Some points
Shuttle's weakest link were the tiles. NASA knew it from march 24 1979 but not before. Unfortunately, so many programs, payloads were already depending on the shuttle and it became very hard to completely change them.
I find it undefendable to assume any other project would have been better. After all, there are always bugs somewhere and something else could have delayed anything else. Only after testing can we find out. Von Braun's projects never went far enough to allow engineers to make an opinion about their merits.
Let's not forget the Shuttle allowed many many more humans to experience space than any other program.