🔄From the archive: The Space Shuttle was NASA’s workhorse for 30 years. But despite all its features, it had some fatal flaws.
Still, the Space Shuttle fell short in many respects.
First — and perhaps most importantly — the program was wildly expensive. The average cost of a shuttle launch was a mind-boggling $450 million, far more than NASA had predicted. While the shuttle was proposed to make disposable rockets a thing of the past, it did exactly the opposite. Most customers who wanted to put satellites into orbit found conventional rockets to be a cheaper alternative.
Second, the proposed launch schedules and turnaround times for the shuttle fleet were essentially fantasy. The fastest turnaround for any shuttle in the history of the program was 54 days. And after thedisaster, the fastest turnaround was 88 days — a far cry from what NASA officials thought they could accomplish. Slower turnarounds meant fewer flights, which meant less access to space for paying customers, further driving business away from NASA.
Safety was also an issue of paramount importance for the Space Shuttle Program. In 1982, the space shuttle was declared “operational” by NASA, a term that conveyed that the technologies involved were far more mature than they actually were. By the mid-1980s, much of the American public thought that spaceflight was routine. NASA was even launching astronauts into space wearing just simple coveralls and helmets, having ditched the pressure suits used in the
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