>>12924648>since we're talking about the shuttle, how could we improve the base vehicle?A big part of why the shuttle was so expensive was because it had to drag so much mass of wings, heatshield, crew cabin, etc to LEO. the shuttle was for all intents and purposes a super heavy rocket but only about a quarter of its overall mass to orbit was payload. in order to be worth it, the shuttle would need to be cheaper than an expendable rocket with a similar payload despite being four times larger.
If the shuttle had really lived up to the hype (a robust orbiter that can be affordably turned around in a couple of weeks and a pair of cheap solid boosters that can be easily fished out of the sea and refuelled for another flight, mated together with a low cost, mass produced external tank) then yeah, it would be cheap enough to be worth it, it'd be much cheaper than the likes of the Saturns and Titans that it was to replace, and it'd have a excellent flight rate too, but I'm extremely dubious that such a great vehicle could have been developed with the technology available at the time, and making the shuttle so good would be so expensive as to make the fully reusable TSTO the cheaper option to develop.
And that's without mentioning that the same reusability techniques that would have to be applied to this "perfect shuttle" could instead be used on a smaller rocket, one that isn't designed around the orbiter and thus appropriately sized for the payload it delivers, offering an even lower cost per flight and $/kg.
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