Interesting...
Both the Space programme (Apollo and Space Shuttle) and Concorde are fanastic technological achievements.... and sadly both have delivered their greatest values as 'sideshows' to the main event...
Lets face it Conocrde as a commercial airliner was not a success but the lessons learnt in pan European co-operation and multi site manfacturing has resulted in Airbus... not a sahbby legacy.
The Space programme, especially Apollo, taught the Us and the world that prgramme management was the key to delivering the project goals on time. The lessons learn there have been applied countless time since then to great efffect in civil infrastrucutre works, manufacturing programmes etc.. .but Apollo served its purpose and then stopped... it had nowhere to go..no future.
Equally the Space Shuttle will have lived only to show its was not possible to do what it set out to do.....
But lessons learnt in doing so will live on regardless.
What these show is that regardless of the headlines... safe/ unsafe/ useful/ useless these programmes serve to increase the skill, the knowledge and the abilities of those who particiapte and that is never lost or wasted...