From what I've seen, it sounds like many kids these days feel the same way about SpaceX launches now as you did about the shuttle (incredibly inspiring). I hope that's reassuring.
What do kids ever have to do with anything? They are the next generation that may or may not want to be involved in whatever they might be getting inspired by.
>The goal is to get to space affordably and reliably; the shuttle failed on both fronts SpaceX is succeeding at.
Shuttle had ~135 missions (number from memory) with 1 failure at launch. The second failure was at re-entry, so assumption is that the mission deployed whatever was being deployed (if that was part of the mission). How many missions has SpaceX lost payloads on? >1? If we do percentages, sure, but to say that 1 failure at launch is unreliable is just farcical.
That’s one of the worst takes I’ve ever heard
Anyway, coolness factor doesn't really matter for space. Economical things also tend to end up looking cool over time anyway simply because streamlined designs which are efficient tend to also look cool..
Exactly. The shuttle program was designed by bureaucrats to be "inspiring." Which explains why it was such a dismal failure economically and in turns of safety - killing 14 people which is far more than any other rocket, and costing insanely more than expendables.
The shuttle program set the U.S. space program back by decades. We are only now finally starting to recover from its dismal failure.
It was designed in an environment they couldn't iterate and test, and tried to go from very little knowlage directly to a massively complex system.
And no only that, they were very limited in terms of funding, so anything that required to much development had to be kicked.