This is what a lot of Go code looks like. This "space shuttle" code honestly isn't much more verbose than most Go code I interact with. The main difference is they have more comments here.
As for the "space shuttle" term, it's more of a euphemism for "do not even attempt to refactor this mess, it's so complex that you'll surely fuck up if you do, and you'll make it harder for the one guy who can actually understand this"