Raketoplány lietali 30 rokov
No a namiesto chvalospevov trocha reality..
Crippled by technological overreach, political compromise, and budget limitations, it instead ended up costing more than the expendable rockets it was to have replaced. STS sucked the money out of all other NASA projects for half a century. The military abandoned its use after the Challenger shuttle explosion in the 1980's.
A kruty epilog:
It was to be replaced by a modernized Apollo capsule, dubbed the Orion. The shuttle turned out to be a fifty-year detour to nowhere. By 2020 NASA hoped to have the sort of lunar base it would have had by 1980 if it had continued with Apollo rather than started the STS program.
Mimochodom, v ramci "uspor" NASA skratila mesacny program Apollo o tri lety (Apollo 18-20) a uz vyrobene rakety Saturn 5 isli z fabriky rovno do muzei (okrem jedneho Saturnu 5, ktory vyniesol Skylab)..
A take detaily, ako politicky vyber mormonskeho dodavatela z Utahu (Thiokol), hoci mal najhorsie parametre..