While it makes for a nice looking ship, a shuttle type spacecraft is a bad design for operation in space. The wings are only used during the last few minutes of any flight. They are useless in space, get in the way of re-entry, and add hundreds if not thousands of pounds to the weight. Since any spacecraft spends 99% of its time in space it makes no since to have wings just so you can make a precision landing on a runway. It should be possible to be precise enough to use a parasail landing with a capsule style ship in the general area of Edwards AFB or any large desert air base. If it is making an emergency landing in the ocean we already know how to build a ship for that. As much as I like watching the shuttle come in for it's landing it is just not the best design. We need to get away from the airplane like design for a spacecraft.