re: Picture of a space shuttle leaving Earth, taken by NASA

Nope.

It is funny to see him take a hardline stance on the reason being why being fuel flow and trying to remove the need of fuel pumps when the reality is it was just a tertiary boost.

If memory serves, they actually did toy around with an orbiter up profile before and during the program.

What always stopped them wasn't anything about fuel issues. It was vehicle strain. Specifically they wanted the bow wave of supersonic aerodynamic stresses to be on the fuel tank rather than the orbiter.