[MacLeod]

Originally posted by Ruatha:
As previus stated, it's a sad day.
But one can't say it's becouse the shuttles are old.
They're constantly being upgraded, and serviced.
They are supposed to be able to handle 100 take offs.

It could have been made yesterday and still crash, **** happens.
In sweden we built this great warship a couple of years ago, the Wasa. It sunk on it's maiden voyage out of the harbour!
There is always a risc, and sometimes it's worth taking. These people knew that.

I agree. I seriously doubt NASA is just screwing around when it comes to maintenance. And even if Columbia is the oldest, it's not the most flightworn, the Discovery is (having about 30 launches to the Columbia's 21).

Bombs are damned unlikely as NASA engineers have certainly gone through the shuttle with a fine-toothed comb fifty dozen times before launch, and a missile is just damned near impossible.

Was probably a random mechanical problem, or one part of it needed to be gone over another ten dozen times than it already was.

As far as shutting down the space program, who wants to stay on this boring planet forever? Just hope we don't forget about the poor guys in the ISS in the meantime, though they reportedly have a good 4-5 months of supplies.