Interesting Proposal for Shuttle II

One of the biggest mistakes of the original space shuttle program was making a single vehicle to carry people and cargo. Any spacecraft that carries humans has to be literally an order of magnitude heavier than a spacecraft carrying an equal non-human weight. The two biggest reasons for this are human's pesky need for food, air and water, and our selfish desire to come back home to the mother planet. This is why disposable rockets (like the ones the Russians use) are still a better deal, dollar-per-pound-wise, for launching things in to orbit.

So a new idea has come around for the next-generation Shuttle: Launch it without the people. This means the heavy-booster which launches the shuttle doesn't have to be man-rated (i.e., human safe) so can be much lighter and cheaper. Consequently, the hardest part - leaving the Earth behind - becomes much easier. The crew would be launched later with a cheap, reusable SpaceShipOne-style rocket.