This is based on what I’ve picked up over the years, so is probably full of flawed info, but here goes:
As I understand it, the Space Shuttle’s final design ended up being the way it was in a large part because the Air Force wanted the ability, if they were going to be forced to use it, to do a once around polar orbit from Vandenberg. Since in that single orbit, Vandenberg would then be several hundred miles farther east than when the Shuttle launched, it would need significant cross-range ability to make it back, thus necessitating the large delta wings. As it turned out, those missions never materialized. Anyway. . .
If not for that, what might the shuttle have looked like? Just smaller delta wings?
That’s my understanding. Compare to the unmanned X-37B, and proposed X-37C space planes which appear to have a similar overall design but much smaller delta wings (along with less cross-range capacity).
It also would have had a much smaller cargo bay, though I am not sure by how much. The payload requirement was mandated by the DOD in order to accommodate national security missions, despite being much larger than needed for the vast majority of its launches.
Well, delta wings AND horizontal stabilizers. The issue with all delta wings like the shuttle system was they need to land at a much higher speed then a conventional setup. And NASA didn’t want that. Then again, they didn’t want the North American shuttle either, but Nixon outvoted them.
Yes, the key design decision was the requirement to carry those legendary giant spy satellites (“read a license plate from orbit”). This required the shuttle to have a 60 foot long, 15 ft diameter bay. Otherwise, it would have been a small craft, maybe 10 people or equivalent space in cargo. Notice how they moved supplies by hand through the hatch when docked at the ISS. Using disposable Progress capsules probably made more sense there. It really made no sense to loft a giant heavy shuttle to deliver a station module probably a quarter the shuttle’s weight.
I haven’t heard the maneuverability problem before. I doubt this, since the obvious point was - the shuttle would pretty much never do only one orbit. the obvious solution was to incline the orbit so that the landing zone was where it needed to be during planned re-entry. (They would have the same issue with KSC since the “sine wave” of the orbit on the map often did not line up with the landing spot, only certain orbits were “landing capable”) Perhaps the maneuverability issue was the need to hit emergency landing spots such as central America, Peru an Chile, which were a lot further crossways when launching over the open south Pacific.
