[LordBodak]

The Shuttle fails in its primary objective, that of being a "reusable" vehicle. I attended a presentation by a NASA employee that explained the Shuttle process from landing to launch, and I was amazed at how much of the craft is replaced. I think we would have been far better off extending the Apollo program to new missions, similar to the Soyuz (which is still flying although much improved from the moon landing era).

[gamble]

The shuttle was the worst of both worlds. They replace enough parts to make each mission absurdly expensive, and keep enough components in place that it's extremely difficult to be sure they won't fail in flight.