I was a little disappointed, as well. It looks like it was perhaps titled by an editor or, conversely, edited down to its introduction so that the title no longer matched.

That said, I do hope, now that the program is gone and the cheer-leading apparatus can (hopefully) no longer feed on it, that the program can come to be analyzed with reference to its poor safety, limited capability, high cost, and needless complexity, rather than with reference to nostalgia and whatever other reality-distortion field that was present that allowed it to receive so little critical attention in the popular mind.

It's not highlighted specifically, and it's weak on specifics, but the article points repeatedly at the failure to scope the Shuttle program realistically, and/or to re-scale the program once its true dimensions (costs, risks, launch frequency) were apparent.

The author definitely has an axe to grind. "Failure" is a qualitative assessment, though it's objectively true that the program underperformed on the bases listed above.