Huh? It's not like the United Space Alliance partners really were responsible anyways...the orbiter is a NASA design. NASA made the call on not having a survivable escape module that can eject safely from a disintegrating launch or re-entry vehicle. They decided it cost too much weight.
NASA also made the call on not having protective "fairings" covering the delicate carbon-carbon leading edges. So far as I know, they didn't even explicitly justify their negligence.
The launch of Discovery with its numerous cameras surveilling the surface right up and through External tank seperation...showed that despite the most-recent-"fixes" launches still are generating a heck of a lot of dangerous debris. Debris effectively ignored until Columbia's catastrophe....
The post-Columbia "fixes" only slightly moderated the problem...
But fairings at least would address this sufficiently to solve the debris safety issue. More effective than the individual flake-source "band-aid" approach. So we don't have to lose another wonderful crew...
