>>12374981Yeah it's a mess of a problem. Shuttle had soul in the design phase but got assraped when it came to being forced to choose a final product. And then they had to stick with the shit to build SLS to keep funding. If NASA had the hindsight of knowing the future they should have done this:
• Build Saturn V for Apollo/Skylab program
• Funding cut? Okay. Build a scaled-down Saturn (instead of the shuttle) build 2 variants basically the same, 1 for a crew capsule and 1 for cargo. Call it the USL (Universal Saturn Launcher).
• Give USL a modular design. Basically for both the crew and cargo variant, everything is the same except for what gets slapped on top. Also expect for new engines to come out in the future when tech becomes available a la F1-B
• Never ever ever touch hydrolox. Don't fuck around with a spaceplane concept unless you want to do a USL dynosoar. Just keep it simple and cheap
