I think the Space Program is neglecting some very promising avenues for development of inexpensive shuttles.

Mashed potatoes are alarmingly non-conductive. They take forever to get hot, but when they do, woo-nelly. Their reluctance to heat makes them an excellent candidate for heat shield technology.

Earlier, I described the potential for using raisins on mottled carpets as a propulsion technology. As explained by Newton's third law of motion, it doesn't matter whether you're dropping the raisin on the carpet or the carpet on the raisin. Therefore, I propose the creation of a raisin spring board. Carpet-covered shuttles (with mashed-potato undercarriages) could then be dropped upon it. They would bounce in a random, previously unforseen direction, as per the nature of raisins on carpets. In fact, if enough observers were to watch the falling shuttle closely enough, it might propell itself in a wholly atypical spatial dimension.

[Ed.'s note: In the midst of all this pseudo-science, I had a real scientific error: Where it now correctly cites Newton's third law of motion, I had previously called on the second law of thermodynamics, which, I remembered in a sudden explosion of memory the other night, deals with entropy. Nobody called me on it. Sheesh.]