late wrote:The Shuttle was Nixon, which means it was a bad idea. While it wasn't unsafe, it did cost too much, and Reagan proved the safety margin was narrow.
I didn't say shuttle was a bad idea and I couldn't give a damn whether it was Nixon.
The promise didn't live up to the reality, each shuttle was supposed to be capable of launching once a month with minimal repairs but the reality was you were lucky to get one a year from each orbiter. The safety record was dreadful, for half it's life it was restricted to solely visiting the ISS and they needed a second shuttle on standby because they couldn't guarantee the heat tiles would stay on the leading edges during launch.
The shuttle literally ate NASAs budget, costing $1.5bn per launch. In hindsight this huge cost prevented development of something that could get us out of low earth orbit.
late wrote: As I pointed out, NASA funding went down 90%, WTF did you expect?
One last item, funding enables, ya get what ya pay for.
I've just shown you this isnt the case.
NASA spent $8bn on constellation which was cancelled because it was going nowhere, now it's in the process of spending $27Bn on SLS which will be obsolete before it gets off the ground. If you add up all the money spent on launch systems to enable human exploration beyond LEO it's $50Bn plus in todays money, for zero return. Almost exclusively to companies involved in shuttle. NASA became a cash cow for these companies.
There is a better way. Backend the contracts so that the contractor doesn't receive the money without delivering the product, NASA has rewarded failure.
I'll give you another example.
NASA have been developing the Orion Space capsule since 2006. They've paid out $21Bn to contractors, so far it's taken zero people into space.
Spacex designed and built Crew dragon for $1.75Bn, they now have three successful crewed launches into space.
How can you possibly say money is the issue when NASA is spending 10-15 times more money than a commercial operator and still do not have an operating product?