I think the key difference was the USA preferred people on the space shuttle missions. It wasn't for lack of technology, which the whole system was computer assisted anyway, but manned missions are hard and require more engineering and technology. It was political and memorable, that was part of the demonstration and triumph.

It's very cool that the Buran completed a single 3 hour trip unmanned, it went down as the first unmanned space flight that not many people know about. There's nothing much more to say other than that, which is disappointing.

The X-37B and its predecessors have been flying for nearly 10 years. I've been following these programs for apparently a lot longer than I realized. The take away with this program is they are launching these missions without much fan fair and the only brag is the incredible amount of time these missions are active in space. Literally every mission I've seen has the same information being released which is a picture of the vehicle touched down and the time spent in orbit... that's it. As with the last mission, this will be forgotten, another will go up to space and in a couple years we will get another press release.