There is no Triple A in space
I'm not trying to play the blame game, but your response is even less well thought out than mine. You mean to tell me that you have never heard of space walks? Maybe in the future we can always have the equipment needed and personel trained to do space walks on board. It seems like some sort of composite mixture to fill in cracks could be devised to use in cases where we know there is tile damage. Then they could fill in cracks much like filling in dents in furniture with wood putty. A big bin of assorted tiles (that could also be cut to fit) to used as replacements could be stored in the cargo bin.
In the future, yes maybe that is possible
But from what I have read .. And I am no expert in this area, far from it .. but what I can tell there would have been no way for this crew to have fixed those titles.
Remember this is space, it is very dangerous inside a shuttle, it is even more dangerous outside of it.
Please pay attention to what is posted on this thread.
They had NO way to do space walks.
A big bin of assorted tiles (that could also be cut to fit) to used as replacements could be stored in the cargo bin.
Assorted tiles? They are all individually cut for the place they go. They would have to take 27,000 tiles with them.