MrCaffeineX
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2011
- Messages
- 1,604
What are you talking about?
Are you saying we 'gave up on space travel' because we finally retired the Shuttle after multiple extentions? NASA has a new heavy-lift rocket in development and private American contractors are slowly taking over ISS resupply missions...
IMO the real mistake we made was opting to develop the Space Shuttle rather than continuing with the Saturn family of rockets. The tech just wasn't there yet, it ended up being too dangerous and expensive.
I guess that depends on the definition of success. There are some interesting stats here: http://www.space.com/12376-nasa-space-shuttle-program-facts-statistics.html
If you want to say that any loss of life was a failure, then the entire US space program would be a failure, but overall, I'd say 133 out of 135 missions going successfully while flying into space and then returning to the Earth isn't that bad, statistically speaking.