As Kiwi said, the reentry profile the Shuttle flies is already almost as benign as is possible. However, reentry heating is made more severe when the Shuttle has to make up a lot of cross-range distance. I'm not sure how much cross-range was required by the entry they flew - if it wasn't zero, then they could have reduced the heating a <i>little</i> bit if they had chosen a reentry path that passed directly over KSC.<p>Also, if they had made the determination that the vehicle was a write-off, they could have modified the 'bank-and-roll' program to increase the thermal stress on the right wing and reduce it on the left, and then had the crew bail out as soon as they could. Again, this would probably not have made that much difference.<p>Another option I heard was to have cold-soaked the left wing for an orbit or two before the reentry. By orienting the Shuttle so that the left wing was in shadow, it would have been pre-cooled to -150C or so. However, it's doubtful that it would have made any difference - even if they tried the wild idea of 'stuffing' the leading edge with water bags - when you consider that the plasma streaming over the leading edge is about 2000C.</p></p>