[Semper Paratus]

The Space Shuttle was conceived as a cheaper way to get materials in orbit to build Space Stations.The Space Station program is now in moth balls but the 30 year old designed vehicle to build them lives on.

[Alberta's Child]

The Space Shuttle was conceived as a cheaper way to get materials in orbit to build Space Stations.

I don't think that's the case at all -- an unmanned rocket is the cheapest way to move payloads into orbit. If anything, the shuttle was conceived as a more effective way to get human labor into orbit to built space stations.

[doc30]

You are right, and I think the space shuttle / space station relationship is far more circular. We need the space shuttle to help build space stations. We need space stations as a destination for the shuttle. Billions more are needed to support 1970's technology (space shuttle) so the inexpensive programs that return a lot of interesting data get the chop.

[Frank_Discussion]

"The Space Station program is now in moth balls but the 30 year old designed vehicle to build them lives on."

Uh, no. But thanks for playing.

Yep, Shuttle's old, but it's still the best available. Anywhere. The next generation is coming, right now.

[Phsstpok]

The Space Shuttle was conceived as a cheaper way to get materials in orbit to build Space Stations.The Space Station program is now in moth balls but the 30 year old designed vehicle to build them lives on.

I would state it differently:

The Space Shuttle was sold as a cheaper way to get anything to orbit. It was designed primarily to bring things back, such as satellites, raw materials from NEOs or finished goods from low G manufacturing facilities, but Luddites like this guy constantly cut back all of the useful stuff the STS should have been doing so it was left with the tasks that largely should have been done by big dumb boosters. The Space Station program was hijacked for political purposes and as another corrupt boondoggle by the Clinton mafia so even that mission was compromised. The fact that it is now "in moth balls" instead of having been finished 15 years ago is because the Earth first kooks like this guy have been fighting every space program since Sputnik.

But the 30 year old vehicle design which was crippled by Congressional libs (who think more like this guy than like Chuck Yeager or Robert Heinlein) continues to lumber on, and is all that is left to us... till Burt Rutan and his ilk have their way. All we'll have to do then is keep the bureaucrats from regulating them to death.

[Final Authority]

WRT 12 the cheapest way to get a lot of stuff into space was the Saturn V system that was scuttled by the government and NASA after there was much enlightenment in media that Germans, possibly Nazis, were the engineering force behind the Moon missions, which was correct BTW.

The Saturn however was not the best way to get stuff back from space. The Air Force needed research into solid rocket boosters for the MX so that was part of the plan with NASA. Newly developed C-C materials for re-entry purposes was part of the development plan as well. They were piggy-backed and worked out.

Overall, what I regret, is that about a generation and a half of talent was not mentored on manned space technology as the shuttle has been the system that has required so much money to maintain and fly over the years. The loss is the thousands of technical people who have done other things than work on space technology and the generations of others that will not have the chance, if the shuttle flies again.