Congrats to the shuttle for not blowing up on launch or burning up on re-entry.
Besides, would you like to go into mid-Earth orbit in a 26 year old piece of equipment that was never designed with safety as top priority. (economic efficiency was top)
That statement is so far from the truth I can't even see it anymore.
The original idea behind it was, a safe, economical, reusable spacecraft.
It mostly failed on all counts.
However, if you know anything about NASA, safety IS the top priority.
Their pursuit for absolute safety is the reason they failed on the whole economical and reusable issue.
Since they had to basically rebuilt the shuttle from scratch each time it landed it was only somewhat reusable.
Because of it not being able to meet safety requirements for relaunch after it flies, they have to spend on the order of 4 times the amount they initially projected to.
NASA mandates every critical system have three point failure or above. Meaning every system required for the thing to fly, and for people to survive, has to be able to survive three different catastrophic failures, before it's in danger of failing outright.
The guidance computer for example. It consists of three computers, simultaneously computing the same data, they then compare the data they each calculated and if one of them is erroneous they take the majority as true, if these three computers all fail, there is even a fourth computer with the sole task of backing up the main guidance system encase of failure.
The program used on the guidance systems is widely known as the most perfect computer program ever made.
Aka if Gmod was programmed as well as the shuttle guidance computer, the game would never crash, your contraptions would never blackhole, and it would be imposable to cheat under any circumstance, barring the computer hardware failing.
Granted part of the reason the shuttle program is so well made, is it's operating parameters are very well defined, and it has a relatively simple task to perform.
In addition to this, as far as space hardware goes, 26 year old hardware is nothing. Just about all spaceflight runs off of the idea of proven safe hardware. So most times they will use legacy hardware because they know it will work. Even if its more expensive/heavy/ etc.
There is a good reason for this too. Your average space launch costs around 2 Billion+, if you are spending that much money on something, you spare no expense in ensuring it works. You don't want to run the risk of using new equipment, if it might possibly cost you the whole launch.
