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Argh. Icer, trust everyone when they say the shuttle cannot make it to the moon. Even if you give it enough engines/fuel to get there, it's not designed for a moon flight. Its software alone would have to be totally redone in order to calculate lunar trajectories. It's a low-earth orbit space truck, and that's all it will ever be.
Redesigning the shuttle for safe lunar flight would take FAR more money and time than just designing a new ship to do it.
Plus, the old LEM's are #1 no longer around (the originals were destroyed since they were jettisoned after they re-docked with the command module) and the tools to make them have long since disappeared. Just as it would take immense time and money to tool up to start building model T's again, it would take even more to start building original LEM's.
Not only that, the apollo program was a proof of concept program. Can we get to the moon? It answered that. But the LEM could only carry a small amount of samples back to the command module with it. It could only carry 2 astronauts. It couldn't carry any construction materials down to the moon. It was a major stretch just to get it to carry the lunar rover. It'd be much smarter to design a new LEM that could carry more people and cargo. This way it could be used to start construction on a lunar base from which to launch the Mars mission. It could also then carry back samples from the moon so we could see what kind of resources we can get from it (fuel, etc).
Using the old stuff would cost more and be less effective than designing new.
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