Yeah, the Shuttle never flew a polar orbit, nor did it ever land at Vandenberg. Fun fact: the only reason the Air Force had a say in the Shuttle's design is because the Shuttle was supposed to be a fast-turnaround spaceplane with enough launch capacity to serve as the standard spacelaunch system for the entire government, including NRO flights.
Then we actually flew the thing. Whoops, the heat shield falls apart after reentry. Whoops, the turbopumps can only last one flight. Therefore, six months of downtime between flights. Whoops, Columbia and Challenger! Therefore, the fleet might be grounded at any time, for years at a time, since the Shuttle can't be flown without humans, (Landing gear deployment requires pulling a manual lever, on the insistence of the astronaut corps. Otherwise it was entirely automatic) and the public doesn't like it when astronauts are killed.
Thus the military returned to conventional rockets. They even built an unmanned spacecraft for the "go up and steal a satellite" mission the Shuttle never ended up performing: the X-37.
Then we actually flew the thing. Whoops, the heat shield falls apart after reentry. Whoops, the turbopumps can only last one flight. Therefore, six months of downtime between flights. Whoops, Columbia and Challenger! Therefore, the fleet might be grounded at any time, for years at a time, since the Shuttle can't be flown without humans, (Landing gear deployment requires pulling a manual lever, on the insistence of the astronaut corps. Otherwise it was entirely automatic) and the public doesn't like it when astronauts are killed.
Thus the military returned to conventional rockets. They even built an unmanned spacecraft for the "go up and steal a satellite" mission the Shuttle never ended up performing: the X-37.