Yeah, that's where the "compromised" is from. STS was killed in the cradle by politics, and operated its whole life as a zombie. A nearly impossible and quite c

Yeah, that's where the "compromised" is from. STS was killed in the cradle by politics, and operated its whole life as a zombie. A nearly impossible and quite capable zombie, but still a zombie. An amazing feat to be sure, but it would have been better to let it go once it became clear it could meet nothing like its original goals. An STS2 might have been a decent system, but running the original so long seems to have damaged the very concept of reusability in NASA and other space agencies. But even the best possible government-designed-and-operated system just doesn't have the right incentives to be really efficient like the SpaceX system is aiming for. The incentives being "making money" and "Elon really wants to go to Mars".