It was an amazing vehicle and highly capable in some way, but severely constrained in others. The main problem is it was almost completely useless for any missions or activities beyond LEO. In theory you could use it to put up a small boost stage for a light interplanetary probe, but its cargo capacity was a bit small for that, and there’s just no point using a whole shuttle to do it.

Now that we have Falcon 9 and Heavy moon missions are back on the table, but the Shuttle was incapable of supporting any effective Lunar mission profiles.

The Shuttle was never designed for operations outside of LEO. It performed the role it was designed to fulfill beautifully. The reusability wager didn't pay off and the Shuttle was expensive as hell but by golly was it capable. Nothing can compare to its combination of capabilities in putting/retrieving payload, being able to service assets with RMS, and the size of the crew it could carry and provide them a relatively comfortable environment, space lab, operational freedom it provided in extending margins of errors due to OMS and aerodynamic reentries, etc.

The Shuttle was never designed to support Lunar missions so that's a red herring.

It was designed to recover satellites and bring them back to Earth safely as part of its military mission. Nothing Space X is offering has such a capability.

Different vehicles for different roles.

The contention was that it was the most capable spacecraft ever flown, without qualification and no reference to LEO, so I think pointing out that it's domain of operations was actually very limited is reasonable.

The shuttle was very well deigned for what it was intended to do, that's quite right, it's just a shame it was never used to perform one of it's primary tasks. However it also doomed the manned US space programme to operate exclusively in LEO for the vehicle's lifetime.

My understanding is that Falcon rockets are not optimal beyond LEO.

They can do it of course, Falcon Heavy could launch a car in the general direction of Mars. But they are limited by their use of kerosene in their 2nd stage and its low specific impulse compared to hydrogen.

BFR and it's Raptor engines are better suited for that purpose. But we don't have a BFR yet.

That's true Hydrolox is by far preferred for upper stages, particularly for interplanetary missions. However Heavy is so powerful it compensates quite well for it's compromises in that area. It can still boost double the payload to Trans-Mars Injection than Delta IV Heavy and more again than Atlas(1).

(1) As Dom Toretto always says, American Muscle beats Import every time ;)

The shuttle was a fiasco.

It was ridiculously expensive. It was unsafe. And everybody knew that before it flew the first mission.

http://www.iasa-intl.com/folders/shuttle/GoodbyeColumbia.htm...