My main beef with the Shuttle has been "You don't put wings on rockets.
Next you don't let people ride chemical solid rockets. These are the two
main reasons(there are others) why the Shuttle is not safe for blasting
off and coming back into the Earth's atmosphere.. Still they are
big,and that is good. They costed lots to build,and that makes them hard
to junk. This could be good space junk. Leave them in high and different
orbits. Use them like the ISS only they could be more flexible.
Astronauts can leave the Shuttles and come back to Earth with the safe
Apollo system.They could go back to the orbiting Shuttles in a safe
liquid rocket system. Doing this NASA can save its face. Doing this NASA
can save lives,and money. NASA should like this idea because it will
always get more money than it needs,and not spending more money is two
ways it can steal more money and still have the books balance. It
now only needs a small 4 man launch vehicle,it can also copy the
Russian,or Chinese way of rentry. NASA does know how to dock,and space
walk. Fuelling the orbiting Shuttles in space should be done by robots.
Bert