You're saying the same thing he is, but with more precise examples. There were also plenty of more useless requirements which is what he was getting at with it being 'designed by committee.' It was also intended to be a 'space tug' to drag things to new orbits, especially from Earth to the Moon, and this is also where its reusable-but-not-really design came from.
It's also relevant that the Space Shuttle came as a tiny segment of what was originally envisioned as a far grander scheme (in large part by Werner von Braun) of complete space expansion and colonization. The Space Shuttle's origins are from the Space Transportation System [1], which was part of a goal to have humans on Mars by no later than 1983. Then Nixon decided to effectively cancel human space projects after we won the Space Race, and so progress in space stagnated for the next half century and we were left with vessels that had design and functionality that no longer had any real purpose.
It's also relevant that the Space Shuttle came as a tiny segment of what was originally envisioned as a far grander scheme (in large part by Werner von Braun) of complete space expansion and colonization. The Space Shuttle's origins are from the Space Transportation System [1], which was part of a goal to have humans on Mars by no later than 1983. Then Nixon decided to effectively cancel human space projects after we won the Space Race, and so progress in space stagnated for the next half century and we were left with vessels that had design and functionality that no longer had any real purpose.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Transportation_System