The first flight of the Shuttle was in 1981 and it retired in 2011…
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Didn’t really question it (thought it was a generic rocket), but it’s cool that it’s based on something!
Me too - it was glorious… 
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This might explain the process more:
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Re the OP, yes I think it’s strange to have a Shuttle launch as background art, and I don’t like it.
I know it looks cool, and many if us grew up thinking that everything NASA did was the greatest. But the Shuttle was a turkey of a vehicle. Costing billions to build, it was supposed to make spaceflight much cheaper, safer and easier. It did none if those things. Not only was it a technological dead end, but it still holds NASA back today: NASA has spent billions every year for the last two decades on its Shuttle-derived Space Launch System (SLS) while SpaceX, RocketLab and others have developed much better rickets for a small fraction of the cost. The purpose of SLS is not to go to space but to funnel tax dollars to certain congressional districts.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a massive spaceflight enthusiast. But the Shuttle is the symbol of what’s gone wrong with NASA.
Actually there was a reason for the shuttle, it could lift and deploy very heavy payloads. It was meant to be used for building stations in orbit and for their maintenance. The idea of it being “cheap” came from the other idea of it being “reusable” and, again, it was the premise for frequent flights in order to colonize orbit and beyond.
Unfortunately it was too complicated, I guess it is the most complex vehicle ever build and the stress of launch and re-entry was too severe to allow easy reconditioning.
Please note that the “reusable” idea is still pursued by SpaceX and I don’t know how cheaper the rockets and the capsules are despite being much simpler than the shuttle.
I agree, the Shuttle did have a formally defined purpose: it was to be an all-purpose space truck replacing all other launch vehicles. It failed miserably and wasn’t even a step in the right direction. As you note, other organizations are making reusablility work now, but nobody is pursuing anything like the Shuttle (except arguably Sierra Nevada Corporation with its Dream Chaser, but that is years behind schedule and has at best a very cloudy future).
It is the SLS derivative of Shuttle that was created with little purpose other than keeping federal money flowing to the Shuttle ecosystem.
That shuttle didn’t sound worth it 
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It id not fail, it did fly and it did deliver cargo in orbit.
It wasn’t as cheap and as safe as advertised.
The question could be “did people at NASA know it wasn’t cheap and safe and did they kept it running regardless?”
Probably, yes, because at that point there wasn’t any other option.
There is a main problem: is space esploration and colonization still a goal the USA and the world all toghether should pursuit? If not, NASA should be much smaller with a smaller budget for just sending scientific probes. I can imagine NASA wanting to survive at any cost, then pushing even wrong ideas just for keeping the wheel turning.
Not really..
Feels appropriate to me considering Fedora also brought back a relic of a contributor as the new Fedora Project Leader. But I may have a unique perspective on that.
That reminds me, I still have a space shuttle LEGO set that needs building..the set initially released in 2021 with the hubble telescope payload..also kinda of a relic now too I guess now that the webb is out there.
Anyways… I probably should go do some stretching cuz I’m old.
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