[cripplecreek]

But a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who served on the Columbia investigation board four years ago, Stanford University's Douglas Osheroff, questioned NASA's hesitancy to perform the repairs since they "can only increase their chances of making it down."

I don't see why NASA is going to invent a fix and not use it,"

Mr prize winning physicist apparently isn't trained in risk assessment. Unneeded spacewalks are an unnecessary risk to fix a tile in that area. After all, the loss of whole tiles on the underbelly of the shuttle were once common.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Those d-mned tiles have been a nightmare since before the first shuttle launch?