True, it was the sexiest spacecraft humanity has done so far. Now we only have flying space dicks, sometimes with some smaller space dicks attached to its sides. Quite poetic.

[–] cordlesslamp@lemmy.today 5 points 1 year ago

If you look closer, you can see that the space shuttle is actually riding on a giant flying space dick, with two smaller flying space dicks attached on the sides.

[–] Chriskmee@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, feels like we have taken a step back almost, we went from Apollo to shuttle and back to basically Apollo as far as overall look.

The closest thing to the shuttle that has a planned Q1 2024 launch date is Dreamchaser. It's much smaller than the shuttle and not nearly as capable, but it at least looks cooler and lands like the shuttle.

[–] Parsnip8904@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

True. Unfortunately it seems like the shuttle design is not as perfoment as the traditional rockets. Maybe when we have orbital platforms.