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Shuttle also had the insane design decision of requiring human crew to be sent up on every single flight, rather than as an optional payload.

Shuttle returned all of its engines by throwing the srbs to the sea. Maybe using a cheap replacement to those and expending it on each flight would be cheaper. At the same time spacex decided against reusing the second stage, essentially making that decision for it's own stack

Starship is very similar to the shuttle in that it will be a reused second stage carrying humans and/or cargo (humans optional unlike Shuttle). Hopefully unlike shuttle it will be able to be reflown without extensive, expensive refurbishment.