>> But to require six shuttle launches a year, there would have to be 18 satellites. "Barring some extraordinary breakthrough in technology," says an informed c

>> But to require six shuttle launches a year, there would have to be 18 satellites. "Barring some extraordinary breakthrough in technology," says an informed communications industry source, "that's inconceivable." >This prediction, though, didn't work out so well. (SpaceX alone has more than 5,500 satellites, and is launching thousands yearly.) Easterbrook was writing specifically about the shuttle. As he explains in the rest of the article, the financials of the shuttle as designed just didn't work without a very high launch cadence. Had each shuttle been capable of landing on its own back at the launch site and be reused 18 times and counting over three years as SpaceX has done with Falcon 9, Easterbrook's conclusions would have been different. Overall, the article is flabbergastingly predictive of every single thing that happened to the shuttle program over its 30-year operational history. In addition to what you mentioned, Easterbrook also predicted * The lack of survivability of the crew if an SRB failed (Challenger) * The fragility of the heat-shield tiles (Columbia, and STS-27) * The danger to the entire US space program—military, commercial, scientific—if the shuttle, intended to be the sole national launch system, was grounded