[AdA$tra]

I really think we all want to know what caused this but grounding the entire fleet is uncalled for. It isn't like they are going to find an inherent problem with all the shuttles that only shows up after 107 shuttle missions.

[dts32041]

107 missions and two lost ccraft.

any other public paid for conveyance with that miserable of a safety record.

[snopercod]

It has stopped preparing orbiters for flight at the Kennedy Space Center launch site, including the one that was scheduled to exchange crews at the International Space Station in early March.

Brilliant. Only in a bureaucracy like NASA do you order people to sit on their hands for two years every time there is a problem.

Did it ever occur to those morons that we should press on and have a shuttle ready to launch in case of problems on the ISS? Hell, if a generic problem is found, they can always destack and fix it.

[Magnum44]

...but grounding the entire fleet is uncalled for. It isn't like they are going to find an inherent problem with all the shuttles that only shows up after 107 shuttle missions.

From a pilots perspective, you comment needs reconsideration. Understanding failure mechanisms in a complex system is crucial to reducing risks, even more so when lives are at stake. I can almost guarrantee you that of those 107 flights, not a single one was launched under identical conditions, with exactly the same hardware at the same stage in its life cycle, with identical software builds, same temperature exposures to tiles and adhesives, carried identical payloads that structurally stressed the airframe, etc. A system like the shuttle is dynamic over its life, and what was safe on flight one may not be safe on flight 28.

The proper course of action is to ground the fleet. The obvious problem with the grounding is that it will be many months, if not years before we can 'safely' fly again.