Thanks...
I stand corrected. 'Give a dog a bad name...' I guess I conflated the Shuttle and Star Wars. Things got pretty weird there in terms of what science was going to deliver, just because it was 'morning in America.'
The thing is, the Shuttle has never delivered on its promise of cheap, reliable access to Outer Space in the way it was sold to the taxpayers yet it seems to have had a charmed existence in the minds of the public. Curious, that.