[Unmarked Package]

"The Space Shuttle could launch a city bus, fully loaded."

That's an interesting way to visualize the payload capacity of the Shuttle.

I'm not sure the design maximum, but I think the heaviest payload ever carried by the Space Shuttle was the P3/P4 truss segment that went up in the last Shuttle flight (Atlantis STS-115). That monster payload filled the payload bay, weighed 35,000 pounds, and cleared the payload bay structure by only four inches when it was lifted out on orbit.

[RightWhale]

The city buses we have weigh 14 tons. There are bigger ones, but these are typical.