Steve Chapman on "Unpleasant Discoveries About The Shuttle":

After spending two and a half years and huge amounts of money to prevent a recurrence of the problem that destroyed the last shuttle, the agency now finds the problem has recurred. If NASA takes appropriate action, though, it won't happen on the next shuttle flight, because there won't be a next shuttle flight.

With luck, the seven astronauts aboard will return safely to earth next week. But even if it ends happily, the Discovery mission can only be described as a disaster. On the first day, agency personnel were elated by the sight of the craft soaring into orbit. On the second day, they were disconsolate at the news that, once again, a dangerously large chunk of insulating foam fell off the external fuel tank during the launch.

Fortunately, an inspection revealed no appreciable damage to the spacecraft. But NASA had to announce it will stop flights until it can devise a remedy. "We decided it was safe to fly as is," said William Parsons, who heads the program. "Obviously, we were wrong."

"Obviously, we were wrong" could serve as the epitaph for the entire space shuttle program, which has never lived up to expectations and has rarely justified its existence. In recent years, it has become a gold-plated Corvair -- obsolete, horrendously expensive and unsafe at any speed.

Indeed.

As I posted the other day, this is the last space shuttle that should ever be launched. NASA's efforts obviously will now be completely concentrated on getting Discovery's crew home safely. After that, the agency's resources should be fully concentrated on developing a replacement for the shuttle. Any further effort expended toward trying to patch up and modify the current shuttle vehicles for further missions, given that the fleet is already scheduled to be decommissioned five years from now, would be a waste of time and money.

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Update:

NASA may order a spacewalk:

HOUSTON, July 31 -- NASA hopes to decide Monday whether to order an unrehearsed spacewalk to make the first exterior "repair" of the space shuttle in orbit. An astronaut would try to eliminate a potential reentry hazard by removing two protruding bits of heat shielding on the belly of the shuttle Discovery.

Wayne Hale, the shuttle's deputy project manager, said he thought such a spacewalk would be a relatively "easy thing," but "we are not making light" of a problem that NASA officials earlier had appeared to dismiss.

"The risk here of going underneath the vehicle is, we hope, relatively remote," Hale said during a Johnson Space Center news conference Sunday. "But it is surely something you have to think about. That is part of the calculation."