Watched the show last night 30 years later. Worked on the shuttle system from 1975-2011. Some awesome years and a few horrible years. I remember exactly where I was for Challenger and Columbia.
Yeah, in 1971 we were working on getting the Congressional funding for the Space Shuttle, the LEO space station, and the manned mission to Mars in the latter half of the 1980s. Later, the Air Force was to have their own Space Shuttles, with some of them launching into Polar orbits from Vandenberg AFB.