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The B-52 is flying out of necessity, not preference. And it has been relegated to less and less demanding roles as the threat increases. Once, the B-52 was the premier penetrator of defended airspace. Then it became a cruise missile carrier when it could no longer be relied upon to penetrate. Today, it is useable only where there are no significant air defenses. On the first night over Baghdad it will be B-2s, not B-52s. The fact that it continues to be viable is a testament to the ingenuity of the service, but an indictment of the procurement policies of the last decades.

Now we will have to fly the shuttle for the next decade out of sheer necessity. To keep the ISS going. To get oversized payloads up. To keep things going. Even if the damn thing now has an empirical time to failure of under 150 flights.

Now the B-52 is not inherently less safe as an airframe than the B-2, although it may be less survivable now in combat. But no airforce personnel should be forced to fly in an airframe that crashes every 150 flights. Now, this is no criticism of those who designed the shuttle back in Nixon's day. Apollo, after all, had two lethal accidents (Apollo 13 survived by a miracle) in less than 2 dozen outings. That was 1 to 12. So 1 to 150 isn't so bad. But today we have the technology to build a vehicle that will go 1 for 15,000. We will keep the shuttle going, and it will be testament to the bravery of its crews and the ingenuity of the engineers, but it will say nothing good about the politicians and suits who are supposed to procure the best spacecraft that money can buy.