[alpine]

If I remember my history correctly, the original shuttle objectives were compromised by US intelligence interests that required the shuttle to attain certain latitudes that were good for launching intel assets? If so, the shuttle program could have been a lot cheaper?

[anovikov]

It was even worse. They required ability to fly to polar orbits, plus ability to make single-orbit missions, which meant a lot of cross-range (meaning otherwise unnecessarily heavy wings). To make things worse, nobody ever paid for these features because Air Force bailed out of Shuttle project long before first flight, but when it was too late to delete hardware needed for these now-unnecessary features. Shuttle had terribly bad luck since the beginning.