Xref: utzoo sci.space:26047 sci.space.shuttle:6777
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Translunar/interplanetary shuttle?
Message-ID: <1990Dec5.172901.11571@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <3550@orbit.cts.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 90 17:29:01 GMT

In article <3550@orbit.cts.com> rambler@pnet51.orb.mn.org (Dan Meyer) writes:
>What about 1/2 the cargo bay for fuel, and half the cargo bay for an LEM ?

As people have pointed out repeatedly, it is far better to take the fuel
and the LEM *out* of the cargo bay and send *them* to the Moon without
taking a shuttle orbiter along for the ride.  The parts of the orbiter
that are actually useful on a lunar trip can be packaged much more
compactly into something resembling the Apollo CSM, and the result will
be much more useful payload delivered to the Moon.  A shuttle orbiter
is mostly dead weight on such a trip, and hauling that much useless mass
to the Moon and back is *EXPENSIVE*.
-- 
"The average pointer, statistically,    |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry


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