2 ms·

I don't really understand the Space Shuttle nostalgia. As a kid growing up it was such a disappointment. It looked bad ass. It looked like it could take off and

I don't really understand the Space Shuttle nostalgia. As a kid growing up it was such a disappointment. It looked bad ass. It looked like it could take off and land under it's own power. It looked independent and manoeuvrable. In short it looked like a spaceship. But in reality it needed giant external boosters to get anywhere. It had to have most of it's shielding replaced and be delicately positioned vertically before every launch. When it came into land it was an unimpressive glide. The rockets and modules of past made so much more sense to me, they got people onto the moon. They got rovers onto mars and took photos of distant moons. I'm kind of glad the shuttle is gone. It was an expensive and disappointing distraction. I often wonder what NASA would look like today if it had gone in a different direction.

rollypolly 15y ago
Don't forget the political context of the cold war space race. A good looking spaceship made for great propaganda. Even the soviets tried to copy it.[1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_%28spacecraft%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_%28spacecraft%29
hahainternet 15y ago
There's much debate about this issue, and it's hard to come down on one side or the other, but the Shuttle had unique capabilities that no other system has had. Imagine building the ISS without the shuttle, for example. Imagine servicing Hubble. Imagine returning large objects from orbit safely. The shuttle cost NASA a lot of money that's true, but it cost the US relatively little, and NASA did a bunch of truly amazing things with it. There's good reason to be nostalgic.