Thoughts on the Space Program

This isn't a particulary mindful post, but the coverage of the current shuttle mission has been getting on my nerves.
There have been two shuttle disasters since the program began. If memory serves me, Challenger in 1986 should never have launched because it was cold and there was concern that seals might have shrunk or become brittle; and in 2003 everyone saw the debris strike Columbia, but no one wanted to use available technology to see if it had left a hole before reentry.
If the Administration is going to cancel the program then just do it. Don't make it about safety. We have no way of knowing whether or not those filler thingies have been poking out on every shuttle mission ever flown. We weren't looking before now. I would go so far as to say that you'd be safer in a space shuttle than in a humvee in Iraq, so what is served by the breathless announcements of another concern about the shuttle? I commented at Two Babes and a Brain that I'd clean the heads for a seat on a shuttle mission. Fly or don't fly; but stop being wusses about it.
We're Americans! We explore! Sometimes it ain't safe! It's either that, or we stay in our little cocoon and keep our fingers crossed.

Thanks, Winston!