Originally Posted By: Bill
The Space Shuttle was originally designed to be a reusable space launch vehicle to carry all kinds of stuff to LEO. The Saturn V was designed to be a one time vehicle to carry man to the moon.


I think that's the most significant fact in all this.

PreEearth. Which would be a better option:

1) Building and destroying 200 Saturn V rockets, to do 200 (or even 50 if it takes 4 times as much stuff) trips into orbit
2) Building half a dozen shuttles to do the same amount of work?