>>1474321>So your problem should be with Congress, not the ShuttleThe STS was the bastard child of Congress and unrealistic NASA ambitions.
>Wah fuckin wah it still took more people and things into orbit than any other systemSource, please. Also, if you read into the design goals ("Exploring the Unknown" Volume 4 collects many relevant documents), the entire point of the program was to produce something that would so cheap that expendable launch vehicles became obsolete. That never happened. If the concern was just to throw things into space, you would never build anything like the STS.
>The Shuttle still flew over 20 missions after the loss of the ColumbiaThe initial projections for the shuttle program were for tens of launches a year, and hundreds before the 1990s ended. Each orbiter was designed for a 100-mission lifespan; the program as a whole did 135. Decreasing the number of launches increases the per launch cost.
>WrongUpgrades are not iteration. There were at most four orbiters in various stages of operations at any given time, the last of them being finished in 1990.
