RJDiogenes wrote:A perfect example of too many cooks spoiling the soup. NASA, Congress, the military. So we ended up with a ship that (while amazing) did nothing very well. And now we have nothing at all. Letting the private sector develop vehicles is the smartest thing they've done in a long time.
Lupine wrote:One of the books I have details the early days of the Shuttle design. It indicated that NASA budget cuts also took their toll on the program.
The shuttles did some amazing things, don't get me wrong. But they were based on the best technology the 1970s could apply to a design first put forward in the 1960s. By the time it was ready the basic design was actually decades behind. Thanks to the way the government works though NASA was locked into this one program and could not develop/deploy anything else.
It quickly became too expensive to build too. Columbia was actually a Static Test Module, was never intended to fly. Atlantis, Discovery and Challenger were the production units and once the last was built the tooling was largely set aside -- NASA wanted 16 of them but in the end never got more than four.
Well that's all behind us now, with the new lower-cost technologies and commercial-space-programs we are in for some interesting times!
Witty comment goes here.