Whether the investment in the airport shuttle will have to pay?

After 133, 14 astronauts have lost two tragic accidents, almost four decades of the space shuttle, NASA's head of museums after the end of the year's last two tasks. File image by NASA, via AP

Endeavour moved toward a landing at Kennedy Space Center's runway 15 at Cape Canaveral, Fla., on 20 January 1996. The final flight of the shuttle is set for Friday.

Image by NASA, via AP

Endeavour moved toward a landing at Kennedy Space Center's runway 15 at Cape Canaveral, Fla., on 20 January 1996. The final flight of the shuttle is set for Friday.

So what did we get for 113.7 billion that NASA had been spent on the ferry? A dream of the century-long, reusable space plane, winged sold by the Agency as a successor to the Apollo missions of the period of the Moon race in the early 1970s. Compromises such as increasing the packet airport shuttle to hold the military satellites of budget cuts and the promise of making space travel cheap, frequent and comfortable, says historian Roger Launius of the national air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. "The history of the space shuttle is biting off more than we can chew," says Roger Pielke Jr., a policy analyst at the University of Colorado. Nature journal estimates, was the real cost Pielke rest of program at 192 billion from 1971 until 2010 (more than an agency only partially due to adjustments for inflation), or about 1.5 billion per session. In 1972, NASA estimated that every $ 10 activation. 4million. says Pielke: "However, you can add it, it was a very expensive commitment." "Economically, you cannot make an argument for it," says economist Henry Hertzfeld of the space policy Institute at George Washington University. Originally, the plan was to perform dozens of launches each year, download the operating costs. His busiest year, 1985, with nine launches, ferry contributed to the loss of the Challenger seven astronauts the next year, according to the investigation. from 1981 to today, the space shuttle experiments carried about 2,300 space, says NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz. one of the most citedSays David Pendlebury of the science information service Thomson Reuters, is the study of the pants "1996 anti-shock" used to measure fitness astronaut. Overall, the achievements of the ferry's 10th rank calculation science news, which ties the scientific discoveries since 1973 individual space agency programs. First in this list with more than six times as many discoveries of Technologically Telescope. Hubble, the shuttle which progress, says physicist Luc Sollitt of Citadel Charleston, s.c.: NASA is keeping the liquid rocket engines the reusable space shuttle for upcoming, For example. And it allowed for construction of International Space Station. For more information about reprints, visit & for our frequently asked questions. To report corrections to vabarot, contact standards editor Jones Brent. For consideration of publication in the newspaper, send your comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, telephone number, city and country for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections. usatoday.com. We have updated the guidelines of the conversation. Changes include a brief overview of the process of reduction and explains how to use the button "report". Read more.