The Space Shuttle

Also known as Space Transportation System, STS

Cause of death

Killed by cost

Made by

NASA

It was sold as a cheap reusable truck and turned out to cost roughly a billion dollars a flight.

The Shuttle was meant to fly weekly and make orbit routine. It flew 135 times in thirty years, lost two crews, and cost far more per launch than the expendable rockets it was supposed to replace. It also built the International Space Station, carried Hubble, and remains the only winged orbital vehicle ever flown operationally. Atlantis landed for the last time in July 2011, and the United States could not launch its own astronauts for the next nine years.