Considering the huge amount of effort to launch one, the short duration a shuttle can remain on station and the limited number of them we could have ever built and put in orbit, what would be the point? Let's assume for a moment we (well...US leadership) lost our collective minds and decided that we wanted to swoop down and nuke Red Square for the LoLs. Hell, let's assume we had every Space Shuttle up and each one swooped down and toasted a city. It's nowhere near the capability to prevent the next action being the retaliatory strike which would incinerate the US. 10x the number of Space Shuttles wouldn't prevent that. And we'd have to plan months in advance for this 'first strike', and prevent anyone from knowing we were loading nukes in the shuttles.
Maybe your 'Trusted close relative' really believed all that stuff. Crazier crap was taken as truth in the Cold War. But in reality, that's not what the Space Shuttle was for.
Considering the huge amount of effort to launch one, the short duration a shuttle can remain on station and the limited number of them we could have ever built and put in orbit, what would be the point? Let's assume for a moment we (well...US leadership) lost our collective minds and decided that we wanted to swoop down and nuke Red Square for the LoLs. Hell, let's assume we had every Space Shuttle up and each one swooped down and toasted a city. It's nowhere near the capability to prevent the next action being the retaliatory strike which would incinerate the US. 10x the number of Space Shuttles wouldn't prevent that. And we'd have to plan months in advance for this 'first strike', and prevent anyone from knowing we were loading nukes in the shuttles.
Maybe your 'Trusted close relative' really believed all that stuff. Crazier crap was taken as truth in the Cold War. But in reality, that's not what the Space Shuttle was for.