alt Hacker NewsFor the shuttle there was also a lot of interference from the Airforce, which forced them to have a massive payload bay, so AF could launch and service their big Keyhole satellites (and possibly snatch Soviet ones in one orbit without warning).
Then there was pressure to make use of solid propellants to amortize their use with military uses, not to mention pushing for Shuttle carrying all payloads for the US.
This together created the dangerous and expensive design tHat was STS.
People give the USAF shit about influencing the shuttle specs, given the capability was never used...
... but a lot of those were set in 1968 - 73, when relationships between the US and Soviet Union were very different than the late 80s.
Given the development and operational timelines, it wasn't a bad bet to cover needing that military capability, had things turned out differently between the two superpowers.