[Blood of Tyrants]

They should have been kept flying at least until there was a replacement.

[plain talk]

They should have been kept flying at least until there was a replacement.

Bingo. My thoughts exactly.

[fishtank]

They all would have crashed before then.

Seriously ... it’s not funny at all what happened with the shuttles.

[DoodleDawg]

They should have been kept flying at least until there was a replacement.

Would it have kept going until the 2020's or 2030's?

[riverdawg]

Of course, there are a couple of interesting private-sector alternatives (one with some NASA funding) being developed:

http://www.space.com/31511-spacex-rocket-landing-great-shape-photos.html

[tet68]

If the Shuttle had been built
in the numbers first stated it
would still be in use.

[DrJeff]

The STS never lived up to its billing as a quick turnaround transport vehicle. It was inefficient and too costly for payload.

Should have planned a second transport vehicle before shuttering the STS.

[TalonDJ]

“They should have been kept flying at least until there was a replacement.”

Except that they kept starting replacement programs and then shutting them down. Over and over. Only when it was retired did they get serous about funding replacements. And now we have 3-4 replacements that are almost down. The dragon, the CTS-100 and the Dreamchaser are all due to fly pretty soon. Orion is not far behind them. It took shutting the shuttle down to finally get NASA to start getting serious about funding the replacements.

[refermech]

We could use it to lob nukes at our enemies too.