This is precisely the attitude I would argue against. The "goals of the platform" are meaningless predictions made by people before the thing even existed. This is a standard of measurement that's appropriate for bean counters and congress people who ultimately wanted and expected just a cheap commodity space bus.
On the other hand, the space shuttle was the coolest thing imaginable in the 80s. It was crazy that it could launch like a rocket and land like an airplane.
My opinion now is that it was an unnecessarily complex, highly inefficient launch system.
The issue that I have is that there should have been no requirement to carry cargo on the shuttle. Launch cargo on big dumb rockets, and launch and return people using a fancy space plane. The space plane would be smaller and likely not need booster rockets.
They always said the thing about being able to retrieve satellites with it but never really did… that they talked about.
We designed, funded and built the thing to do something specific. It didn’t really do that.
A goal is not a meaningless prediction. Outcomes matter.