[Blood of Tyrants]

He RUNS away from the question of why he didn't ask for telescopic investigation of possbile left-wing damage on ascent - mainly because, IMO, he doesn't want to deal with the problem of what to do if damage is shown.

When Discovery had some problem with the vertical stabilizer, NASA tried to look at it with ground telescopes but the resolution wasn't good enough to do any good. He made a good call by not wasting time performing a fruitless task. However, I don't know why an EVA (extra vehicular activity) was not scheduled in order to make a visual inspection.

[chaosagent]

No EVA suits were onboard.

There is no such thing as an on-orbit tile repair kit. Everyone of the 30,000 or so tiles is custom-made for its location. There is no adhesive that can be used in the cold and vaccum of space and yet will survive the heat of re-entry.

This was looked into back in the early days of the Shuttle flights, but as time went on with no tile problems, it had been dropped the last I heard.

[chaosagent]

See #11