A big thing I keep coming back to that I didn’t expect to be one of my takeaways from this book, is the amount of showboating and publicity stunts and political maneuvering that permeated the space shuttle program. Like ofc, all the US space programs have been political, the original Gemini and mercury programs were all about not letting the USSR outdo the US, but it seemed more serious maybe? More careful? At least where crew safety was involved? The Gemini program did have multiple abort and escape contingencies that shuttle didn’t include for budget reasons. With the space shuttle, it was (initially, more scientifically focused in the late 90’s and early 2000’s I think) such a commercialization of space exploration. With things like the Pepsi-Coke “demonstration” (ad) in zero g that was taken on a shuttle, senators bumping trained astronauts and scientists off missions because they wanted to take a joy ride, and the whole teacher in space thing which was just another publicity stunt. With the program running like that it’s a wonder to me there were only to shuttle missions with major fatalities. NASA was running like a corporate business, driven by monetary and schedule incentives instead of scientific discovery and crew safety. And I guess now it is like that in a lot of ways, but at least we also have programs of scientific value like JWST and an expansive earth science program that the shuttle era didn’t have in its heyday.