You're contradicting yourself: first you said: "The Space Shuttle was a political football whose design was dictated by the whims of Congress and the meddling

You're contradicting yourself: first you said: "The Space Shuttle was a political football whose design was dictated by the whims of Congress and the meddling of the military first...." Then you note the military didn't want it, but wanted it to be useful if forced. I would add the Science article specifically addressed the single orbit polar mission, saying the Air Force didn't see a great need for that and would have been happy with gentler flight profiles. It explicitly said NASA insisted on it, and that's consistent with their post-Apollo institutional biases, much the same produced the hot-rod SSMEs. "Meddling", when it wasn't, qualifies as bashing in my book, especially in the full context of your sentence. As for my incredulity, maybe start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography I was a History minor in college....