[jpthomas]

The NASA Administrator is a "bean-counter", not an engineer. I can understand NASA not wanting to leap to a premature conclusion as to the root cause of the accident, but there was no reason to mock those who suspected the impact of the insulation as "foamologists".

I worked on aerospace structures for more than twenty years before I retired from the Air Force, including work on the hot structures design of the National AeroSpace Plane (NASP). I have "eyeballed" the thermal tiles on a shuttle undergoing overhaul in the VAB at KSC. I suspected the foam impact played a significant role in the disaster as soon as I saw the video of the event. There may have been other contributing factors, but an anomalous event like that has to be given serious consideration from the get-go.

[isthisnickcool]

There may have been other contributing factors, but an anomalous event like that has to be given serious consideration from the get-go.

The even was not so "anomalous" since material had sloughed off the external fuel tank in previous flights and hit the vehicle. Two flights back material coming off the tank had wacked one of the SRB's so hard it had a pretty good dent in it after recovery.

There was a rumor going around NASA shortly after the accident that the crew could see the damage from inside the shuttle. That the damage was on the leading edge of the wing. And that one of the crew emailed his wife about it. Who asked NASA about this afterwards and NASA sent an "inspection team" over to look at the wing area from different angles from within one of the trainers. And that the "team" concluded that there was no way to see the area. Supposedly, some people that saw this got into heated "discussions" with the "team".

Lot's of rumors shortly after the accident. One was that Dittmore was toast. Looks like that one was true.