ok, we will be retiring the shuttle fleet soon.
why not send them into space one last time, they could be laucnched unmanned (the soviets did that with their shuttle) the remaing fleet could be placed in orbit, and hooked together to creat a space station (remeber Skylab??? it was made of left over Apollo parts)
we could strip the shuttles of landing gear, and even the tiles, to allow more cargo to be carried. we could add a space station module to teh cargo bay, adn full outfit it.
we could run these shuttles as a space station on their own, or connect them to the existing space station. talk about an inexpensive spacestation upgrade!!
what a waste to let the remaing shuttles collect duct in a museum, lets use that hardware one last time for space flight.
Comments (3)
Space shuttles would make poor components for a space station as they have very little habitable volume. Much of their mass is taken up by the engines and supporting tankage, none of which would be particularly useful on a space station. (The reaction thrusters needed for station-keeping are tiny compared to the SMEs.)
we could leave much of the return materials ont eh ground, remove landing gear, and tiles and you free up wieght, go remote control and you free up life support and seven crew, thats a lot of wieght saved. then you add a space station module (space lab) intot eh cargo bay, presto, a space station, dock it to the existing station and you instantly have more room, for a small cost
the shuttles might not be the best space station stuff, but they are already paid for and we can still launch them
The SMEs and the External Tank are necessary to get the shuttle into orbit. The ET might be a useful component for a station (if you could scrub the hydrazine somehow) but it never makes it that high.
As for putting a module into the cargo bay, it would be much cheaper to just put that module atop an expendable heavy lifter (Ariane V?) and leave the shuttle on the ground.