Its a bit ironic to make fun of failed missile tests when we don't even have a space shuttle

[backscatter712]

32. The shuttle's always been a white elephant.

The concept was for a spaceship that could be turned around and reflown like an airliner. It never did do that - it was a ridiculous hangar queen.

It was way too big - the Air Force demanded a payload bay that could deploy their big heavy Keyhole spy satellites. Never did - after the Challenger explosion, the Air Force switched back to expendable launchers and never looked back.

It was ridiculously expensive, and there were too many safety issues (and NASA didn't help by slacking off on the safety every time Congress and the President sneezed at their budget - "We'll launch on time, sirs! No matter what!"

I'm amazed the Shuttle lasted as long as it did.

The future is capsules like Dragon.

I see the Falcon 9 as being something like a Model T - in a good way. The Model T was one of the first cars to get the benefits of mass production, so it was far cheaper than previous cars, accessible to the average guy for the first time, which was why it was so popular.

The Falcon 9 has a lot of new manufacturing techniques put into it that make it far easier and cheaper to manufacture than previous rockets, so costs have the potential to go way down if Elon Musk can get enough orders to do full-scale production.