Mach 25, It Made No Military History, and Was Faster Than the SR-71 Blackbird: NASA’s Space Shuttle Was the Fastest Machine Humans Ever Flew and Made Aviation and Space History

Mach 25, It Made No Military History, and Was Faster Than the SR-71 Blackbird: NASA’s Space Shuttle Was the Fastest Machine Humans Ever Flew and Made Aviation and Space History

Pitched to Congress in 1972 as a $20-million-a-flight space truck, the Space Shuttle flew 135 missions over 30 years at about $1.5 billion each, roughly $200 billion in all, and never managed more than nine launches in a year. For the money it built the International Space Station, launched and then repaired Hubble, carried 355 people from 16 countries, and killed 14 astronauts on two mornings, Challenger at 73 seconds in 1986 and Columbia 16 mi…