A candid discussion of the US Space Shuttle.

Why it's a foolish endeavor, and how it got that way. Once again, politics rears its ugly head. And the Military Industrial Complex, never far behind. A thorough explanation of how we got stuck with this ungainly spacecraft, and why we are clinging to it. As a fan of space travel and childhood worshipper of NASA, it pains me to read this article. But I believe it to be true.

In the thirty years since the last Moon flight, we have succeeded in creating a perfectly self-contained manned space program, in which the Shuttle goes up to save the Space Station (undermanned, incomplete, breaking down, filled with garbage, and dropping at a hundred meters per day), and the Space Station offers the Shuttle a mission and a destination.

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