The whole point is that they had already ruled out catastrophic scenarios and are therefore no longer worried about losing the crew and orbiter.
The only concern left is that the aluminum frame will be weakened and need to be replaced once on the ground. The mission managers decided that it's not worth risking the astronauts during a spacewalk (which can further damage the tiles) and during landing because of a sloppy repair job. Not to mention creating more work for the next mission because of the wasted time during the repair.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice job quoting out of context.
The whole point is that they had already ruled out catastrophic scenarios and are therefore no longer worried about losing the crew and orbiter.
The only concern left is that the aluminum frame will be weakened and need to be replaced once on the ground. The mission managers decided that it's not worth risking the astronauts during a spacewalk (which can further damage the tiles) and during landing because of a sloppy repair job. Not to mention creating more work for the next mission because of the wasted time during the repair.
Sorry for feeding the troll.