Until we're ready and able to abandon the Shuttle (may it be soon), we need to make it as safe as reasonably possible. That's like refusing to replace balding tires on a car that you're hoping to replace in a few years. Sure, you're saving the cost of tires but you're risking an accident in the meantime.
A piece of foam killed a crew and wiped out a vehicle costing about $1-2 billion. It cost over a billion more trying to fix it. If changing to a different foam forumulation was a contributing cause of the Columbia accident, then they should go back to the old formula. The amount of CFCs in the old formula was probably pretty small, especially compared to the nasty stuff that comes out of the SRBs. Having a Shuttle come apart in flight probably wasn't too good for the environment, either.
Space/Science » in reply to re: The "F" word.
That doesn't make sense