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

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.