The first computer worked, why did we change it?

What if the interiors and functionality were changed leaving the design same?

aerodynamics

I like your comet a lot; like so much so that if i could like it 1000 times, I would. It just made me smile and my faith towards this site has been restored. This was actually my 3rd picture i posted last night and I haven't posted since last year..

No, using several million dollars to make a new one that is only slightly better is a waste of money and time, considering that the current ones can already do everything we need them for.

It's like if you had five Iphone 3's and you had to pay over 10 million dollars to upgrade one of them to an Iphone 4.

Would you do it?

Except for the fact that private companies are already working with NASA to develop ways to travel to space in the public eye, by letting average people travel there, it would still only be slightly better, because when making a space shuttle, you have to make more things than you have to do for a friggin sedan, engines that can take you out of the atmosphere, for example.

And it would still have to be pretty lightweight, so again, it can get out of the atmosphere and then still complete his mission and come back.
You can't fit stuff as a better computer easily.

And also, they are already giving hundreds of jobs for their money, like all the researchers and people who build the other things than space shuttles, like you know, robots that fly to mars.

I think all the experts at NASA know what they're doing and why they don't upgrade their shuttles than some dude writing on FJ.

If it got me to fucking Mars I would.

Then what?

We will never get anywhere in life if we sit around and ask "then what?". Sometimes you just need to do things just because you can.

And then you ruined your company because you spent millions of dollars and several months developing, building and using a new spacecraft for a mission that didn't help doing any scientific research or discovering something we didn't already know.

Are you saying that developing an improved space craft would contribute absolutely nothing to the scientific community?

No, I'm saying that doing it just for doing it would be a stupid financial decision.

I'm sure many scientific developments were considered stupid financial decisions at the time. People would have said, "oh you made your radar machine melt chocolate bars, I'm sorry there is just no call for this... what did you call it? a Microwave?".

Making a scientific discovery you don't know isn't the same as financing an expedition to a place you do know, considering mars is in our solar system astronomers can learn pretty much everything about the planet.

I see your point but in my mind this would not be about Mars per-say, it would be about long term exposure to zero gravity, developing colonies on other planets and a million other thing we cannot learn unless we do it. Maybe in 50 years when we are exploring the solar system, the lessons that would have been learnt would be invaluable.

I have to agree with you on this, NASA do plan on doing manned space flights again around 2020.

Making colonies and bases around the solar system and making it a lot easier to generally get into space so that more people can do it and the effects of space can be more tested.

It will also help to encourage people to become astronomers, which could make it easier to invent interstellar flight, if it's possible that is.