You either do not know me well enough to say that- I have always reviled the shuttle or I suspect you are again just arguing a red herring to argue. The shuttle hardware is heavy lift- and it bothers you for some reason this hardware exists. Too bad.

“The Shuttle lifts several thousand tons free of the earth.”

It’s not the effort, but the result that matters. That the Shuttle was an inefficient launcher should be very apparent, even to someone like you.

Even with all it’s theatrics, the Shuttle only leaves 1.2% of it’s takeoff mass in orbit, whereas Delta IV Heavy and Falcon 9 leave 3% of their total mass in orbit. And it gets worse when you look at the $/lb it costs to get that Shuttle mass into orbit…

The Shuttle era, if they can ever get these last two flights off the ground, has ended. Let’s throw a party, congratulate everyone involved, and move on to something better.

The Shuttle lifts several thousand tons free of the earth. It is a HLV.

Even if we accept that a fully commercial space station is not feasible at today’s launch prices, and in the absence of commercial crew taxis, it is still true that a Bigelow space station would likely be a more economical way to run a government funded space station than Shuttle + ISS, or Orion + ISS, let alone SLS + Orion + ISS. It would at least be a big step in the right direction and it would also help make EELVs more competitive through economies of scale, something which benefits unmanned spaceflight too, including commercial unmanned spaceflight such as comsats.

The last thing a “NewSpacer” wants to do is present an arguement from authority because it is a fallacy of logic:

“Appeal to authority is a fallacy of defective induction, where it is argued that a statement is correct because the statement is made by a person or source that is commonly regarded as authoritative.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

The case for Bigelow is:

A) Has invested his own time and money i.e. he has some skin in the game.

B) Has launched hardware to LEO on two occasions that are still functioning.

C) Has six signed MOU’s from future potential customers illustrating there is a market.

“The shuttle is a HLV, no matter how much the regulars here deny it.”

If that were true, then how quickly could you lift a 30 ton payload?

If the answer to that is “we have to get the money from Congress to modify the Shuttle”, then the Shuttle is not an HLV.

PARTS of the Shuttle system might end up in an HLV, but the Shuttle is not an HLV. The maximum payload left in space when the orbiter returns home is 27.5 tons, and right now the Shuttle doesn’t go anywhere without the orbiter.

And a lot better in that regard than the crackpot “googaw.”