There's much debate about this issue, and it's hard to come down on one side or the other, but the Shuttle had unique capabilities that no other system has had.

There's much debate about this issue, and it's hard to come down on one side or the other, but the Shuttle had unique capabilities that no other system has had. Imagine building the ISS without the shuttle, for example. Imagine servicing Hubble. Imagine returning large objects from orbit safely. The shuttle cost NASA a lot of money that's true, but it cost the US relatively little, and NASA did a bunch of truly amazing things with it. There's good reason to be nostalgic.