On Thursday, October 19, 2017 at 2:40:15 PM UTC+13, bob haller wrote:
strictly for fun could that have been done?
Yes.
http://www.astronautix.com/s/saturnshuttle.html
http://www.astronautix.com/s/shuttle.html
http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytw...lvs/sld036.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn-Shuttle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy
The Falcon Heavy puts out 5.13 million pounds of thrust. The Saturn V used for the Saturn Shuttle - puts out 7.65 million pounds of thrust from three Falcon Common Core Boosters. Adding two more Falcon boosters, a total of Five - would boost total thrust to 8.55 million pounds of thrust and permit putting a fully loaded External Tank atop the central booster - to which the ET is affixed. The Space Shuttle is attached to the side as shown in the Saturn Shuttle. The 0.9 million pound increase permits added propellant (stretched ET) and added payload aboard the Shuttle.
Recovery of all the parts and pieces (using the ET on orbit as a space station) is a dramatic improvement over the SRBs actually used.
http://www.astronautix.com/s/stsexte...nkstation.html
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A Falcon 9 could put a DynaSoar (X20) or X-37 in orbit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-20_Dyna-Soar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37
The Falcon Heavy could place highly reusable space plane on orbit as well - this paper also discussed the advantages of liquid fueled rocket booster to replace the SRBs.
https://www.aiaa.org/uploadedfiles/a...sfinalaiaa.pdf