I can't help my general dissillusionment with the entire shuttle program get the better of me sometimes. I read somewhere that that one flight (STS 114) cost somewhere on the order of $7B after all the investigations and what have you, and it still ended up in further grounding and delays.

Maintaining the shuttle through 2010 will now cost $8B more than previously thought. That hefty chunk of change will kill VSE. What's more, in two years we'll likely discover it will cost ANOTHER $8B more than we now think.

Since the last Apollo launch America has spent $500B on NASA and we can't even get beyond LEO. Hell we can't even get TO LEO with any reasonable regularity.

It would be far wiser to ground the shuttles, divert funds to the CEV and HLLV, and reimburse our international ISS partners for their costs. We should not be expected to continue to fly a flawed spacecraft because other nations insist on it.