one'.
>Not a sourceDid you even read the attached picture, which is a source?
>yet the Shuttle continued to be used for three decadesContinued to be used by NASA, because it was the only vehicle they actually owned, and all attempts at successors fell through due to lack of funding or technical issues.
The lack especially of a heavy lift vehicle (which NASA is spending billions on today with the Space Launch System) was not by deliberate choice of NASA. Literally every accident/spaceflight commission (Augustine 1990,Augustine 2009, CAIB) recommended one, but Congress did not act until Constellation.
The situation was not deliberate. To quote President Bush in his "Vision for Space Exploration" (where the STS was cancelled and an expendable successor announced) ,
> In the past 30 years, no human being has set foot on another world, or ventured farther upward into space than 386 miles -- roughly the distance from Washington, D.C. to Boston, Massachusetts. America has not developed a new vehicle to advance human exploration in space in nearly a quarter century. It is time for America to take the next steps.> that's because everyone involved was dumb and you're smarter than rocket scientists lolCongress decides which rockets NASA will build and use, not "rocket scientists." NASA did not want Saturn V production to end in 1968. NASA did not want NERVA to be cancelled. NASA wanted a 1970s/1980s space station, a lunar station, a lunar base, a Mars station, a Mars landing, a space tug, a....
>>1479241, None of which happened because they answer to Congress and Congress doesn't care.
>three decades Or 135/500 possible missions, for a program that was supposed to do hundreds of launches during the 1980s alone. If the STS had actually accomplished its goals, the idea of an expendable rocket would be as dead as expendable airplanes.
