BREAKING: NBC News finds Jan 30 NASA Memo showing serious concern about tile damage!

Developing. Watch MSNBC for latest. Internal memo shows some engineers believe there was up to a 7 1/2-inch gash from the foam breakoff at launch. Memo was serious enough to go out to all NASA centers two days before disaster.

Of course not.. they should of planned for this a long time ago.. hell setup a 2nd shuttle ready to launch in case of anything going wrong with the 1st one. The thing is this. It's a job.. a dangerous job.. and obviously that comes with certain risks. If NASA at some level royally screwed this up and they died because of it. Then by all means let the sorry saps that caused this to happen, pay for it. But until there is any proof of what should of, could of, been done to fix this problem, you have no standing what so ever. As it stands right now this is a tragic accident. Nothing more.

I am not accusing NASA of malice- only perhaps lack of judgement.

1). We hear there was no way for any of seven(!) people on board to space-walk out to the damaged area because a) none of them was trained to do so, and b) because no effort had been made to lay in supplies (such as tiles) to deal with such an eventuality, even though this exact same problem had manifested itself on Columbia in 1997, and had produced numerous warnings that some plan needed to be put in place. This is careless management in my view.

2). Please correct me if you can prove I am wrong on this, but I have also heard from numerous sources that no attempt was made to utilize satellite resources to photograph the damage and assess it in a responsible manner. Not for sixteen days. Forgive me for sensing a pattern.

3). The idea that NASA has not invested in a practical crew-ejection system (say, a tile insulated, parachute-equipped, detatchable cabin section) in the seventeen years(!) since the Challenger disaster does not inspire great confidence in the judgement of NASA's leadership.

4). You've no doubt seen (or heard) the stories about NASA's "new and improved" method of adhering the "foam" (hard as concrete, apparently) to the Main Booster Rocket. It is more "environmentally friendly" than the old method which was favored by the more cautious elements within NASA. I haven't researched this in great detail, but Roger Hedgecock (Rush's substitute teacher today) sounded as though he had, and was appalled at such a decision.

5). Had two of these issues been addressed more responsibly, this situation might not have arisen. Had the other two been dealt with differently during the mission itself, I'm sure there would have been hope for those folks. Atlantis could have mounted a rescue mission (cargo-bay to cargo-bay?) within a week. IF all resources had been utilized to gather information.

I don't take any pleasure in "piling on" the administrators who screwed this program up. God knows they're going through hell. But it does seem that the truth must be faced.

It also seems that accusing me of implying that NASA deliberately caused this tragedy is infantile and counter-productive. Have a nice day.

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