Space Shuttle Program - Criticism

Criticism

The space shuttle program has been criticized for failing to achieve its promised cost and utility goals, as well as design, cost, management, and safety issues. Others have argued that the shuttle program was a step backwards from the Apollo Program, which, while extremely dangerous, accomplished far more scientific and space exploration endeavors than the shuttle ever could. If Apollo had continued, it may have evolved into manned missions to other planets.

After both the Challenger disaster and the Columbia disaster, high profile boards convened to investigate the accidents with both committees returning praise and serious critiques to the program and NASA management. Some of the most famous of the criticisms, most of management, came from Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, in his report that followed his appointment to the commission responsible for investigating the Challenger disaster.

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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:

    Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!
    Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)

    It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)

    Homoeopathy is insignificant as an art of healing, but of great value as criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the time.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)