Its cheap light and easy to haul a half dozen humans home in a capsule, but its complicated and heavy to haul down immensely heavy satellites with a decent cros

Its cheap light and easy to haul a half dozen humans home in a capsule, but its complicated and heavy to haul down immensely heavy satellites with a decent cross range such that you could land next orbit on friendly territory at all times. Remember the shuttle "had to" be all things to all people, and the military demands ended up being VERY heavy and expensive. At this time AFAIK nobody has the technical ability to snatch a Soviet spy sat and take it home, or haul strange and heavy (many ton) electronic warfare payloads over a target and land next orbit on NATO turf. Now, WHY you'd want to, or SHOULD you want to, are outside the bounds of this discussion, but the shuttle certainly had that kind of military stuff as a very expensive and very heavy design req.