post-apollo

Prologue: "Tap-off" It was the spring of 1981. A whitish visage emerges from the Orbiter Processing Facility. Rolled back on brand new tires, its fresh silica surface sparkles under the power of floodlights. It dwarfs the swarm of people, mostly reporters, trying to get their first peek at this...

I was wondering, what is the alternative for NASA, if they do not go for Space Shuttle in the post-Apollo era? The STS seems like a good idea on paper, but with the benefit of hindsight many of its flaws are obvious, and could NASA instead go with more "classical" expendable rockets and...