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I am not saying that I could do it...I thought that I made it pretty clear from my self deprecating remarks that I have the utmost respect for the true engineers and was just curious about the design.

Your flippant response amazes me.

I pray that you are not an engineer or scientist. If you are, God help us all........

Don't you think the best minds possessing BS, MS and PhD degrees have beat this design nearly to death to perfect it?

Do you think the space shuttle design was just the result of a senior class project handed out by an overly-driven teaching assitant?

Holey Moses man!

What did you expect me to say?

"Your flippant response amazes me.

I pray that you are not an engineer or scientist. If you are, God help us all........"

My bet is that there are quite a few engineers on this thread whose patience is wearing thin. I know mine is. Not really from a comment like yours, but from those determined to see conspiracy and coverup in all of NASA activities.

The real problem with your question is that it hits a raw spot for anyone that has worked for NASA, because the answer is yes, we *could* have designed it better. We could have come up with better systems and a more robust platform -- if we had the money to do so.

The Shuttle is a compromise, a kludge. We were asked to deliver a quart in a pint pot, and all we got in was a pint-and-a-half. There are lots of things we could have built better, that we argued for, pleaded to get, but didn't. Instead we got what we got. And it irks us. But it was the best that we can do with the time and money allocated.

So when someone asks us couldn't we have designed it better? It's pulling a scab off all the old scars we accumulated trying to do just that.