Nobody is spitting on the ground-breaking research that NASA has done, and Elon Musk takes every opportunity he gets to thank NASA for doing that research and making their results available to him.

For the Shuttle, however, that research occurred in the early 1970s. The $200B that has since been spent flying the shuttle did not constitute ground-breaking research in any respect. It's simply operating a tragically expensive space truck. I'm thrilled to see the back of it, and hope that this will allow NASA to return to its primary mission of doing ground-breaking research, while buying its space truck services far more cheaply on the open market.