Richard Lamb wrote in
:

But even a Boeing 7^7 is only a pale glimmer of the complexity
involved in designing and building something on the level of
the Orbiter.

Actually, Boeing's modern 7*7 designs are comparable in complexity to the
orbiter. The biggest difference is that modern airliners have several
design generations behind them, so their designers have a pretty good idea
what works and what doesn't.

The orbiter is still essentially a first-generation design. If it's balky
and temperamental, it's mainly because its designers did *not* have a prior
experience base for reusable spacecraft.

--
JRF

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