Anti-satellite weapons significantly expand the amount of space debris that we have to deal with, and threaten a global impact cascade we term 'Kessler Syndrome

Anti-satellite weapons significantly expand the amount of space debris that we have to deal with, and threaten a global impact cascade we term 'Kessler Syndrome'. The Space Shuttle was designed to do several things that had nothing to do with NASA's purview: To launch anti-USSR spy satellites into polar orbit from Vandenberg, to reboost and repair those satellites, and to steal/recover USSR-owned spy satellites, taking them into the cargo bay and landing at a US runway in order to recover their technology in the event that the USSR got ahead of us again. This also applies to US-owned satellites at risk of reentering over the USSR to prevent their tech from catching up. In order to do this, they made the whole thing incredibly expensive, and sacrificed a lot of capabilities NASA would have rather had. That's what this is for. It serves as a functional military Shuttle analog against small payloads, and as a beta for a manned X-37C or X-37D against larger payloads.