I am on both sides on this one. I thought this was great that we had a reliable,re-usable manned spacecraft,but it was really only meant for the purpose of Low Earth Orbit so that limited the amount of things it could do. It was a project to do whatever we needed close to Earth. Mostly satellites, space stations, experiments,etc. To get us ready for the future of space exploration. Now we are aiming at going to Mars. I belive that the private industry is going to get there first though. The Shuttle program was extremely expensive though so I'm fine with them retiring the program.