[bicycle thug]

I've never seen any aircraft, or other high speed, low drag vehicle not be oversold when the appropriations game is played in D.C. Why just pick on the shuttle?

Many complex A/C don't become effective long after deployment, and undergo updates on equipment and gear on them as well as see some other stuff go outdated at the same time. I'm sure you could expound this into another index of Murphey's Law axioms about expensive flying contraptions. So I consider this a reality that is a non issue, with all due respect.

Nah, the eary disposible space craft era was glorious, but the core concept of reuse that the shuttle promoted is the right way to go.

[Mr170IQ]

... the core concept of reuse that the shuttle promoted is the right way to go ...

Re-use may have been the promise on which the Shuttle program was sold to Congress, but it never had a prayer of living up to its billing.

When NASA was plugging the Shuttle concept in the 70's, they claimed that the marginal cost per flight would be 22 million dollars (fifteen times cheaper than Saturn V launches). Fixed costs were totally glossed over.

In the real world, the shuttle program cost $760 million per launch during the 2001-2002 missions.

Personally, I believe that the best hope for Cheap Access To Space would be a two stage fully reusable kerosene/LOX rocket weighing about 120 tons that would be launched from a modified 747 that could put about five tons of payload into a zero degree low earth orbit.