My question for you, the ALMIGHTY EXPERT, is this:
Is this honestly the best we can do? If you, in your expert opinion say yes, well then fine with me. I'll just get used to the pictures eventually. Soon, the funerals will seem almost routine, and you won't be bothered with our questions.
Being a naive simpleton, I always thought NASA and the space program was about improving, testing, and stretching out limits. Making it Better, and achieving great things.
Do I think this is the best we can do?
I believe in the process of "continual refinement" - build on the success and learn from the failures of the past ...
To that end - I would fund a "new approach" program staffed with new people and take the design of the current shuttle and work to massively improve that design. We know it works- and we now have a better idea where the weak areas are (as if we didn't before?) ...
The 'givens' of this problem still exist: payloads and people into space and back again ... only this go-round we have a little better understanding of the 'risks', as we've had twenty plus (is it already) years under our belts.
No, it certainly isn't now. It probably wasn't the best we could do in 1975, either. What it was, was the best we could do with the money Congress would appropriate to the project in 1975.
Engineering projects almost never do "the best we can do". Why? Because the best we can do is spectacularly expensive in every category: time, money, resources, etc. The idea in engineering is to do the best you can do to meet the requirements in the time, and with the resources, that you have available.
If you have a spare $40 billion burning a hole in your pocket, and 10-15 years, I guarantee that America can build something that will make the shuttle look like an ugly piece of playground equipment. We might be able to do it for much less than $40 billion.