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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.

I agree that astronauts should have the best vehicles available. The Space Shuttle is old technology combining the risks of rockets with the landing characteristics of a plane. It never actually leaves the atmosphere, so we couldn't fly the shuttle to the Moon. As for the B-2 and B-52, The 52 is a stategic bomber and still performs well able to deliver huge payloads at a safe altitude. Without the need to carpet bomb the USSR, they can be flown less and keep flying. The B-2 is a tactical bomber like an F-111 with a much smaller payload. It's stealth allow it to engage an enemy that still has air defense capability.