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"NASA could alway develop something so they could do a spacewalk to check for damage. Thruster suit, whatever. If there is a will there is a way to get our pilots home safely."

If they hadn't over-invested in manned spaceflight, they'd already have a football-sized camera pod that can maneuver about and take pictures, untethered. Disposable, so you don't even need to recover it. Works on pressurized gas of whatever is on hand. With padding in case it goes out of control and flies into the spacecraft (and limited rates of acceleration so that it can't fly too fast.)

Geeze, I mean, all you really need is a wireless TV camera (steadicam stabilized to maintiain its attitude) to float out there, and simply thrust the shuttle away from it and into an attitude for inspection.

I like the idea of the camera drone. Really.

But as NASA has reported many times, even if they found tile damage, the have never been able to find a way to repair it on orbit in the vacuum of space.

As you know, each shuttle tile is custom made in size and shape. So you would have to fill a gap with come kind of caulk or foam or something.

Nobody has found such a material that will work in the cold vacuum of space...so far.