Everyone discounts the military value of the shuttle program.
We had the ability to go to orbit and pluck the military satellites of other countries literally out of thin air.
We could, at will, blind an enemy and make their sat guided weaponry useless.
Unfortunately, this ability is now past tense.
Not if they were booby-trapped!
While you make some good points, the USAF doesn't care for the
manned space program. In fact, they were quite pleased when
Challenger gave them an excuse to not use the
shuttle for polar launches.
I remember people 30 years ago blaming the military for how
expensive the shuttle was (DOD requirements...) at the time.
OTOH, back when Art Bell was around, I'd normally discount
Hoagland, but he did tell an anecdote about von Braun when
the shuttle was approved by Congress.
While vB was happy for the funding to continue, he was dismayed
that it was for the worst design compromise in terms of
safety, as the Challenger/Columbia disasters proved.
(And Jack Garn's hands aren't clean either)
Any way, I wouldn't be surprised if new satellites are booby-trapped for self-destruction in some way.
It also gave us computers and technology that is currently being use in medical diagnostics.......among millions of other things. Hell, back in the early 80's, I had an ENT specialist shove a camera thing up my nose that was first developed by NASA in order to allow the astronauts to see behind computer banks in order to help diagnose equipment malfunctions and work on them.
As a side note, look at the technology currently being used in our cars which was first developed for car racing......turbo chargers, super chargers, etc., etc.....