Space shuttle

[powerg8]

I just got back from Florida,I went to the Kennedy Space Center to see the lanch.It was very cool.Now they think some of the tiles on the shuttle that protected it from the heat of rentry are damaged from foam falling off the external feul tank so now it cant land. That was the same problem that the last shuttle that diddn't make it back had. Now the two other shuttles are grounded until they can fix this problem even tho there is almost no danger to this mission.I think it sucks how this is effecting the space program,what do you guys think about it all?

 

[Nairagorn]

Well, it is 30 year old technology, almost. Those shuttles are practically antiques. Time to put em in museums and keep pushing for private companies to figure out a way to get to space cheap.

 

[Kestenvarn]

We were talking about this on another forum... apparently they had plans for designing new vehicles, but were cancelled due to lack of funding.

ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2001/01-031.txt

 

[Sir Saladin]

I have been living in the good old U.S my whole life and I think this space shuttle stuff is nonsense. And the so called space station is just a glorified satellite. Real life is not Star Trek, and orbiting in Earth atmosphere space has already been done. Over and over. They are not exploring anything excepting how they can throw away lives and massive amounts of money. If they really did land on the moon why not bring back that ancient rocket technology instead of just orbitting all of the time?