Has the US Senate Outlived its Usefulness?

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While the US Constitution divides some responsibilities between the House of Representatives and the Senate, it seems that having both chambers still in existence in this day and age creates unnecessary redundancy. Has the US Senate, as an institution, outlived its usefulness? Is it needed any longer? Or is it an archaic body, an anachronism from the early days of the Republic, that no longer serves any real purpose but continues to exist out of inertia? The Senate was originally designed to represent the interests of the sovereign states rather than the interests of the residents of those states, a subtle difference many people have difficulty discerning. Until just before World War I, Senators were not elected by direct popular vote, rather they were elected by the state legislatures. Not until the ratification of the 17th Amendment did this change. This begs the question: Once Senators started being elected by popular vote, did the Senate, in effect, simply become superfluous to the House, whose members had always been elected by popular vote? When we now have octogenarians and nonagenarians who were first elected to the Senate during Reagan's first term still in office decades later, is the institution itself so moribund and corrupt as to be in need of dissolution? My fellow myLotters, let me know what you think?