LIVE: Space Shuttle Atlantis Lands For Final Time Ending Era For NASA

The space shuttle program now ended was launched in 1972 by President Nixon with an absurd NASA target of a “cost-effective” mission every week! In comparison to the beautifully engineered craft of von Braun’s Apollo programme this was an all-American venture with ships made up of 10,000 bits farmed out to the lowest tender. The lash-up was a Heath-Robinson contraption with serious cost, design, management and safety issues which did not even approach its targets and was lucky to fail only twice. The programme never lived down the excoriating criticism made during the federal investigation of the Challenger disaster by leading physicist, Richard Feynman. He told NASA’s fatally incompetent management that successful technology required reality take precedence over wishful thinking because “nature cannot be fooled”.