> The Space Shuttle was launched successfully to orbit in it's first try. And it was clear both during the development and in the retrospect, that the crewed l

> The Space Shuttle was launched successfully to orbit in it's first try. And it was clear both during the development and in the retrospect, that the crewed launch was extremely presumptuous, as the STS-1 could have easily crashed due to the mistakes made during the development. It's been done to show that the modeling could replace testing (turned out it couldn't), and to cut the costs, as the Shuttle was supposed to be "economical", in the original concept anyway.