This one was obsolete well before its first flight. Astronauts could be delivered to LEO with expendables for less money. Satellites and supplies to the ISS could be delivered without risking human lives and, again, for less money. By using expendables you would end-up building modular spacecraft, iterating designs and improving them on every launch. By using less money you get to build more expendables.
The shuttle is a beautiful machine, but it's even less practical than the Concorde. And many, many orders of magnitude more expensive.
Sadly, a Saturn/Apollo stack would be more ingenious and a worthy successor.
That said, the SRBs, the tank and the engines could be put to good use. I guess the tank could be adapted to LOX/Jet-1 and engines and payload could be fitted on it.
The shuttle is a beautiful machine, but it's even less practical than the Concorde. And many, many orders of magnitude more expensive.
Sadly, a Saturn/Apollo stack would be more ingenious and a worthy successor.
That said, the SRBs, the tank and the engines could be put to good use. I guess the tank could be adapted to LOX/Jet-1 and engines and payload could be fitted on it.
The orbiter is the problem.