Having worked on the STS for 36+ years (1975-2011), that would have been nice. Unfortunately the processing time involved to ready another orbiter in time was impossible. Even if the damage had been confirmed there would not have been time regardless of how many hours were worked. That was a real crappy day to say the least. My wife and I were watching NASA select awaiting Columbia’s return. When the twin sonic booms did not happen I told her it was going to be a bad day because they didn’t land late and they didn’t land somewhere else. Watching the controllers at JSC during the last few minutes was gut wrenching.
I have posted this before on FR:
I, too, worked on the Shuttle program. The whole story on Columbia has not been aired.
I still have my meeting notes and my report to my colleagues in Downey from my visit to JSC.
We told JSC that the RCC on the leading edge of Columbia’s wings MUST be replaced. Where the shock wave from the nose impacted the RCC very high heating rates were causing oxygen atoms to enter the RCC and “de-densify” it. In other words, the RCC was losing carbon atoms as CO and outgassing.
We were told by the JSC rep, “There’s no money in the budget to replace the RCC”.
You could poke your finger through an RCC panel it was so weakened.
That’s the point where the foam off the ET hit the wing leading edge.
I wrote a letter to the accident investigators telling them what I knew. Never got a reply. To this day, I do not know if they replaced the RCC.