Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster design or replacing them altogether with liquid "flyback" boosters using either Atlas V or Delta IV EELV technologies. The 5-segment SRB, which would have required little change to the current shuttle infrastructure, would have allowed the space shuttle to carry an additional of payload in an International Space Station-inclination orbit, eliminate the dangerous "Return-to-Launch Site" (RTLS) and "Trans-Oceanic Abort" (TAL) modes, and, by using a so-called "dog-leg maneuver", fly south-to-north polar orbiting flights from Kennedy Space Center. After the destruction of "Columbia", NASA shelved the five-segment SRB for the Shuttle Program, and the three surviving Orbiters, "Discovery", "Atlantis", and "Endeavour"
Space Shuttle cost around $450 million. Roger A. Pielke, Jr. has estimated that the Space Shuttle program cost about US$170 billion (2008 dollars) through early 2008; the average cost per flight was about US$1.5 billion. Two missions were paid for by Germany, Spacelab D1 and D2 (D for "Deutschland") with a payload control center in Oberpfaffenhofen. D1 was the first time that control of a manned STS mission payload was not in U.S. hands. At times, the orbiter itself was referred to as the Space Shuttle. This was not technically correct as the "Space Shuttle" was the combination of the orbiter, the