I really don't feel sorry that the shuttle is gone, over the lifetime of the program including all costs, it cost $1 billion per launch. The 1970s dream of an affordable, reliable, speedily re-usable spacecraft was not achieved. It's good that it's gone.
Also it was the most deadly launch system ever created, killing on average one astronaut for every ten launches.
The combination of needing human crew for every single mission and not having an launch escape system (something basically every other rocket had) wasn't a great compromise.
Of course I knew about both Challenger and Columbia, but I wasn't sure on the total number of flights... Two quick google searches say 135 flights and 14 fatalities, which statistically is quite bad. All of the fatalities related to Soyuz flights were, if I recall correctly, with very early versions that were rushed to launch by arbitrary soviet political deadlines.
