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Final shuttle launch for Discovery: Was shuttle program worth it?

Feb. 24 will mark the last shuttle launch of Discovery, with the final flight of Endeavour to follow in April and – if there's enough money – Atlantis's last flight of the entire program in June. Here are five questions about what the shuttles have – and haven't – accomplished.

4. What is the most significant lesson from the shuttle program?

Steve Helber/AP/File
The crew for the space shuttle Challenger leaves their quarters for the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., in this Jan. 27, 1986, file picture.

  • By Pete Spotts Staff writer

Most important, Friedman says, are the lessons of the Challenger and Columbia accidents, which killed a combined 14 astronauts within a 17-year period.

"Risk human life where it's worth the cost, and don't risk it when it isn't," he says, adding that launching satellites, as the shuttle did initially, doesn't require a human presence in orbit. Exploring new worlds, by contrast, can benefit significantly from boots on the surface.

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