Don't forget the real value of the Shuttle.
Deliver groceries, and pick up the trash...
YAWN - NASA better up their PR campaign ASAP - get to the Hubble or find something someone cares about.
Bad PR - real Bad
This should be a pretty impressive mission..
It will significantly alter the appearance of the station, and will involve actual work and assembly in space..
That means lots of spacewalk activity, and possibly some dramatic stuff...
The visible change in appearance alone will garner interest.. Actually seeing the new solar panels being installed..
As for the shuttles, you're sort of right.. They're just glorified taxis..
We need to go back to dedicated "heavy lifters" that deal with cargo, and a small fleet of "tugboats" that remain in orbit with the ISS and do the actual ferrying of supplies, crew, etc., back and forth from low orbit to the ISS high orbit..
Let Richard Branson's "Virgin Galactic" or whatever deal with crew transport.. Stop messing around with a clumsy, undependable and expensive shuttle run by an incompetent government bureaucracy..