[Alberta's Child]

Something else to consider here is that we are discussing all of the possible things that could be done in the event something like this happens again.

But this was only one of many, many things that could have gone wrong. In order to be prepared for every possible contingency on a shuttle mission, or even for every possible contingency that might happen on more than one out of every 1,000 launches, we would be launching shuttles the size of warehouses, with extra tiles, engine parts, engines, wings, escape pods, 5 years worth of oxygen, Florida ballots in case the crew is trapped up there past the next election day, etc.

At times like this it is hard to accept that it is necessary to be clinical about these things, but there are paratical considerations to be made. That's why the speed limit isn't 10 miles per hour on interstate highways.

[GOPrincess]

"But this was only one of many, many things that could have gone wrong. In order to be prepared for every possible contingency on a shuttle mission, or even for every possible contingency that might happen on more than one out of every 1,000 launches, we would be launching shuttles the size of warehouses, with extra tiles, engine parts, engines, wings, escape pods, 5 years worth of oxygen..."

This is a good point which Miles O'Brien (CNN's space expert) addressed in a KRLA radio interview this morning. He said there are literally thousands of parts on the shuttle which can cause a catastrophic failure -- if just one of them goes bad.

I think maybe it would be a good thing to consider how *amazing* U.S. engineering is, that we have flown these shuttles so many times with no problems, when there are always thousands of possibilities of things going wrong.