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I don't think you are correct. Space Shuttle came about because Saturn was not economically sustainable. NASA was getting those massive funds from the Gov for

I don't think you are correct. Space Shuttle came about because Saturn was not economically sustainable. NASA was getting those massive funds from the Gov for the Moon mission, and after the goal was achieved those funds stopped flowing, and NASA had no way to maintain those expensive rockets. So NASA came up with a reusable spacecraft design, the Space Shuttle. But DoD wanted the shuttle to have a certain payload capacity/features for their use cases and that forced NASA to change their original design, which also made it a maintenance nightmare. In hindsight, Space Shuttle would have achieved its mission of being a cheap reusable spacecraft, if NASA were able to use its original design.

nickik 9y ago
Not really, they could have gone forward with either program with the budget they had. They would have to do some cuts, but it was not completly unviable. > In hindsight, Space Shuttle would have achieved its mission of being a cheap reusable spacecraft, if NASA were able to use its original design. There are lots of ifs and buts and I blaming everything on the DoD and not make NASA responsable for anything is false narrative. NASA made a lot of mistakes to even get to that point.
- iamcreasy 9y ago
  > Not really, they could have gone forward with either program with the budget they had The goal of Space Shuttle was to reduce the cost of space flight.