2007 shuttle launch schedule

wrote:

is there ANY way a shuttle like vehicle could have a low cost to orbit
and be as safe as a expendable?

Is there any way that a Caterpillar crane will have the same fuel
efficiency as a Smart car ?

A shuttle will always cost more than a Soyuz. But it does a hell of a lot
more and has far more capabilities.

Going back to Apollo simply duplicates Soyuz' capabillities. And it is
unlikely to cost less than Soyuz.

From a humankind point of view, it is better to have one Soyuz and one
Shuttle than to have two Soyuz and no Shuttle. Shuttle brings unique
capabillities to work and build complex things in space.

Just because Shuttle "beta" ended up costing a lot more than promised
doesn't mean that Shuttle successors would also be as flawed.

Lets say a real challenge were given to NASA : send a man to Mars and bring
him back safely by 2020. You would need some form of shuttle vehicle to
assemble the expedition ship in LEO and load it up with the supplies needed
for that journey.

Start building new/improved shuttles now, and you would have the tools
ready to start assembling the ship. Ditch the shuttle now and repace it
with some simple CEV, and you won't have any tools to build anything
significant in space. In fact, the russians, French and Japanese (if they
ever complete HST) will have more space capabilities than the americans
because of their primitive cargo delivery capabilities compared to the shuttle.