Official NASA site. Links to NASA TV. Probably very hard to access.
In addition to the seven members of the crew, there are three people on board the International Space Station. The shuttle is the primary but not the only source of supplies to the ISS as well as the primary means of getting those astronauts down from there.
They mentioned the space station crew on one of the news reports we were watching. Reprovisioning is apparently done via unmanned launches from Russia, so resupply won’t be a problem. In the event they need to leave, getting them down also won’t be a problem, because they can use the escape capsule. The problem will be getting a new crew up there.
It may take a while to discover the cause and then examine the remaining three shuttles to ensure they don’t have the same problem. As I recall, after Challenger it was nearly three years before another mission was deemed safe to go up.
Yeah, Linkmeister-
I read where it was 32 months before another shuttle went up in space..
There will be alot of spectulation about all this for awhile. My husband was asked to go to Texas, but he got out of it. Sometimes its all too much….