I think one of the things that got me about the Space Shuttle was the early Pentagon requirement to be able to lift satellite payloads into a polar orbit, since the military was planning on having their own military shuttle launches. Apparently that is one big thing in particular that added a lot of additional cost to the shuttle. Supposedly halfway through the design the Air Force decided they didn't need or want it after all, then NASA was stuck holding the bag on a more expensive/complicated design than would have otherwise been necessary. ________________________________ From: "Shoppa, Tim" <tshoppa at wmata.com> To: "cctalk at classiccmp.org" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Mon, May 17, 2010 12:04:33 PM Subject: Re: [OT] Space Shuttle and ISS (was Re: Amiga 1000 helps) Al writes: I actually hope he doesn't do "a Space Shuttle replacement". The Space Shuttle is a classic example of scope creep. It had to do everything. In the end it did do most all of everything, and it did it each of them pretty well, but it was much more complicated than needed for any one task, and schedules and budgets were blown out of the water. But excepting schedules and budgets... it did surprisingly well. What Burt Rutan could do, is a family of replacements, each of which does one of the shuttle's tasks well. Some stages/assemblies/technologies would probably end up being shared and that's great. Tim.