From motherboard.tv: "One commonly-heard notion about the demise of the Space Shuttle is that the costly and overly complex program was killed, rightfully, because it didn’t help to advance science. But this is based on a false premise, the astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson reminded us at the World Science Festival. The Shuttle was never really meant to promote research or fulfill NASA’s goal of space exploration. Instead, like the Apollo missions to the moon, the Shuttle program was the product of politics.

As inspiring as the grandeur of the spaceship has been to legions of young people – and as important as it was in fixing the Hubble telescope – it was actually the Western battle against the Soviet Union – and later, other diplomatic interests – that left NASA operating this amazing low-orbit dump truck. To criticize the Shuttle for not doing more science, he said, is to miss the larger picture."