How do you build a space shuttle?

Question

you knooooow the things that go up to the moon and stuff.

Answer 1

Well, the U.S. space shuttle doesn't go to the Moon.

Aerospace design and manufacture is a curious mix of the exotically innovative and the comparatively ordinary.  Certain portions of the space shuttle orbiter, such as its structural design, are little different from building an airliner.  Certain other portions such as the heat shields and the engines require very unique processes and methods that themselves often take years to develop and protect.

But every design, whether exotic or ordinary, requires a lot of ephemeral engineering in developing those proceses and "tools" to get it done right.  A Boeing 747, for example, has about 6 million parts and requires 270,000 different "tools" to build it.  Aerospace tooling is not just screwdrivers and measuring tapes.  The "tools" themselves are complex structures that have motors, platforms, pins, hinges, and so forth -- they are complex machines themselves.  Each of these tools is built for only one task.  So the tooling for a 747 can only build 747s.

Similarly the tooling required for the space shuttle was useful only to build the space shuttle.  That tooling no longer exists, so in order to build a new orbiter you'd have to set up its production line again and all its tooling, which is a very expensive and time-consuming thing to do.  Conversely, tooling is expensive to maintain and store, so you don't keep it around in good condition after you're done using it.

NASA made a decision to inform its contractors that no more orbiters would be required, whereupon the contractors gave over that production capacity to other uses.  That decision effectively ended the space shuttle program: we cannot practically build another orbiter without repeating the startup costs.

Answer 2

I think you can buy a kit from the back of a comic book.  Right next to the guy about the guy who kicks sand in your face.

Answer 3

Watch The Astronaut Farmer. Helps A LOT.