Space shuttle was inherently a bad idea. Actually the concept behind the idea is good, a reusable spacecraft. But the way they went for it was bad. The thought only went to the fact that it need to come back as a plane was the bad idea. That concept will add unnecessary weight in the way of wings and pilot controls and uses a runway to land. This weight we can avoid. To have reusablity, I am sure it costed more than the throwaway rocket launching costs.
Propulsive landing is the best, it takes much smaller total rocket to acheive the same thing shuttle did. Space X Falcon rocket. And it's first stage sucessfully came back for reuse. There is a lot of work to be done in this area, but the path which SpaceX takes is the best path. Low cost, less fuel, and safe landing.
