>> Ha! I have heard that before... Cost and availability?
>> Maybe... Superior Safety? Never!
>
>Unless you have some figures to back that up,
>it sounds like an emotional knee jerk statement
>to me.  I don't know if the shuttle is in fact
>safer than other alternatives, but it's far
>from obvious that it's not.

Perhaps I can point people at a letter in the Sept 12 "Space News" by
Stephen A Evans.

Titled "Throwing out the Wheat and keeping the Chaff" it appears he was
involved in some of the design studies, and has some interesting comments.

Quote 1
"Engine design decisions started with aerospike vs staged combustion engine
and progressed to details like extendible vs fixed nozzles. When the
re-usable booster was abandoned, we knew that most of the promise of the STS
was lost."

Quote 2
"Two items assumed to be low technology, an O-ring and foam insulation,
caused the loss of the Challenger and Columbia orbiters, while many
high-technology items operated as planned."

Quote 3
"The orbiter itself has never experienced a failure. The parts of the STS
that have caused mission loss are the solid rocket boosters and the external
tank. Neither performed as originally designed. By treating the solid rocket
booster and the external tank out of specification performance as
maintenance issues, NASA doomed two orbiters and their crews. Maintenance
only applies to re-useable parts. The solid rocket booster and external tank
are non-conforming parts whose problems are caused by a faulty design or
manufacturing process.

NASA is thinking of retaining the external tank and the solid rocket
booster. The logic seems to be that by eliminating the orbiter, the part
that works, the other parts can be used because there will be no orbiter for
them to damage."

He has a number of other things to say along the same line.

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