Shuttle's up!

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

Oh ok, you must be refering to the Orbital Manuvering Module, which evolved from the "space tug" concept. It used LOX/LH2, was transported to the space station via the shuttle, and was used to launch satelites into higher orbit trajectories.

 

The concept evolved around the time of Space Station Freedom, and was the first budgetary elimination of the project (in FY91-ish). The idea was that Freedom could use the OMV to deploy and retrieve spacecraft from LEO. The shuttle, or SDV, would return with fuel as needed to keep the OMV running.

 

Nope again. This was an honest-to-God fuel tank for the shuttle itself.

 

There was also an interesting proposal to use a shuttle stack without a payload unit called the "low-value cargo vehicle", proposed in 1989. The idea here was to attach two beat-up SSME to the ET, and use normal SRBs to deliever propellents to orbit, for use in other space craft. Since the vehicle was much lighter than the traditional shuttle stack, the SSMEs would not use much propellent, and approximately 163,000 pounds of fuel could be sent to the space station.

 

However, this concept didn't really gather much steam because NASA was trying to get Shuttle-C flying, and focused most of thier efforts there...

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Heard of that one. Hell, in my post above, most of my ideas are just old NASA ideas, from the good ol' days when the agency was run by engineers and not lawyers, dusted off.