That'd be nice, except for one major problem: Shuttle is a truly unique launch vehicle. There is nothing that can take up its payloads. We're talking more than just reconfiguration. You'd have to redesign them from the ground up. Shuttle has extraordinarily benign launch conditions in terms of vibration and structural loads. It's also capable of furnishing electrical power and coolant to a payload long after launch. It can place payloads directly into their final position, obviating the need for any sophisticated navigational computers, engines, and tanks of propellant. And lastly, it can launch damn big payloads (both in terms of mass and volume). Compare Destiny to Zvezda and you can get an idea of the difference in capabilities between Shuttle and Proton.<br /><br />I, too, would like to see pieces designed for more than one booster, but the reality is that you can get a lot more out of a component designed to be launched via Shuttle than you can with a component designed to be launched by Proton. So I can perfectly understand why the design decisions were made which restricted so many components to Shuttle launch. It's also why I am admittedly a bit sad to see Shuttle go. It has unique capabilities which will be lost when it goes. But there's more than one way to skin a cat, as it were; the next space station will likely be designed differently. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em> -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>