I’m going by memory here, but as I recall, it isn’t that the shuttle can’t land with the Hubble on board, it’s that the delicate components on the telescope, particularly the extremely sensitive mirror, wouldn’t survive landing in good enough condition to be returned to service. Bringing it down, in other words, is a one-way trip. If you want to work on it and keep it operational, it has to be done in orbit.
Here’s a rather discouraging article on the subject of NASA’s plans for a shuttle replacement. He seems to know what he’s talking about and make some good points, but his “what do we do now” conclusions include:
Some of my admittedly less-informed thinking was along the same lines as his (i.e. separating the cargo-carrying, crew return, and human access to orbit requirements and developing cheap (sic!), specialized vehicles for each task), but his conclusions are quite different. His proposal to use refurbished Apollo Command Modules seems pretty far-fetched, IMHO. Why not just depend on Soyuz capsules, or cooperate with the Russians to develop an advanced version of the proven Soyuz for crew return?
Cervaise, another advantage of the South Pole moon base is that, if the suspected water in the perpetually shadowed craters turns out to be legit, we can use solar power stations located on the higher peaks to generate electricity and break the water down into H2 and O2, which can then be used as rocket fuel. I still think it’s a good idea to practice long-term surface living on the moon as opposed to going to Mars without that knowledge.
Possibly relevant: New reuseable rocket engine on the way.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-03zm.html
It’s kerosine-fueled, which most likely means it’s designed for the first stage of a two stage reuseable launch vehicle.