Let's hypothesize that a shuttle goes up and a very serious flaw is detected. Let's say it bumps a meteor and incurs a serious gash. The craft is still stable but a section of the wing and the heat-resistant tiles are clearly damaged. Are they trying to tell us that they have no backup plan *at all*??
When they went to the moon, took their first spacewalk, etc., they knew they were pushing the envelope and could run into a catastrophe with loss of life because they were taking risks that had never been taken before. But this was something they'd sent up dozens of times and I would have assumed they would have anticipated this situation happening *sometime* and come up with a backup plan. Otherwise, what were they thinking sending up teachers and congressmen, poster children for diversity and the sort? Seems darned irresponsible for them to send up a ship that they can't retrieve if it gets anything beyond minimal damage.
You can criticize all you want about the whistleblowers who complain about cutting corners on safety regs but, it doesn't cost money to have contingency plans in place should an event happen which the odds say was going to happen at some point. What I'm learning is that NASA had none for this and that's as startling to discover as the ship itself disintegrating on Saturday.
It certainly seems to be pointing in this direction. I keep saying wait until all the facts come out, but the more facts that do come out keep pointing to this conclusion.