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Plus for the orbiter refurb they had to check the entire heat shield, flight control systems, crew habitats, etc. etc. Easier when it's just the rocket + fuel t

• mikeash 10y ago
  Indeed. The heat shield in particular was extremely delicate and tended to get beaten up a lot coming back, so that was a huge amount of work to get ready for the next flight.
  • XorNot 10y ago
    The entire spaceplane concept drastically complicated things. Capsule-based return systems are vastly simpler to operate, which is despite everything the Soyuz has been flying continuously this whole time.
    • grinich 10y ago
      Downside is you can't capture enemy satellites and return them to ground for study/reverse engineering.
      • walrus01 10y ago
        This is how NASA got many billions of funding from the USAF for part of the space shuttle program - look through the list of flights in the 1980s where the payload was an unspecified national security satellite. The capability was promised and it was funded for it - but almost never used. The actual ability to grab a big thing and return it was hardly ever used, such as the LDEF mission. It doesn't help that a huge percentage of Soviet satellites that they might want to have grabbed would have been unreachable from a space shuttle launch site (IMINT satellites in 90 degree inclination polar orbits, satellites in molniya orbits, radar naval observation satellites in MEO orbits) all beyond the orbit/delta-V capabilities of a shuttle mission. And of course geostationary orbit where no human has ever gone.