Space Shuttles

[AZRedhawk44]

Been thinking the last couple days, we missed a golden opportunity with the space shuttles.

We should have left 1 tethered to the ISS, permanently.

It was designed to be the space-truck, right?  Throw the new fridge in the back and take it to space, then put the cardboard and packing materials in the back and take that stuff to the dump.  That sort of thing.

It doesn't take much fuel to do orbital maneuvering.  A shuttle deployed with a payload of fuel could launch from Earth and expend the external fuel tank, then top-off its conventional fuel tanks with an additional tank in the payload bay, which would then be jettisoned and burn up on re-entry into the atmosphere.

In the event of malfunctioning satellites or large space debris, the shuttle could be deployed from the ISS to meet the satellite in orbit.  No need to re-enter it into atmo ever again.

I bet it could operate 5 or more years at a time doing orbital maneuvering missions, and refueling it would not be an insurmountable challenge.

And it would make a hell of a museum piece 100 years from now if we ever have orbital tourism.

[Tallpine]

Had to get the crew back, somehow 

[Boomhauer]

Maintenance would be a bitch. Everything needs MX, and the SS was not built for long term operations like that as far as I know, nor was it built so you could accomplish routine maintenance that would be needed in space with limited tools/manpower and with no gravity...

[AZRedhawk44]

Skeleton crew launch.  2 or 3 astronauts.  Come down on Soyuz or Dragon capsule.

Heck, Enterprise or one of the others left over could serve as the "lifeboat" rather than the Soyuz doing the job.

And frankly, a shuttle makes a far more effective lifeboat.  In the event of danger to the ISS, crew can evac to the shuttle and survey the damage from the shuttle rather than just detaching in a crappy little rocket nosecone and re-entering Earth.

Load the Shuttle with emergency repair equipment and food for a crew to work for a few weeks in the event of an evac, and maybe they can fix the problems with a series of EVA missions.

And in a last-ditch evac situation, the shuttle can be landed again if needed.  Or a rendezvous with a Dragon capsule a week after emergency abandonment, in orbit.

[AJ Dual]

Maintenance would be a bitch. Everything needs MX, and the SS was not built for long term operations like that as far as I know, nor was it built so you could accomplish routine maintenance that would be needed in space with limited tools/manpower and with no gravity...

This.

There's lots of maint. that has to happen that's not space-serviceable at all, and goes way beyond just replacing the thermal tiles etc.  So while  leaving it up there as an OMV is a nice idea, that's handled a lot more cheaply and efficiently by third stage boosters for the various satellites and probes. And those can do it without the mass penalty of the now useless wings, control surfaces, landing gear, or thermal tiles.

[birdman]

The overall orbit change capability of the shuttle, even if you filled the payload bay with extra fuel, is less than 5-8 deg of inclination change (and return) or a reach up to -maybe- a few thousand km of altitude.  And that's with 50,000 lbs of extra fuel.  That means that from the ISS orbit, there are effectively NO satellites that could be reached for repair, as all the LEO stuff is either in lower inclinations (0-28.5deg) or higher (70-110deg) compared to the 51.6deg ISS orbit.  All the medium altitude stuff is too high (10-15,000km), in a high inclination (60-80deg) and the crew would be killed by the radiation belts during the repair.

All the GEO stuff is low inclination AND too high to be reached.

Basically, the only thing you could reach from the ISS is, well, the ISS, even if you dedicated the entire payload capacity of the shuttle or an EELV-heavy or falcon-9 heavy for fuel.

Sorry.

[Hawkmoon]

Basically, the only thing you could reach from the ISS is, well, the ISS, even if you dedicated the entire payload capacity of the shuttle or an EELV-heavy or falcon-9 heavy for fuel.

Even if Scotty cranks it up to Warp 9?