Re:What the shuttle is worth (Score 1)

A better way to value a human life comes to us through the "Value of Statistical Life", often used by economists to generate benefit cost analyses for things which result in the saving of lives. Through survey research, it has been found that most people value their own life at somewhere between 5-10 million dollars, depending on whether you look at willingness to pay or willingness to accept, since the slope of the value function changes at zero, according to Kaneman and Tversky's Prospect Theory.
The reason, in general, you don't want to value life according the revenue (and in any case you should use present value of revenue) is that it dramatically undervalues the lives of children and the elderly.