The Shuttle was really intended as a stepping stone to a space station and a method to get stuff into space “cheaply and reliably” - but it turned out to be neither. That isn’t by the way, a reflection on the people who built it. But plans, like computer programs, are only as good as your input. Bad or limited requirements get you limited (or bad) equipment. The Shuttle was never intended to be the end all be all.

Unfortunately, nothing else attempted survived with adminstration changes or this or that failure. So, we ventured only to low earth orbit, same place Mercury ventured, and it’s hard to convince the taxpayers that that counts as “exploration”. The taxpayers have a point.

But that’s a problem with the implementation, not the plan, not the goals, not the reality. It isn’t that man can’t be useful exploring space (and I hope you checked out the Apollow Lunar Surface Journals), he just hasn’t done so for thirty years.

I intend to write what I think went wrong and what we’re really going to need to do to fix it over the next few days. Thanks for your comments.

I hope that will change. Soon.