OK, I personally don't think this is going to happen.  Yes, the Apollo capsule was only capable of one flight but it wasn't an inefficient spacecraft.  Secondly, could we prepare a shuttle faster, thats hard to say.  First a Saturn V rocket would not be neccessary-it was only used as a moon ship because it was powerful enough to break out of Earth's orbit (just to be completely correct-it was also launched once to put a space station in orbit).  They would need a smaller Satrun type rocket; likely a Saturn 1B.  OK, now the amount of time to prepare one for launch might be quicker than the shuttle-unfortunately I don't know how long it takes to prepare the STS for launch (I'm more of an early manned spaceflight expert than anything else) but I know that an Apollo CSM which had to be modified was prepared and ready for launch in about 2 weeks during the Skylab program (they though they were going to need to lauch a rescue mission and they made the preparatiosn very quickly-the mission wasn't needed).  Anyway, I'll bet the time tp prepare the launch would be about the same.

The problem I see is the cost of building the CSM's.  Now, there are no finctional CSM's left (plus if there were they would be too old to use)-therefore they would have tp build more.  North American Aviation built them in the earily 1960's-I honestly doubt they still have the machines required to manufacture Apollo parts-so those would have to be rebuilt before a CSM could even begin construction.  For that reason alone, I don't see this happening in the near future. 

Hopefully that all made sense.   

Richie,

How can you say that a spacecraft which is designed for one use is more efficient that one designed for 100 uses?

And since shuttles are in production and CM's are not would it not be cheaper to have a shuttle equipped with "universal" docking modules on "standby", ready to be fuelled and launched within a few days?

It could be rotated in and out of service so that there is always an "emergency" shuttle on standby.

Sooner or later we will need a space rescue.  In the traditions of NASA it will probably be successful.  In the traditions of the American government there will be hearings, investigations, etc. from which:

1. NASA will be blamed for not having an emergency contingency, despite lack of funding, and,

2. NASA will suddenly receive adequate funding for studies, proposals, and, if fortunate, an actual solution.

I think I agree with you, except that Apollo was "efficient". It did what it was designed to do, if that is efficient, but at monstrous cost.  The civilian population received some benefit but Tang and Velcro were not among them.

I did not suggest that we have a shuttle ready, waiting and fuelled on the pad but I think we need some sort of capable emergency vehicle available on short notice.  In space you're either dead immediately or when your air runs out.  We need a vehicle that can get into orbit and rendevous before the air runs out.

The shuttle is not the most efficient answer to that, as you have pointed out.  But, and you can quote me on this, but I'm not looking forward to it, sooner or later an astronaut (more important, an American astronaut) will die in space because his/her air runs out.  Typically our government will react and demand to know why NASA did not act sooner to prepare an emergency launch vehicle.