People think I'm saying the Shuttle was a shitty design, and meanwhile I think the Shuttle was a heroic effort to keep crewed spaceflight going in an era where it was fighting for its life.
The tragedy of the Shuttle is that the compromises made to stay alive meant it never achieved its stated main goal. So it became a symbol of its dark times, and the clinging to it for decades a symptom of that trauma.
It's amazing how bad the 70's were in general.