As I said, Max Faget is an aerospace god. I agree with his basic opinion in the linked Op-Ed (in my own words): We need to decide whether or not we are really interested in going into space. If the answer is "no" then we should stop wasting money on expensive half-hearted efforts like the ISS and Space Shuttle. I should emphasize that it is my own opinion that getting people permanently into space is THE MOST IMPORTANT GOAL for our generation. Our failure to do so has been nothing less than a disgrace to ourselves and a discredit to the achievements of our ancestors.

Concerning Faget's straight wing orbit vehicle design which Raoul linked to: That design was not successful. It is my understanding when they tested models of that design in supersonic wind tunnels, the performance was found to be unacceptable (von Braun and Goddard also made mistakes). The Shuttle was a very difficult vehicle to design. It is required to operate in a hard vacuum, reenter at hypersonic velocity, fly at supersonic then subsonic velocity and then land horizontally. It has to do all of this with minimum vehicle mass but with a prespecified payload mass, reasonable safety and be reusable. Obviously the Space Shuttle failed to meet all of these requirments. The reason why it failed was the government's unwillingness to pay for the full development cost even though this was a radically new technology. The government opted to reduce development cost by following a "fly now and pay latter strategy" and then lie about the Shuttle's true capability. This tactic lead directly to the Shuttle's economic failure and the accidents connected to Challenger and Columbia.

Gary