In article ,
AES/newspost wrote:

The Shuttle's purpose was more than just lifting payloads. It's both a
scientific platform, as well as a on-orbit repair station.

Little to completely negligible meaningful science actually done with or
on the shuttle; shuttle launches for repair missions of unamnned
orbitals cost more than rebuilding and relaunching a new copy of the
same item; plus limiting the unmanned orbital to an orbit reachable by
the shuttle generally significantly compromises its performance.

You can't do much man-in-space science during unmanned missions.
Of course, the people who don't want manned missions don't care
about that science.

--
Bob Noel