One Giant Leap

...Backwards.

The new space shuttle will not be the glorious Orion featured in 2001 A Space Odessey. The new shuttle will be an Apollo capsule with twice the room.

Why? Because aiming a heat shield towards re-entry is easier than exposing the much larger surface area of the present-day shuttle.

Payload? None to speak of. Our satellite-launching business will go back to unmanned rockets, and perhaps we'll retrieve at least some of the work lost to the Russians, Japanese and Europeans.

Wasn't the concept of the original Orion far more feasible than the old Apollo capsules? Yes. And then some. But once we decided to send teachers in space the danger factor overwhelmed us and it was only a matter of time before the shuttle was doomed. Apollo-types are safer. Far too small to be used as a vehicle to Mars, so by 2020 or so we'll need a Super-Apollo-Orion, and that gets back to more surface area exposed to re-entry, and, gulp, danger, gulp.

Not going to happen. Not by us. Every rocket scientist in the world agreed that bigger shuttles were necessary, so after an experimentation period to verify the validity of this we decided to go smaller. Because the press was scaring the soccer mom's.

Oh and they aren't going to be called "shuttles" anymore. Exploration vehicles. For the time being, to restock the space station that was built for the shuttle to dock to, after the shuttle was built to restock the space station that was built to...

Inspired by Lem's far more positive view of back to Apollo.