Time for my little US space science soapbox …
“As of May 1, 2018, the ISS Program identified a total of 2,135 publications since 1998 with sources in journals, conferences and gray literature.”
Since 1990, over 18,000 scientific papers have been published using the Hubble (about 10x more than the ISS.)
The bungled Space Shuttle and ISS programs diverted most NASA funding from science to pork.
The Space Shuttle actually had tile issues from the very first flight, STS-1, and besides the losses of Columbia and Challenger, STS-27 Atlantis was nearly lost (the right wing tiles were shredded, with one complete tile missing but backed by a steel access plate. Ground control refused to believe the astronauts who did a space walk inspection, calling the damaged tiles “shadows.”)
NASA was too slow to buy Russia’s superior Buran vehicles (larger payload, remote-controlled, more reusable), so that option was wasted after storage damage.