In article . net,
"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote:

"C J Campbell" wrote in message
...

The earlier flights were not done in a re-usable spacecraft.

So what?

So that is a large part of what makes it different from the single-shot
suborbital flights of the past.

Not to mention the thousands of man-hours and cast of thousands needed
to turn around the shuttle.

One step on the road to non-government, gold-plated, decades-long
development projects type spaceflight.