Heavy lifter? Try this.

I wrote a bunch of posts about recycling the External Tank of the Shuttle. Let's say that you could count the ET as part of the payload. How much gets lifted into LEO?

The Shuttle weighs about 80 tons:

The external tank weighs about 50. The cargo capacity of the shuttle is 25 tons.
That's 155 tons. Figure out a way to use all that and you've got all the lifting capacity you need.

Seems like a lot of heavy lift capability already. The trick is to use the external tank. Anybody paying attention?