Soon after the start of the space race, a major problem of spaceflight became obvious.

It was really expensive.

The high cost of spaceflight was in large part due to the fact that every rocket and spacecraft was expendable.

Every trip meant a new rocket and spacecraft was expendable.

Every trip meant a new rocket and a new vehicle.

To solve this problem in the 1970s,

the United States launched a new program

to create a reusable spacecraft.

Learn more about the rise and fall of the space transportation system,

aka the Space Shuttle, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Consider for a moment how cheap air travel has become. You can board a jet aircraft that will fly you and several hundred people over an ocean for a few hundred dollars.

After everyone gets off the plane, they clean up the interior, put more fuel back in,

and then it flies off again, sometimes in under an hour.

A commercial aircraft can easily have a lifespan of over 20 years and fly

tens if not hundreds of thousands of passengers during its time and service.

Now consider what flying would be like if after every flight they scrapped the airplane.

Every flight would be a single one-way trip.

The first flight of a particular aircraft would be its last.

At a cost of nearly $100 million per commercial aircraft, even a full plane would warrant tickets that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Moreover, the interior of the aircraft would be bare bones, and pretty much nothing would be built for comfort as what would be the point as it's only used once.

This nightmare scenario was the reality in human spaceflight.

Starting with the first man launches into space, every single one was done with a disposable

capsule on top of a disposable rocket.

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