Clark Lindsey, on more clueless commentating from the MSM:

In science it is not considered a valid technique to generalize from a single data point. The same is true for judging RLVs. The Space Shuttle, which is not really reused but rather is rebuilt between flights, has innumerable design flaws and shortcomings far too extensive and numerous to go into here. Predicted to become the DC-3 of launchers, to call it even the Ford Tri-Motor of launchers would be an insult to that historic plane. (Ball also mentions the X-15 but it was a experimental development program, not an operational system. It should be compared to the SS1 not the SS2.)

Commercial spaceflight vehicles are being designed and built with the goal of low cost operations rather than highest possible performance. Low cost operations can only arise when high reliability and robustness are designed into the systems from the ground up. Those features in turn will produce safe rides for the crews and passengers. (I’ll note that it will be easier to achieve safe and routine operations for suborbital spaceflight but eventually the lessons learned there will be applied to orbital systems.)

One runs into this illogic often in space discussions, as though the Shuttle proves anything at all about reusable vehicles in general.

Though it’s not as bad as that Alex Tabarrok piece a while back.