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The vast majority of the mass in any spacecraft is fuel. So you only have a little bit literally one or two percent of mass left over to do any work to carry people. The space shuttle though had those tiles that were very lightweight. That protected it and it did have a payload. Yeah, it was also a hundred tons. It was enormous and the same with Starship. One would argue that Starship is probably about as small as you can get for something that will function both as a second stage, complete orbit and then to reenter and recover. This hasn't happened yet. There are many prototypes being built, but none of them have flown fast or far enough to reach orbit much less