Conquer Club

Was the space shuttle a MASSIVE waste of money?
The cost of launching IT with a smaller payload than could be launched by a Saturn V rocket is less cost effective.
The amount of repairs and checks required after each mission, must of equated to a similar outlay of making a brand new (slightly better one) each time.
It was virtually out of date by the time it first made it's maiden flight. Designed in the seventies and still being used in the noughties.

Would you feel safe belting down the motorway doing a ton in a car built in 1982?
Nor me.

Was Concorde a waste of money?
You would of thought that by now airliners would be doing mach 1 as standard.
But after all the millions spent researching it, they only made 20. It was going to be sold in greater numbers to re coup the investment but the oil crisis of the early seventies screwed that plan.

Turns out people care less about speed and more about price. So in that respect, the Concorde was obsolete before it was even built.

Though the Shuttle is going to be retired in 2010, I would say the bigger waste was the Concorde.

The space shuttle was not a "waste" of money. The problem was that with all the disasters the evolution of the shuttle was put on hold. It was no more a "waste" any more than the gemini program was a waste, because it lead to the apollo program and eventually to the moon.

The biggest problem was that the shuttle wasn't designed to go high enough for most practical missions. The next generation would have done that, but that failed to materialize. Most of the problems with shuttle missions stems from the launch site more than the shuttle itself.

The Concorde had two major problems going against it. The first is that it required a longer runway so it was limited to the places where it would land and take off. The second was a NIMBY mentality over supersonic flights over land which limited potential routes. Given its small cargo size, its clientelle would be limited as well. Since these clients were not all located at the limited hubs serviced by the Concorde it's advantage wasn't always all that great.