A fully-fueled Shuttle doesn’t use a runway: Being fully fueled means that it’s got a full external tank attached, which means it kind of has to stand upright. And with the external tank, it could certainly take off from the Moon, but then you’d have to figure out how you got the full tank there. And even if you could use a runway (strap the tank to the back, or something?), I’m not sure what you think it’d benefit you: There’s no air on the Moon, so you can’t just take off like a plane. Not that the Shuttle can do that even with an atmosphere: The only time it ever uses a runway is when it’s landing, and it does that completely unpowered, like the world’s least efficient glider.
sigh Let’s go over this again:
First of all, fueling and stack intergration operations are complex, hazardous, labor-intensive operations even on terra firma. We have nowhere near the experience to perform these operations, nor is the system even remotely designed for it. This is about as feasible as using pixie dust for propellent.
Second, I don’t think there is any way you could get the SRBs up to orbit as payload and have any assurance that they wouldn’t be cracked or damaged. That itself would be an exercise far outtasking the current launch capabilities.
Third, the Shuttle cannot withstand an aerobraking maneuver from cislunar return; it will have way more velocity (10-11 km/s) than it would from LEO (7-8 km/s) (remember that in terms of energy velocity is squared) and about an order of magnitude more mass (and in a more delicate configuration) than the Apollo capsule. It simply isn’t designed to absorb this amount of aerothermal umbrage and would come apart like a cheap gold watch.
Let it also be noted that the ISS is in a very poor inclination for Lunar insertion; except for brief windows that probably occur but a few times a year it just isn’t aligned such that it would be anything but extremely costly (in terms of delta-V) to launch from the ISS, nor is the station designed or readily modified to support any kind of fueling or maintenance operations. Just 'cause it’s up there doesn’t mean it makes sense to use it, any more than you’d use an air hammer to replace a spark plug just because it’s the nearest tool at hand.
You notice how the STS launches from a tower? 'Cause…it’s not designed to take off horizontally like an aircraft. Even if you could somehow contrive to move the ET and the SRBs out of the way (maybe we should mount them on the vertical stabilizer?) and get it rolling toward your “ski ramp”, there’s no atmosphere to provide lift to the Shuttle body. It’s true that if you point something at the horizon and give it sufficient impulse to achieve escape velocity it’ll keep going, but that’s neither practical nor desireable.
I’m completely at a loss to understand what the interest is in modifying a barely functional, 35-year-old technology, heavy-lift orbital vehicle to performing all sorts of missions it was never, even in the wildest dreams of conceptual artists, conceived to perform. An orbiter does its thing, going to orbit and returning. A moon-transfer craft, or a lunar lander, or an interplanetary craft, or whatever, each should be designed to perform its specific set of tasks without being burdened by the need to do every task. In spacecraft, where mass and volume are always at a premium, you don’t–or at lest shouldn’t–attempt to make it do all things. That is a problem of the STS as it stands–it’s a compromise, and a bad one, between a personnel shuttle and a heavy boost vehicle. It wasn’t designed and isn’t capable of performing a cislunar mission, nor would it make sense to attempt to adapt it to doing so.
Stranger
Maybe this is a dumb question, but why is it necessary for a space vehicle to get telemetric/guidance info from the ground?
Not a dumb question at all. In fact, it doesn’t strictly need to get telemetry from a ground station, and modern ICBMs are designed not to do so, instead using a combination of intertial guidence and stellar/solar tracking which is sufficiently accurate enough to place it within scores of meters to the intended target. However, because a tracking station represents a known (if not strictly fixed) point, it makes for greater accuracy in tracking. It may seem surprising, 'cause you can easily see it in the night sky, but getting to the Moon at both the correct position and the right velocity in order to enter a lunar capture orbit, and especially in a survivable Earth-reentry injection, requires a precision and accuracy that is a couple orders of magnitude greater than an ICBM launch. Not impossible, especially when you get the chance to make a few correction burns, but much easier when you can get accurate info from ground tracking stations and let the eggheads crunch all the numbers with their big blinky machines rather than work it out on your HP-41Cv.
Plus, when we send people up there, we like to keep in contact with them, just to make sure they’re all actually doing their jobs and not just lollygagging around on the taxpayer’s dime, you know?
Stranger
Telemetric = “measuring from afar”. The shuttle doesn’t receive telemetry from the ground; it sends telemetry to the ground, so they can measure it from afar. It’s not necessary to do so, but it’s nice to have that kind of data recorded on the ground in an easy-to-use format in case something goes wrong on orbit.
Responding to the comments of why bother…
I think the Shuttle has grown on people. Maybe alot of people are sick and tired of hearing about what can’t be done. Maybe they don’t like the not even remotely sexy apperance of the Apollo-esq design of the new ships. Perhaps people just want to see the Shuttle live on.
I totally agree it does not make much sense to extend the Shuttle’s mission. But I think these are the reasons why the desire exists.
I’m not so sure it can’t, remember that a areobrake was done (perhaps the 1st time ever by man) with a unshielded space probe (Magellen) in orbit around Venus (much much more atmosphere). The aerobrake was not planned, and the design of Magellen was not intended for this, but yet it took a dip into the venution atmosphere, no heat shield, and IIRC just some external solar panels which also survived.
Remember aerobraking is not reentry, you don’t plunge through most of the atmosphere, you just skim it, perhaps several times in several orbits to bleed off speed.
As for your other points, though it is impractical, I wouldn’t say in space refueling and attaching of external thrusters/tanks is impossible - remember these thing would be redesigned for this purpose, hopefully so inspace assemble would be possible.
As for the small window where the ISS is in position for a moon shot, well that is a issue, but as you stated there is some time where it lines up.
Just trying to find some use for it, it’s not really doing very well in it’s present role.
Guess Virgin Galactic will need to construct an orbital platform with a slingshot vehicle for any cislunar tours.