Criticism of the Space Shuttle program stems from claims that NASA's Shuttle program has failed to achieve its promised cost and utility goals, as well as design, cost, management, and safety issues. More specifically, it has failed in the goal of reducing the cost of space access. Space Shuttle incremental per-pound launch costs ultimately turned out to be considerably higher than those of expendable launchers: by 2011, the incremental cost per flight of the Space Shuttle was estimated at $450 million, or $18,000 per kilogram to low Earth orbit (LEO). By comparison, Russian Proton expendable launchers, still largely based on the design that dates back to 1965, are said to cost as little as $110 million, or around $5,000/kg to LEO. When all design and maintenance costs are taken into account, the final cost of the Space Shuttle program, averaged over all missions and adjusted for inflation, was estimated to come out to $1.5 billion per launch, or $60,000/kg to LEO. This should be contrasted with the originally envisioned costs of $118 per pound of payload in 1972 dollars ($1,400/kg, adjusting for inflation to 2011).
It failed in the goal of achieving reliable access to space, partly due to multi-year interruptions in launches following Shuttle failures. NASA budget pressures caused by the chronically high NASA Space Shuttle program costs have eliminated NASA manned space flight beyond low earth orbit since Apollo, and severely curtailed more productive space science using unmanned probes. NASA's promotion of and reliance on the Shuttle slowed domestic commercial expendable launch vehicle (ELV) programs until after the 1986 Challenger disaster.
Read more about Criticism Of The Space Shuttle Program: Purpose of The System, Costs, Cultural Issues and Problems, Shuttle Operations, Accidents, Retrospect, Future
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“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... criticism ... makes very little dent upon me, unless I think there is some real justification and something should be done.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“I take SPACE to be the central fact to man born in America.... I spell it large because it comes large here. Large and without mercy.”
—Charles Olson (1910–1970)
“And the shuttle never falters, but to draw an encouraging conclusion
From this would be considerable, too odd. Why not just
Breathe in with the courage of each day, recognizing yourself as one
Who must with difficulty get down from high places?”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“When Paul Bunyan’s loggers roofed an Oregon bunkhouse with shakes, fog was so thick that they shingled forty feet into space before discovering they had passed the last rafter.”
—State of Oregon, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)