[John Jamieson]

That is called the die in obit plan. There is no abort from reentry. There is no rescue plan.

Sure the shuttle tiles are a single point failure, there are a thousand others.

17 loses in 40 years seems pretty good to me, thats less than NASCAR.

[r9etb]

That is called the die in obit plan. There is no abort from reentry. There is no rescue plan.

You're right. I was in the post-Challenger Flight Rules Review meeting where this particular one was discussed. There wasn't a lot of discussion -- everybody knew that the only plan was to not get to that point in the first place. (This was the same meeting where they reviewed the flight rules governing the ground-initiated destruct sequence for a launch contingency....)

IIRC, the astronauts were more than a little interested in the topic.