Would the REAL Space Shuttle please Stand Up

Looks like Aki has been thinking about space at least as much as me.
Shuttles have caught my attention. This is mostly because they should be held up in public to demonstrate why design by committee is bad, and why politics should be kept well away.

If you go back and look at what NASA was actually researching when they announced that they were going to build a reuseable space vehicle, and compare it to what we got, it gets a bit scary...

The plan closest to what we got was a combo "superlifter" with what looked suspiciously like "our" shuttle on top. The superlifter used conventional jet engines, took off horizontally and simply took the space plane to the edge of the atmosphere, before gliding home, under power, and with it's own crew. Some of these versions used aerospike engines, a rather daring design.

(Interestingly, some rumours have it that the Aurora next gen spyplane may use these engines)

Most of the designs were lighter, more reuseable, cheaper, safer, simpler and easier to build. Then a committee got involved. Then certain senators stepped in and declared that the Shuttle would never fly UNLESS parts were made in their states. And here we end up with a mish mash of bits and pieces, many badly bolted together with no real success for any of its design goals.

What are our alternatives?

Well actually there are many alternatives.

1. We Pinch the Russian Shuttle: The Soviets had designed and built a damn nice shuttle. It can carry a nice payload of thirty tonnes into orbit, it has been built AND tested, and it can probably be purchased for a song. Rumours have abounded that there is so much demand for lift capacity that the major (now privatised) russian launch provider is looking at manufacturing these, as well as a bigger lifter capable of 50 tonnes into space. ("Our" shuttle can barely manage 25 tonnes). It'd take a while to get it going again, and there'd need to be some cleaning up done of the design, but it is there.


2. We finish the Clipper: The Delta Clipper was a "classic" rocket. It looked like it had escaped from someones comic books. It was canned in favour of X-33, which is a pity as it was MUCH closer to completion. Several successful test flights had been made. Advantages? Cheap. Fast Turnaround (Emergency turnaround was less than a day! Normal was less than a week). Safe (They had an explosion on the side of the test prototype, and "crumple landed" it quite safely. It could land using parachutes if needed. It was designed to be "self monitoring", using a network of distributed computing, which helped speed up the turnaround)


3. We use monster big normal rockets: Break out the Saturn 1B! Lets get LIFT dammit! Alternatively we buy some of those "old school" pyramid launchers the Soviets developed. Cheap, nasty, environmentally unfriendly but stupid amounts of lift


4. We let Private Enterprise pick up the slack: Go X-Prize, Go!

I suspect our best shot is actually the X-Prizers, unless McDonnell Douglas Aerospace actually get a rush order for Clippers. Possible momentum for that rush order could be "Son of Starwars".