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

[joshcryer]

35. I saw its last dozen launches. Would take off from work or stay up until the early morning.

It was a great concept, and if it was utilized to its fullest potential could've changed everything, it was supposed to be a truck to space, it was a cool idea. They never did the requisite upgrades on it (it was still using 80s components for crying out loud!). The engines practically weren't reusable (the rebuild on the engines basically rendered them one shot engines). The tiles were supposed to be bigger but they turned out to be too fragile at a large scale so they had to scale them down. That made the labor go up exponentially for tile replacement (nicked tiles wasn't a new thing and they'd been fervently watching tile behavior throughout the program, it's a shame they couldn't do anything about Colombia). People say they couldn't have launched more than they did because of other factors, the real factor was that it was physically impossible to replace the tiles in enough time to get more launches than they got out of the thing.

Meanwhile, SpaceX is changing everything. Their heat shield (PICA-X) could survive a reentry from Lunar orbit (25k MPH). It is reusable hundreds of times from Earth orbit. They're working on plans to reuse the Falcon 9 vehicle. It's going to change the entire landscape for space exploration and access.