Could this disaster of the shuttle be forseen, interesting link!!

[Bob O]

http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,887236,00.html
So was this disaster unexpected????? Or were their signs that NASA/government should have seen but didnt act to save money???

 

[nativetxn]

I hope not

 

[wdwguide]

If I recall correctly, the shuttles were designed with a failure rate of roughly 1%. So yes, this tragedy does not come entirely unexpected.

One of the design goals of the VentureStar was to reduce this rate by something like a factor of 10, but unfortunately that program was shelved when it ran into some design problems with the internal fuel tanks. There are some plans to augment the shuttle with a smaller spaceplane for station crew rotations around 2008, but to the best of my knowledge there is no actual shuttle replacement planned at this point.