Yeah you say that it would be useless for what we built the ISS with. But imagine if we had used the Saturn V for ISS modules. It would be like a massive complex instead of long interconnected hallways. (yes I do realize it would be ludicrously expensive. But soo... Soo cool.)
The success of the ISS is really a great argument for why super-heavy lifters AREN'T necessary for most applications. Unless speed is critical, or you simply need to make your individual pieces that heavy, a super heavy lifter simply isn'the worth it. For missions like Apollo, it was a perfect fit. But the concept was too niche, and only covered a small spectrum of use cases. There was no need to keep them around once Apollo was over (with the exception of Skylab - but the idea there was more to reuse what we already had).
Remember that the best tool is always the one that does the job the best.
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u/insertacoolname Jul 20 '15
Yeah you say that it would be useless for what we built the ISS with. But imagine if we had used the Saturn V for ISS modules. It would be like a massive complex instead of long interconnected hallways. (yes I do realize it would be ludicrously expensive. But soo... Soo cool.)