There are a lot of smart people at NASA so why did it take nearly 20+ years to put a tile inspection boom on the Shuttle. They are developing a procedure to insect the exterior the day after a launch. My question is how the hell are they going to rescue the Astronauts if there is a problem. With tile replacement nearly impossible while in orbit this makes me wonder what they will do if they find a problem in the future.
I guess the ISS is there and they could orbit close to the space station and transfer. Because on non ISS supported missions they usually do not have the docking mechanism. Or are they going to have to change the schedule of shuttle launches to always have a spare shuttle on the pad. Time for the US to bite the bullet and accelerate the shuttle replacement program. [Space Today]