/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12665598
Everything

The Shuttle wasn't meant to be *the* program, it was meant to be a smaller part of *a* program that was vastly larger and more ambitious in scope, the logical progression from the Apollo program. By itself it was fucking worthless, a useless boondoggle and death trap that has held us back and delayed progress for over 40 years.

>>11997966
People at NASA basically got cocky after Apollo and thought they were just gonna go on and conquer the solar system, not realizing that after beating the Soviets to the moon there was no longer any political will to do it.

The only part of their grand plan to get funded was the Shuttle, and all that could do was take things to low Earth orbit, so they did the only thing they could do with it which was to make a space station. Manned spaceflight since 1975 has mostly been a waste of time and just an excuse to do something with the equipment they had available rather than having any kind of mission or purpose.