RE: Earth re-entry problems

“ahh it was just a thought garry…….
as for fuel, why not have it stored on the ISS??”

There is some fuel stored on the ISS but it is used to maintain orbit.

If you wanted to use fuel stored on the ISS to fuel a landing you would be in the unusual situation of flying 20-30 times more often into space for the sole purpose of making every 50th or 60th flight a little safer… and that is only in theory. Most of the accidents that have occured in the short life of space rocketry have involved liftoff for the very simle reason that a rocket is a controlled explosion. I don’t know that doing that more often would make it safer.

I personally think that until some new and far more efficient propulsion system can be designed the best solution would be to have several layers of heat tiles so that even if one entire layer was lost there would still be plenty of protection for the aircraft.
Of course that would eat into payload capacity and my solution there would be to remove the main rockets of the shuttle and get rid of the solid rocket boosters and use a more powerful but disposable rocket to launch the spaceshuttle. (Like Buran)

“ahh it was just a thought garry…….”

Not burning you on a cross 🙂 Just pointing out that although it could be made to work it would be very inefficient and not necessarily safer.

“So when are europeans going to send a shuttle in orbit?.. “

Buran was launched quite some time ago…

Seriously though i think the Japanese will be the next (country) to launch a space shuttle.