[6figurelenins]

The "shuttle" concept dates to the late 1960's. Great marketing, but the program was intended to finish once a destination was built.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Station_Freedom

> As the Apollo program began to wind down in the late 1960s, there were numerous proposals for what should follow it. Of the many proposals, large and small, three major themes emerged. Foremost among them was a crewed mission to Mars, using systems not unlike the ones used for Apollo. A permanent space station was also a major goal, both to help construct the large spacecraft needed for a Mars mission as well as to learn about long-term operations in space. Finally, a space logistics vehicle was intended to cheaply launch crews and cargo to that station.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-134

> The Shuttle was originally conceived of and presented to the public in 1972 as a 'Space Truck' which would, among other things, be used to build a United States space station in low Earth orbit during the 1980s and then be replaced by a new vehicle by the early 1990s.

[rob74]

Well, you could say that those plans were ultimately accomplished, although much later and in a different form: the shuttle was used to build a space station (the ISS - not in the 80s, but in the 2000s) and was eventually replaced by a new vehicle (again much later, in the 2020s, with an embarrassing gap in between, and the new vehicle looks much like the shuttle's predecessors - but still...)