They've found a cause, and solution to the foam-falling problem that gouged the tiles on the last flight. I wasn't sure they'd be able to do it at all, let alone this quickly. On the other hand, I think they could have continued to fly with it as is, and if they hadn't found a solution, they should have. If it occurred again, it would only be a real problem on the Hubble mission.

I in fact think that the Shuttle is now about as safe as it can be made, and it's in fact pretty safe. I'll be very surprised if they lose another orbiter before they retire it. But even if I'm right, that's no reason to not retire it (though many will attempt to keep it alive). I've never thought it should be retired for safety reasons (at least not because it kills astronauts occasionally). We lose people mining, in construction, driving, and even in recreation. The notion that we can't afford to do so in space is silly. And in fact it's ridiculous, when we're losing people fighting a war, to argue that we can't afford to do so to open a frontier. If we, as a nation, can't grow up about this, and think that it's not worth losing people occasionally. we should just give up.

As I've noted previously, and recently, the real problem with an unreliable Shuttle is that we can't spare the vehicles. A reusable vehicle that's not reliable isn't affordable (one of the reasons that talking about "human rating" one is oxymoronic, and misses the point). And the real problem with Shuttle isn't that it's unsafe, but that it costs too much, for too little. There are a lot more useful things that we could be doing in space for that billion dollars per flight. Unfortunately, NASA is replacing it with a system that will be no improvement at all in that regard.

This is a positive development that Dr. Griffin has brought to the agency.

The trouble is, when an orbiter is lost it happens on national TV, right in front of all the critics who want to spend the money on their pet pork. We all heard the calls, after Columbia, to retire the shuttle. While that would free up money in NASA's budget, we all know that it would probably lead to a reduction in NASA's budget and spending of that money elsewhere (can we say tons of earmarks?).

It may happen on national TV in front of the whole world but I would bet big money that the cries of "is it worth it" etc. would be much less if a shuttle only cost say 50 million bucks, and we had a dozen of them sitting around or could build another within 12 months any time we wanted one.

If a 50 million dollar business jet crashes with 7 souls on board it barely makes the news.

while i agree that we shouldnt be afraid of losing people on new frontiers, i fail to see how STS is opening one.

Mercury-Gemini-Apollo opened this new frontier, all STS has done is keep the door to the new frontier cracked slightly.

while i agree that we shouldnt be afraid of losing people on new frontiers, i fail to see how STS is opening one.

Indeed. But if STS isn't doing enough to justify the cost of the risk to the lives of the astronauts, it certainly isn't doing enough to justify the other costs of operating it, since those costs, objectively estimated, are orders of magnitude larger.

If STS were an order of magnitude cheaper, but no safer, it would be worthwhile to continue building orbiters and operating the system. If it were an order of magnitude safer, but not significantly cheaper, it wouldn't be.