On Sat, 20 Aug 2005 19:06:32 +0200, in a place far, far away, nmp
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

Op Sat, 20 Aug 2005 19:37:36 +0000, schreef Rand Simberg:

On Sat, 20 Aug 2005 17:58:58 +0200, in a place far, far away, "Rene
Altena" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

It may not be an STS replacement, but a shuttle it surely is.

Only if you think that the word "shuttle" means any partially reusable
vehicle that goes into and returns from orbit. That's not a
definition in any dictionary of which I'm aware.

The Shuttle is called 'Shuttle' because it is a Shuttle-service:
up-down-up-down-up-down-up-down etc. etc.

That doesn't mean that everything that goes up and down must be called a
shuttle. Should we rename elevators "shuttles"?

No, but why do we sometimes call airplanes, autobuses, trains "shuttles"?

Because we sometimes choose to. We are not required to. If you want
to call the Kliper a "shuttle" (or, for that matter a tail a leg),
you're free to do so, at least in the US, but that doesn't impose a
requirement on anyone else to do so.

The others with the narrow viewpoint, do they include the writers of
dictionaries and the people who named the US Space Shuttle, Space Shuttle?

Yes, if they demand that all space vehicles in the future be called
"shuttles."