Energia can launch manned vehicles to Mars and the Moon, and is capable of putting short-term, fully assembled space stations (like SkyLab) into LEO and sending fully assembled space station components to L1. Heavy lift boosters are necessary for manned space exploration, which is necessary for the survival of our species.
The Shuttle’s system is also capable of launching 100 tons to LEO (reference), but we’re too busy sending bricks and wings along with it for it to be of any use for true manned exploration, just hops to and from the ISS.
The really expensive part of a rocket is the engines. NASA wanted a reusable space system to lower costs because throwing away valuable engines is kind of stupid. So they made the shuttle, which also needs bricks and wings, and holds not only the engines, but also the crew. (To be fair, NASA didn’t want to do this, but the DoD made them because they needed a polar launch for spy satellites. Get your own damn launch vehicle!) It wants to do all things, and as we know; something that does two things does neither particularly well.
Here’s my idea for a heavy-lift launch vehicle. Take the shuttle’s engines (which are very good) and put them on a chassis that includes all the electronics for unmanned launch and the refrigeration systems and make that recoverable. Mate this with the current system, and the only thing you’re throwing away would be the main fuel tank, which is just a big pressure vessel anyway. This would produce a heavy lift vehicle capable of maintaining presence in space and having very low launch costs.
The next step would be to mass-produce a manned craft. A capsule (like those used in Apollo) would provide efficient and cheap crew return, while a modular cylinder would provide on-orbit lodging. And only one or two would need to be up at a time. These could also be linked to provide even larger stations, without all the complications involved in creating large power systems.Going to and from these stations would be serviced by small rockets capable of lifting a crew transfer vehicle.
The focus of development should be on cheap access to space. Once we get this cost down, we won’t have to entice people to space, they’ll go on their own. Just like they moved out of Africa, across the oceans, and to every corner of the globe.
