Why The Space Shuttle Only Launched Three Deep Space Missions

The Space Shuttle was "America's Ride To Space" for 3 decades, it launched over 100 times, and yet over that long career it only launched 3 interplanetary missions - Magellan, Galileo and Ulysses. And all of those were launched in 2 years, after that everything the Shuttle carried remained in Earth orbit. Multiple factors came together to limit this: - The Shuttle was late and expensive - The Reagan administration cancelled most interplanetary missions - Challenger's destruction changed NASA's policy requiring all launches on shuttle. Magellan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellan_(spacecraft) Galileo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(spacecraft) Ulysses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(spacecraft) Follow me on Twitter for more updates: https://twitter.com/DJSnM I have a discord server where I regularly turn up: https://discord.gg/zStmKbM If you really like what I do you can support me directly through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/scottmanley