Ignoring all the weird design decisions, STS was flexible enough to do a bunch of things we still don't have a replacement for, such as on-orbit service mission

Ignoring all the weird design decisions, STS was flexible enough to do a bunch of things we still don't have a replacement for, such as on-orbit service missions, satellite return (if we wanted, never used as far as the public knows), ISS reboost (dragon can't, cygnus can), etc. Anyway the failures I was pointing out were very tactical, classical get-there-itis ones. Challenger had a clear warning not to launch on that cold day but was overridden. For Columbia, Boeing engineers modeled potential damage from the foam strike, but mission managers dismissed the risk and decided not to inspect and mitigate; there were several options on the table that might have improved survival if they had done so.