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Shuttles Can't Finish Space Station
Doug Dante writes "The shuttle can't make the 28 flights now planned before it retires in 2010, according to Dr. Michael D. Griffin, the new administrator of NASA. It can only do about 15-23, leaving 5-13 planned missions to alternate lift vehicles. NASA is expected to consult space station partners on alternatives once they are approved by the Bush administration.
Should the Space Shuttle be cut loose?"
And meanwhile, start building a better space shuttle.
We spend all these billions on defense... if we were to scrap 1 or 2 of the least useful weapon systems, we'd have pleny of money to build a new shuttle and either colonize the moon or send someone to mars.
The unofficial
"What we need to do is establish a base on the moon."
Because, as you all know, building an orbital station with the collective strengths of many nations has been a roaring success. Oh wait.
Leave it up to the Europeans to get it right
You yourself said that the shuttle was a reasonable idea when it was early on the drawing board, and it went bad as the project came to fruition...and now you're comparing the ACTUAL American shuttle to a THEORETICAL European shuttle.
The theoretical ANYTHING is always better than the actual ANYTHING.
If the ESA ever gets a shuttle up and running, then we can compare apples to apples.
Until then, your argument holds no water. It's like saying "the party I'm thinking about having is better than that party that you actually had, because your party sounded good, but then when you actually held it, things went wrong".