Recycling the ET, part 10

It looks like 10 posts so far on this subject, identified by this label.  I have to apologize for the lack of organization here.  This blog is a bit more haphazard than what I would like.  It appears that so far that there are 9 posts, but I wrote more on the subject in previous posts.  Yet this seems to be hard to find.

What got me interested in this proposition was the fact that the shuttle derived system is now being adopted as the heavy lifter.  Since I learned that, it is now 10 posts, which are easy to access from the label at the end of each post.  Just click on it to bring them all up.

I learned of the decision to use the shuttle derived launcher late last month.  By then, it was a month old decision since it was mid October when the decision was made to use the DIRECT approach.  The DIRECT approach is the name for shuttle derived system as the heavy lifter.

What does this decision mean?  For one thing, the entire rocket system now can be independent of the orbiter.  Since the orbiter carried the main engines on board, it meant that the entire shuttle had to come with it so as to have access to the engines.  Now that the shuttle will be gone, that extra mass, which was considerable, will no longer be needed.  The significance of this is that the external tanks can go into orbit at a much higher and safer altitude than before.  Without having to carry the extra mass of the shuttle, there will be plenty of thrust to get the external tanks to that orbit.  Even with the shuttle onboard, the tanks could have been put into orbit (not just my opinion here, it is in the documentation that is in the pdf file I reviewed).  The reason they weren't was the fear that the tank could reenter the atmosphere due to orbit decay.  At a higher orbit, this concern can more easily addressed.

As for some of the ideas that I put forward, they are not new, unique, nor mine.  It is in the pdf, just mentioned. Not necessarily in the form that I put it in, because that pdf is material that is nearly 30 years old.  The shuttle was still a relatively new launch platform back then.

Thus the use of the external tanks as a space station is an idea which has already been studied by NASA. What may make the idea more interesting is that some of the limitations of the shuttle have now been removed. It may well be more feasible now than before.

What I am saying is that there may be an opportunity here.  The question is will somebody be able to see this and take advantage of it?  Or will that opportunity be lost?  A window of opportunity can close really fast.  I hope that it will not be lost.