Quote:
Originally Posted by bossbunny
Its sad they are shutting down the space program... It still makes me mad! I think they are making a huge mistake not continuing space exploration.
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I totally agree with you. Retiring the shuttles was very premature. Each shuttle was built to withstand 100 missions EACH. Our oldest and most traveled orbiter, Discovery, completed 39 missions, and our youngest orbiter, Endeavour, only did 19 missions. Most people blame the shuttles for both disasters, but the truth is.. The Shuttles did exactly what they were engineered to do during both disasters. Not one shuttle was built to be able to withstand an explosion as close as the SRBs were or enter the atmosphere with a bowling ball hole in its wing.
In my very honest opinion, the Space Shuttle program was the best space program America has done yet.
Oh and by the way, they aren't stopping the entire space program. They still send rockets into space, they just didn't have a replacement for Space Shuttle when it retired.