Using The Shuttles External Fuel Tank In Our Return to The Moon and Our

On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Alex Michael Bonnici wrote:
> Hello Gang,
> As news comes in that the President will announce an
> ambitious new space program that will return the United States to the
> Moon and take us on to Mars, a venture that may have a huge price tag
> connected with it, I am left wondering why NASA never seriously
> considered the various proposals to use the shuttle's external tank (ET)
> as the building blocks in developing a permanent space station and
> cyclic spacecraft that would take us to the Moon, Mars, and perhaps to
> the Asteroid Belt, and Outer Solar System. Why wasn't this idea ever
> really given the attention it deserves? Looking at the proposals made by
> the Space Islands Group and various other companies and organizations
> this proposal seemed to have real possibilities.

Space construction cost estimates from NASA are, I'm sure, much higher
than these other groups estimated. Anyway, the way the Shuttle is
launched is already a huge waste - 80 tons goes up only to come
down again every time. The external tank's nothing compared to that.

Arthur