One thing that the Space Shuttle had going for it was that it could be used as a Canadarm[1] platform. Bringing the arm back home in one piece was handy, and th

One thing that the Space Shuttle had going for it was that it could be used as a Canadarm[1] platform. Bringing the arm back home in one piece was handy, and the orbiter's huge mass probably made it easier to reason about the physics involved. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm