[Paleo Conservative]

What about using parts from the shuttle program to build a heavy lift booster. I would think equipment capable of using existing shuttle infrastructure would be fairly inexpensive and quick to develop especially since quite a bit of work has already been done designing such equipment.

[chimera]

So this looks like the shuttle except there is a sausage where the orbiter would go. What parts would you get back? Looks like those are the same SRBs. The sausage looks like it has the shuttle's main engines. You'd want those back. Does the sausage come back intact or just the engine pods? How do they survive reentry? Are we talking tiles again?

Looks like you've got everything there except a manned system. That saves costs and reduces risk of loss of life, but are we talking about an unmanned space program?

[Centurion2000]

Another thing that could be done is to put that big fuel tank into orbit .... you could outfit a few of those and string them together ... move in some insulation and consumables and you have an instant space station with plenty of room.

How hard can this stuff be ??

[Centurion2000]

Another idea for that might be to mount a tiny dyna-soar type module for the crew so that a baby shuttle comes back. Maybe something like a 50,000 pound craft and 250,000 module for cargo.It doesn't have to go, but for missions with a human construction requirement it could be added.