Mini Space Shuttle Design Keeps the Shuttle Dream Alive

Seems like something NASA should have pursued in the 1970s instead of the Space Shuttle, in my opinion.

I have always felt that a "man-rated" shuttle-type craft would be a good means to get personnel into low-earth orbit and use traditional lifter boosters to cary payload aloft.

We already had a lot of proven engineering done with the Saturn boosters for a heavy lift (which had 4 times the lift capacity to LEO) and Atlas and Delta vehicles with a proven track record.

It seems politics ruled the decision for a shuttle based HLV that spanned 29 years and 135 launches. The Shuttle orbital is a marvel in engineering and is the most complex machine on this planet.

135 launches and our major accomplishments are the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station. Both are important milestones in our exploration of space, but it seems to leave us wanting for more after nearly 30 years of service.

The root problem is two things:

1. Politics - A shifting political landscape prevents both meaningful and efficient use of public funds for NASA and our future of space exploration.

2. Politics - a loss of vision for the US and its space program led us to 30+ years of vacillation in direction and guidance as to what we should do next.

I am very grateful for all of the unseen contributions NASA has made to the public industry. This is truly the most underrated return of investment NASA has provided. Many people are totally unaware of how much credit is due to this organization.

More than just keeping the Shuttle dream alive (a neat reference to the NASA film from the early days of the Shuttle program. 'The Dream is Alive') it also keeps alive an Air Force idea from the late 1950s -- the "Dyna-Soar" program which envisioned a small re-usable rocket plane launched atop a conventional rocket. AKA the X-20 program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-20_Dyna-Soar

The Air Force already has it. It's called the X-37B and it recently returned from a long orbital mission for its first test flight.

Yeah, I read about that too, but that one is unmanned. If it's mission will always be to sit in orbit for months, it will always remain an unmanned vehicle.

I seriously doubt it will ever go through the process of man rating it. Not only must the X-37B be certified, but so will the booster that launches it.

Maybe a derivative might be possible.

Sounds like we are in violent agreement on that.