NASA is testing some ways to do on-orbit repairs of damage to the the shuttle's leading wing edge [via robot wisdom].

That still leaves these five shuttle catastrophe scenarios that NASA's currently most worried about (Jorn's blurb: “Shuttles remain hopeless deathtraps”).

“Some people still involved in the program confided to me that they have been awakened in the night with nightmarish pictures of the vehicle cartwheeling off the pad,” said Bill Heink, who retired in 2000 as site director of The Boeing Co. shuttle operations at Kennedy Space Center.