[Salgak]

What we REALLY need, and NASA has killed 3 times already, is a replacement for the shuttle. We had a working prototype in the DC-X, and NASA killed it in favor of a theoretical X-33. . .which was entirely TOO theortical, they couldn't make it work in reality.

We need the old, problem-solving Can-Do! NASA of the Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury days, and not the sclerotic bureaucracy which it has become. . .

[RKV]

Good point. I have been following these programs over the years. I wish we had a Kelly Johnson today.

[Man of the Right]

Technology and common sense killed a follow on program. NASA merely bowed to reality.

[Cvengr]

I give 30 days until conspiracy theorists suggest the Columbia failed due to a mid-air collision with a stealth DC-X, X-33, UFO,...chemtrail plane,...take your pick.

[185JHP]

The list of "delivered beef"from the shuttle isn't long - new version of teflon? new Tang? - sorry. It's a confluence of "space buffery" - people that like getting paid for doing stuff they enjoy - never mind what the taxpayer gets out of it - and a newer version of what Ike saw as the nastiness of the "military-industrial complex." A good bumper sticker - "The Shuttle - End it, don't mend it."