And you boys boast about your 'superior' IQs...
...The Space Shuttle fleet is retired mainly for budgetary reasons. And yes we have no problems acknowledging the ships are expensive to maintain. But they more than returned for what they cost. Expendable vehicles are limited in payload in human and non-human cargo and we already know there is a limit on how much we can learn about large vehicle operations. The Space Shuttle gave us valuable experience in that, just like how the Soviets/Russians are knowledgeable about long duration in space. Eventually the design will be obsolete but until something is proven to be inadequate it is not obsolete and the design has yet to be proven inadequate for the current needs.
So much for those high IQs statistics...