I can imagine that no amount of experience would've avoided the final events for Columbia, but I was astounded to see that only two of the crew were on their second mission & the rest were on their first. Again, I draw no conclusions from that, but I just assumed that NASA would use a mix of experienced crew with any mission.
Also sad to see that none were trained for EVA. If they had any doubts about the wing, there was no way to check.