> we had a space shuttle It's good we lost the shuttle. It was hot garbage. > now struggling just to get a small copy reaching the ISS. I think you need to t

> we had a space shuttle It's good we lost the shuttle. It was hot garbage. > now struggling just to get a small copy reaching the ISS. I think you need to take funding levels into account. The Shuttle cost $1.5B per launch (fully amortized). None of the commercial crew/cargo vehicles are anywhere close to that price. And the commercial crew vehicles are more capable of doing their job. That's on top of having almost no endurance, having a pathetic payload mass fraction, needing humans to pilot it (meaning that it's much more difficult to improve the vehicle), and being an inherently unsafe design.