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Intent matters and in the case of the Shuttle as a TAOS concept:1) It's designed to carry and bring back the crew and possibly a payload from Earth orbit2) The ET is staged almost at orbital speed3) Since making the ET reusable would entail a major loss of payload margin it is designed and intended to be expendable4) Since you want to reuse the engines you therefor have to mount them on the Orbiter and return them with the crew/payloadIt's the "SpaceX-Upper-Stage-Recovery" problem in nature in that you go from a light weight expendable external tank to a heavy and robust booster stage which wasn't compatable with the TAOS, (even though NASA kept hoping it would be) concept.The Energia had the same issue in that while they could consider recovery of the booster stages the main stage and engines would end up needing to be built both more robust and with an added reentry and landing system which was found to impact the overall payload enough it was never seriously considered as an option.Randy
Intent matters and in the case of the Shuttle as a TAOS concept:
1) It's designed to carry and bring back the crew and possibly a payload from Earth orbit
2) The ET is staged almost at orbital speed
3) Since making the ET reusable would entail a major loss of payload margin it is designed and intended to be expendable
4) Since you want to reuse the engines you therefor have to mount them on the Orbiter and return them with the crew/payload
It's the "SpaceX-Upper-Stage-Recovery" problem in nature in that you go from a light weight expendable external tank to a heavy and robust booster stage which wasn't compatable with the TAOS, (even though NASA kept hoping it would be) concept.
The Energia had the same issue in that while they could consider recovery of the booster stages the main stage and engines would end up needing to be built both more robust and with an added reentry and landing system which was found to impact the overall payload enough it was never seriously considered as an option.
Randy
