@cerebrate This prompted an etymology expedition to find out whether "shuttle" was first used in the weaving sense or in the transportation sense.
Wiktionary has this to say: "The name for a loom weaving instrument, recorded from 1338, is from a sense of being "shot" across the threads. The back-and-forth imagery inspired the extension to "passenger trains" in 1895, aircraft in 1942, and spacecraft in 1969, as well as older terms such as shuttlecock."
@jendefer TIL this, too!