Re: Progress, NASA style
I'd have to agree with Raoul. As a designer of low-cost launch vehicles, I am no fan of the Shuttle's approach to manned space flight, but anyone who knows anything about engineering knows the Shuttle is a technological marvel of complexity. The fact that we have flown this immense, stupendously complicated machine through the regimes of space so many times without major incident is not just comparable to getting a bear to dance ballet, it's the equivalent of getting a bear to jump a motorcycle across the Snake River Canyon.