🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> On Tue, 17 Nov 1992 22:01:50 GMT, henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) said:

Henry> In article <1992Nov17.194901.16883@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> Dr. Norman J. LaFave <lafave@ial4.jsc.nasa.gov> writes:
>... is it concievable that an SSTO vehicle could be built with the same
>payload weight capability as the shuttle with the same base technologies?

Henry> Gary Hudson claims that you could put six SSMEs on a shuttle external
Henry> tank, without SRBs, and get it into orbit carrying a payload about 50%
Henry> greater than the shuttle's.  It wouldn't be reusable, though.

This sounds a lot like Shuttle-C, whatever happened to that idea?

As I understand it, Shuttle-C was an idea for using up old SSMEs.  The
idea was to take a normal stack (an ET and 2 SRBs) and bolt on a
fairing containing the payload and some SSMEs in place of the shuttle.

This was meant to be a cheap expendable HLV using parts that NASA was
already familiar with.  I guess it's payload would have been at least
100,000 lbs, probably a lot more.  Some of the pictures I saw had 4
SRBs.


Hugh