The shuttle was only "public" in the sense that the public was paying for it and got to watch the fun on TV - it was not, however, available to the public in an

The shuttle was only "public" in the sense that the public was paying for it and got to watch the fun on TV - it was not, however, available to the public in any meaningful sense. The fact that NASA occasionally took a schoolteacher or scientist or Saudi prince along for the ride does not change the fact that space travel remained a fantasy for most of us throughout the entire lifetime of the shuttle program. I grew up in the 80s and 90s (in the US) and I was never under the illusion that the shuttle was open to me, personally. The only way the "public" will ever get to visit space is if the cost of launches is reduced, which is something that governments have been almost universally terrible at.