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Shuttle Fleet Upgraded
angel'o'sphere writes "Space.com reports that the shuttle fleet will be upgraded with more technology, like new sensors to detect debris hits on the wings, etc. Also, the foam causing the Columbia accident (intended to insulate the tank and prevent the formation of ice) will be replaced by: heaters. I wonder if heating up a tank with liquid oxygen is a bright idea."
Nope. No shuttle ever launched from SLC-6. My dad was a flight operations analyst at Vandenburg from 1983-1987, so he would know. SLC-6 was originally built to launch the shuttle into a polar orbit -- the shuttle would launch in a southerly direction. (You can't launch into a polar orbit from Canaveral because the spent solid-fueled boosters would fall onto Brazil, and that would probably torque the Brazilians off.) Unfortunately, the solid rocket boosters were redesigned after the Challenger accident, and enough weight was added to preclude ever launching into a polar orbit, so SLC-6 was, in fact, abandoned. I was last there in 1996, and it was rusting out pretty badly.
Also, they've used heaters on liquid O2 before. I was reading "Moon Lost" by Jim Lovell (the Apollo 13 astronaut), and he explains that heaters were used in the Apollo spacecraft's O2 tanks to keep the system pressurized. O2 pressure too low? Just turn on the heaters, more of the supercritical O2 would resublimate, pressure's back up to nominal. In fact, heaters were chosen instead of pumps because pumps have more moving parts which means more things that can malfunction.